Asian Stereotypes Throughout History

Doing some quick research on Asian stereotypes for class, I thought I'd share the preliminary draft with you. It's supposed to eventually be a slideshow essay, after I tweak it. More to come (including the model minority stereotype, later).

"The Yellow Terror In All His Glory", 1899 editorial cartoon

1. THE YELLOW PERIL

Unsurprisingly, the first image Americans had of Asians was as a threat: a “yellow peril.”
The term refers to two attitudes: racism and fear, reducing Asians to their skin color and demonizing them as wage-stealers. “Yellow peril” originated in the in the late 19th century when Chinese laborers immigrated to various Western countries, especially the United States, and later when Japanese immigrated in the mid-twentieth century.

The fear of the Chinese peaked in the 19th century, resulting in lynchings and eventually the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which reduced Chinese immigration from 30,000 per year to just 105. Australia and Canada had similar fears and enacted similar immigration exclusion acts.

2. BAD ASIAN MAN: wicked genius, predator of white females



As the Yellow Peril became a common theme in 19th century fiction, British writer Sax Rohmer personified the fear into a physical villain, the character Fu Manchu. Film, television, radio, comic strips, and comic books featured the stereotype for over 90 years and Fu Manchu became an archetype of evil criminal genius.

In the meantime, during World War II, xenophobists portrayed Asian men as predators and killers of white women. No surprise there; anyone can take a look at black history to find the parallels.


3. GOOD ASIAN MAN: effeminate, harmless



However, there were other less obvious stereotypes. Media portrayed Asian men as either threatening or as bumbling and effeminate. Charlie Chan, a popular fictional detective by author Earl Derr Biggers, appeared in over 10 novels and 40 American films from thet 1920s to the 1980s. Chan, as a portly man who "walked with the light dainty step of a woman," as Biggs described him, spoke with broken English and acted extremely polite and apologetic. A white actor always played Charlie Chan, but an Asian actor, Key Luke, did play his “number one son”.
There have been controversies over the “yellowface” aspect of whites playing the character of Charlie Chan, but on the other hand, others argued that at least Asian men were now appearing in mainstream American entertainment media. Key Luke, for one, defended the portrayal of Charlie Chan: "Demeaning to the race? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!"


4. ASIAN WOMAN: Dragon Lady



Asian women faced a similar set of extreme stereotypes. They were often seen as hypersexual, aggressive, and cunning. “Dragon Lady,” popularized by Milton Caniff in his 1934 comic strip Terry and the Pirates, came to mean a domineering or tyrannical woman, or a seductive and treacherous woman (especially an Asian one). Any strong-illed Asian woman was immediately seen as a Dragon Lady, be it early Asian American actress Anna May Wong, who was typecast into these roles, or Madame Chang Kai Shek, a political power in her own right, who not only acted as her husband’s (the leader of the Kuomintang party) secretary, translator, and advisor, but also regularly traveled abroad to build up China’s image and legacy, eventually becoming the first Chinese national and second woman to address the U.S. Congress.

Nowadays, we can see this emerging as a fetish in objectifying Asian women, in Asian Halloween costumes and ethnic pornography. Current actresses like Lucy Liu perpetuate the Dragon Lady stereotype in their dominatrix roles in television and film.

5. ASIAN WOMAN: China Dolls and Geisha Girls


At the other extreme, Asian women were portrayed as submissive, docile, and obedient. While we can trace this submissiveness to historical realities of Confucian hierarchies in Chinese culture and in other Asian cultures, perpetuating this image turns Asian women into a stereotype. Elaine Kim, a UC Berkeley professor of Asian American studies, has argued that the stereotype of Asian women as submissive sex objects has impeded women's economic mobility and has fostered increased demand in mail-order brides.