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All these other 'people of color' are new concepts that were politically fabricated in the 70s/80s.
Yep. Asians were never discriminated against before 1970! Japanese-Americans were never put in concentration camps. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is just a saying
"Coolie" was just used to tell Asian immigrants they were cool. The Page Act of 1875 barred Chinese women from entering the US just because we thought they were TOO nice. The original California Chinese Exclusion Act of 1858 tried to make it illegal for anyone of the "Chinese or Mongoloid race" from entering California.
In the 1700s and 1800s up until the interwar period, there was thought to be 3 races of humans: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Besides being 100% wrong, it was the basis of a lot of political thought. Like hitler. In 1858, California also excluded "Negroid, Mongoloid, and 'Indians'" from going to school. In 1885 California made specific public schools for "children of Mongoloid decent". In 1911 the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was using "Mongolic grand division" to classify everyone from east of India - in 1911, they added British India to the "Mongolic" category.
So no, "POC" is not a 1970s invention. There has been scientific racism since 1785 which has been used for law up until the 60s.
Yep. Asians were never discriminated against before 1970! Japanese-Americans were never put in concentration camps. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is just a saying
"Coolie" was just used to tell Asian immigrants they were cool. The Page Act of 1875 barred Chinese women from entering the US just because we thought they were TOO nice. The original California Chinese Exclusion Act of 1858 tried to make it illegal for anyone of the "Chinese or Mongoloid race" from entering California.
In the 1700s and 1800s up until the interwar period, there was thought to be 3 races of humans: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Besides being 100% wrong, it was the basis of a lot of political thought. Like hitler. In 1858, California also excluded "Negroid, Mongoloid, and 'Indians'" from going to school. In 1885 California made specific public schools for "children of Mongoloid decent". In 1911 the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was using "Mongolic grand division" to classify everyone from east of India - in 1911, they added British India to the "Mongolic" category.
So no, "POC" is not a 1970s invention. There has been scientific racism since 1785 which has been used for law up until the 60s.
No kidding!
Many assumed this was during ww2, This photo is from around 1920
Thank you for that well written post. You took the time to recognize the complexities. There is an expectation among many non Asians that we are a monolithic bloc. That is hardly the case. As for East Indians most of them came over after the Immigration and Naturalization Act was passed in the mid 1960s. So yes they have not been here as long. Additionally, they have their own internal issues stemming from caste, religion, provincial rivalries, etc. back in Asia that go beyond mere skin color. (Supposedly an Indian or Pakistani can tell another's caste just by the last name or looking at them - I have no idea how true
that is). South Asian features are also, depending upon the region like the northern areas, more easily passable for Caucasian features - straight hair, sharp noses, taller heights, fair to medium skin tone, blue or green eyes, etc.
In India names are very important. Names at the very least can identify what part of India someone is from. However I still can't tell, because I've worked with Indians who are from different parts of India with the same name. I do know the super long names tend to be way more common in Southern India. Where names like Patel, Shah tend to be Western India. Also places have different naming systems. Where there isn't a traditional first name/surname.
Caste is a religious thing. But typically Indians can usually distinguish each other by their accent. Since different languages are spoken in just about every single state in India. Everyone speaks Hindi or English differently. And then there are states where they refuse to speak Hindu, but know English.
India is probably one of the most complex countries in the world. It's a very old country that has seen many time periods, many conquest, many reshuffling, many merges, many split ups. And there there is a good amount of religious diversity in India. Either by different interpretations of Hinduism. then there are religions also common like Jainism. In addition to there being Christanity and Islam.
In America its even more complicated. Because India had a lot of "migration" to the carribeans. So there are Indians who grew up in carribean culture. My girlfriend is half Trinidadian India. And her family while Indian have a very loose interpretation of Indian culture. Just think of Black American in relation to Africans. And this is super common in NYC. It wasn't until I started dating my current girlfriend that I started to realize that there are Carribean Indian communities in NYC. And has no relationship to people actually from India.
"Segregation statutes consistently defined all those without African Ancestry as whites. Texas, for example, defined "colored children" as persons of mixed blood descended from negro ancestry for purposes of its school segregation laws and defined all persons besides those of African descent as white for purposes of its antimiscegenation and Jim Crow laws... Chinese and Mexicans were thus white under state laws governing the segregation of the races."
So there was two races "white" and "colored". Who was white and who was colored?
Colored = people of African descent only.
White = All other persons.
So the broad notion of "people of color" we have today, is really not a concept that existed. All these other minority groups are johnny-come-latelys. They just decided that they wanted to be minorities in the 70s.
This makes me happy in a way you'll never understand.
I just think too many people get their views of reality from the news and TV. Instead of getting out and learning about people, they rather look at stats, then preached to us about how people really are. It would be a much better world if we took the time to understand our neighbors
"Hispanics" made up a narrative of discrimination that literally never happened to them.
When America was segregated, "Latin" people went to white schools, used white public facilities, fought in the white units of the army, could vote and hold public office, played in the white major leagues, married white when interracial marriage was illegal...when they went to jail - they went to white jail.
Everything about the "hispanic" group is fake. The United States does not have a history of excluding people of Spanish origin, or people with Spanish surnames, or whatever it means to be a "hispanic". There was no notion that they were even minorities before the Reagan administration.
In Texas, they were white the same as Anglo-Americans - but they were sometimes called names (e. g "****")
Critical Race Theory is just as racist as black slavery was in the antebellum days.
Only an idiot would believe something like that. When you see some people with "critical race theory" genuine open wounds on their backs and genuine chains on their ankles, being sold like cattle on genuine auction blocks, get back to me.
As a black man, I like asian culture. But I also think asian Americans have a very complex history in the USA. And also Asia itself is quite a diverse continent (being the largest and all). So there is a lot of different viewpoints and thoughts in what we may consider the Asian community. For example the Cambodian communities are much different than maybe some upper middle class Chinese community.
When I lived out West, I did notice that some of the more "Americanized" asians somewhat gravitated towards certain influences. For example, some Asians aligned themselves more with white culture. And some Asians related more with black culture.
I've found that Vietnamese, some Koreans, Cambodians tend to not come here with a high upper middle class status. And grow up around working class black and white people. They tend to identify more with working class culture. And tend to have normal jobs like everyone else.
I also think there are a group of asians who seem to come here through student or work visas. Either get an advance degree, or come here to work a really nice job. And tend to be what some white people like to point at when they talk about "model minority".
To some degree I think SOME asians are accepted into a more majority status. However I from working with many Asians in my field. Some feel that status is flimsy, and all it takes is some lack of public trust to mess up that relationship. So I do feel that younger Asians tend not to break their neck to try to fit into the proper white narrative. Especially when there are some people who go to far into that, and demonstrate some level of self hate. Such as with eye-lid surgery or skin bleaching. Which is seemingly fairly popular in Asia.
Then there is the Asian male problem. Where I've definitely know there are some communities online where Asian men have shown outrage by asian women trying to fit the white supremacist narrative. And how Asian men need to show more masculinity.
TL;DR. Asian American narratives are super complex. It's uniquely an East Asian or Southeast Asian thing from what I can tell. Because East Indians in America don't seem to have these sort of complexities in America. Maybe because they've been here a lot less time
I do agree that Asians have a complicated status here in America. It's not all black and white(no pun).
In Chicago proper, at least according to C-D statistics, the poverty rates among Asians is closer to Latinos and the city average than it is to whites, at 14.5% among Asians to whites' 8% and the city as a whole sits at 16.4% or 18.4% as of 2019 estimates. Still, the median income among Asians is still considerably higher than that of Blacks. Also, a lot of the Chinese population is concentrated in neighborhoods where they form an ethnic enclave, keeping the culture intact. Same with the Indian and Pakistani population. It is when you get to the suburbs that is where a lot of Asian wealth is concentrated and most do live in suburbs that are middle class or higher with high white populations, but even then there are exceptions and their culture is intact even while living amongst other groups. I grew up in an impoverished suburb to the south that has a small East Indian community mostly of the Muslim faith. The history behind this community forming in a suburb that later became black and latino suburb was that of discrimination. Apparently, the grandfather who pioneered the enclave was not as welcomed in nearby whiter suburbs(back then) during the 1970s.
There is evidence that Asian Indians have been in the USA a lot longer than recent immigration policies post 1965. It is evident that a few South Asians were brought over here as indentured servants going back to the colonial period in Virginia, Maryland. If you have noticed through ancestry websites like 23andme, some African-Americans(myself included as a trace ancestry before being later dropped) have reported a fraction of a percentage of South Asian ancestry. The South Asians who came here during that time period were certainly absorbed into the black population. Their offspring who were of mixed African or European descent were classified as "Mulatto".
Such as with eye-lid surgery or skin bleaching. Which is seemingly fairly popular in Asia.
What you referred to as 'skin bleaching' is something they call 'whitening' but it has nothing to do with the white peopel here. People did this ever since the ancient time when even men would put some puffs of pearl power over their faces and necks. At that time the white people were living really low level life and were not known by the Asians.
These two trends have nothing to do with the white people and have been there for hundreds of years. The one difference is that modern technology made the double-lid come to true. Some people were born to have double-lid eyes.
There were countless Chinese herbs claiming they can make your skin white and line free ever since more than two thousand years ago.
White people became widely known by the common people in Asia in the 19th century and the Chinese people call them' the alien ghost'. There are some people admiring the white culture but not the majority. Girls back there like dating foreign guys as a show-off thing but when it comes to marriage, they probably tend to find some one who can afford buying a large apartment in Shanghai/Beijing and most of the foreigners teaching English in China can not make it.
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