Strangers from a Different Shore Quotes

“At the state’s constitutional convention of 1878, John F. Miller warned: “Were the Chinese to amalgamate at all with our people, it would be the lowest, most vile and degraded of our race, and the result of that amalgamation would be a hybrid of the most despicable, a mongrel of the most detestable that has ever afflicted the earth.” Two years later, California lawmakers enacted legislation to prohibit the issuance of a license authorizing the marriage of a white person with a “negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.”
― Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore

“Certain it is,” he predicted in his book The Land of Gold, published in 1855, “that the greater the diversity of colors and qualities of men, the greater will be the strife and conflict of feeling.” Helper insisted that America should be a homogeneous white society. Comparing the entry of the Chinese in the West to the existence of blacks in the East, he protested: “Our population was already too heterogeneous before the Chinese came. I should not wonder at all, if the copper of the Pacific yet becomes as great a subject of discord and dissension as the ebony of the Atlantic.”
― Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore

“Chinese men were seen as sensuous creatures, especially interested in white women. A writer for the New York Times reported that he noticed “a handsome but squalidly dressed young white girl” in an opium den and inquired about her. The owner replied: “Oh, hard time in New York. Young girl hungry. Plenty come here. Chinaman always have something to eat, and he like young white girl. He! He!”
― Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore