The Chinese in America Quotes

“Racial and ethnic tensions simmer just below the surface in virtually all multiethnic societies, but it usually takes an economic crisis to blow off the lid of civility and allow deep-seated hatred to degenerate into violence.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“Because they saw themselves as intellectuals rather than refugees, they were concerned less about preserving their Chinese heritage than with casting their lot with modern America, and eventual American citizenship. It is in connection with these immigrants, not surprisingly, that the term “model minority” first appeared. The term refers to an image of the Chinese as working hard, asking for little, and never complaining. It is a term that many Chinese now have mixed feelings about.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, middleman minorities typically arrive in their host countries with education, skills, or a set of propitious attitudes about work, such as business frugality and the willingness to take risks. Some slave away in lowly menial jobs to raise capital, then swiftly become merchants, retailers, labor contractors, and money-lenders. Their descendants usually thrive in the professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, or finance.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“Ronald Takaki, an ethnic studies professor at the University of California at Berkeley, once called the Chinese and other Asian Americans “strangers from a different shore.” I propose to take this a step further. At various times in history, the Chinese Americans have been treated like strangers on both shores—a people regarded by two nations as too Chinese to be American, and too American to be Chinese.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History