The glut of Chinese restaurants in the US proves just how popular the cuisine is with Americans.
But once upon a time, these eateries were the target of a “war” from the white mainstream, one that represented a continuation of the horrifying yellow peril that first emerged in the late 19th century. Americans used racist and xenophobic narratives that tapped into white fears, including those surrounding interracial mingling.
… there was the pervasive idea that Chinese men were lecherous threats to white women. Chinese restaurants were considered “dens of vice,” Chin says, where white women were at risk of moral corruption by way of sex, opium and alcohol.
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At the American Federation of Labor’s 1913 convention, organizers proposed that all states should pass laws that barred white women from working or patronizing Chinese or Japanese restaurants for both moral and economic reasons, Chin says.
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While the proposed white women’s labor law was never officially enacted, some police officers began patrolling the restaurants of their own volition, Chin says.
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For example, he adds, “when there were concerns about white women patronizing Chinese restaurants and when the police thought this was prejudicial to the safety of white women, they would simply order white women out.”
The NPR story also mentions that a case in 1909, where a Chinese restaurant worker killed a white woman named Elsie Siegel working at a Chinese restaurant, further fueled the hostility against these establishments. “‘To be a Chinaman these days,’ one Connecticut newspaper wrote, ‘is to be at least a suspect in the murder of Elsie Sigel.'”
On Sampan, a bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England, a post on this ugly phenomenon in history comes with an example of the kind of racist propaganda that circulated at the time, even in the northern US. Led with an image from the era bearing the title “State Law Being Sought to Save Girls from Lure of Celestial Wiles”, the post notes a number of local media outlets that pushed this narrative, including a newspaper “claiming it was dangerous for young girls to go sightseeing in Chinatown” and another paper that actually stated in an article “‘The picture of a girl’s ruination through the medium of the Chinese restaurant is too horrible to depict'”. A representative in Massachusetts attempted to pass a bill to “prohibit women from entering Chinese restaurants unless they were over 21 years old and accompanied by a non-Chinese man” — which was later never enacted.
You can read the full stories at NPR and also the Sampan website.
What do you think?
Photo: A Chinese restaurant on Dupont Street in Chinatown in California in 1895.
Lol! How insecure!!! Hahaha
Thanks for the comment, Peter
The orientalist language is quite appalling now. I was more familiar with the racist western tropes of Chinese restaurants being seen as threats for illness and disease rather than threats to white womanhood. Do you know the book New York Before Chinatown by John Kuo Wei Tchen?
Thanks for the comment, Heather! I think I’ve heard of that book, but haven’t read it yet. Will put it on my to-read list. The tropes you mentioned aren’t surprising either — and even more recently, immigrants have been demonized in similar ways.
Elsie Siegel was the granddaughter of a Union general in the Civil War. The Siegel family had been beset with very bad luck since the 1860s, with many members dying very horrific deaths over the years. In the case of Elsie Siegel, she had fallen in love with a Chinese organized crime hitman who was the enforcer for one of the Grand Street Chinatown cartels that was making HUGE profits off of bookmaking and extortion in the Lower East Side and they were on the verge of taking over a racket that was originally dominated by the Italian Mafia in the area. Ms. Siegel had fallen in love with a hardcore playboy and heavy drug user who helped run an intimidation and “take care of business” racket for the syndicate by night. The Triad-Mafia wars had began and assaults and arsons on both sides started to escalate into murders and brazen daytime robberies of delivery trucks and warehouses. Elsie had long witnessed the warning signs that her love interest was a violent and unstable person who would resort to any criminal act to score his next fix but she refused to leave the spotlight of the party scene which he was into. One night, he and several other syndicate hitmen had shot dead an Italian mob associate and just seconds after the shooting, Elsie had ran up to the gang members trying to get her boyfriend’s attention, who was amongst the gunmen. Fearing that she had witnessed the crime and might rat him out, accidentally or intentionally, the guy had her murdered the following night. Her corpse was discovered in the trunk of a car on Delancey Street with multiple close range gunshot wounds. Yep. He was scum, through and through. Believed he got the electric chair for that crime and several previous killings too. This whole thing is heavily discussed in the annals of organized crime in New York City.
Blue Sky Country, thank you for sharing the background on this fascinating but tragic case.
PS: That notorious murder, along with the other murders that occurred during the latest 1909-1910 outbreak of organized crime violence across New York City had set in motion the steps for the city’s highly corrupt Tammany Hall ruling faction to pass the Sullivan Act in 1911, which is one of the most strict and controversial gun control laws in the USA. The Sullivan Law required anyone who wished to own or carry a firearm in the city to go through a tedious, expensive, and time consuming application process which, over the last century, had very little effect on reducing actual crime and how criminals easily obtained their firearms illegally. The Sullivan Law’s exclusive aim was to keep minorities and non-politically affiliated people from acquiring guns. In the 50s and 60s, one had to be a labor union or political club member affiliated with the Tammany faction in order to get your application approved by the police department. The Sullivan Act was never repealed and is still the main enforced law in NYC today. I had worked part time at one of NYC’s largest shooting ranges as an NRA/NYSRPA certified handgun safety instructor and we have a team of lawyers whose job is to guide applicants for NYC gun licenses through the city’s notorious and excruciatingly difficult bureaucracy, which cost hundreds of dollars and can take up to 10 months wait for a license to be approved. Carry licenses are almost never granted, unless you are a security guard tasked with transporting large amounts of cash, or if you are a celebrity
I’ve been a reader of this blogs (including the AMWF section) for the last 2 years. Your latest post (with the NPR article) really hit the spot.
I want to also disclaim that I’m a K-pop/Hallyu fans for the last few years (been a K-pop fan since 2013). The thing I get scared the most after reading the article and being a K-pop fan, I get scared of a racist backlash toward AMWF and K-pop in the US. There are evidence of K-pop (that does include BTS, thanks to their American/worldwide breakthrough) helping AMWF. A few years back I noticed several K-pop MVs glamourizing AMWF. Even before BTS’s breakthrough in the US, I was very concern about a racist conspiracy theory being spread around the internet (in a similar vein to Q-Anon) about linking K-pop and AMWF which can create a racist backlash against Asian-American and AMWF.
Even before K-pop became big thanks to BTS, I had that same concern and fear. But now, I fear the mainstream popularity of K-pop (including BTS) in the US, and K-pop fans getting involved in political activism and social justice (like Black Lives Matter) may put K-pop and AMWF in danger of a racist backlash. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go watch and read these stuff that’s been happening in 2020 involving K-pop fandom:
https://youtu.be/834AYrNdRPc
https://youtu.be/iC7wRiN0XJg
https://youtu.be/uEMwcScyMtk
https://youtu.be/qq587ktdHf0
https://youtu.be/j6Q075sZSM4
https://variety.com/2020/music/news/k-pop-whitelivesmatter-hashtag-drown-out-racist-1234624126/
https://twitter.com/BW/status/1321481281318850563?s=20
A few days ago K-pop fans on Twitter did this:
https://variety.com/2021/music/news/impeachbidennow-hashtag-hijacked-by-k-pop-fans-1234890344/
Yep, it really happened and I was one of the witness. Now, I’m proud of K-pop fandom doing this, but at the same time I fear this will likely accelerate and increase the chance of K-pop and AMWF facing a racist backlash. There are already right-wingers targeting K-pop. Shown here:
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f40e9d0366f5832d0ec80d651bc93603
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0238c9052572b22db77b38f90e33fbfa
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d763cdbd12510111c236fecb2f042acb
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-89401d9571a6021bb7009c719425e3f8
Now I fear for K-pop fandom, and AMWF. It’s only a matter of time before these racist right-wingers, and anti-AMWF will connect K-pop and AMWF. If that happen, K-pop fans, and AMWF couples can be put in serious danger as in hate crime, “corrective” rape toward white girls that are K-pop fans or openly dating Asian male, and terroristic action toward Korean-Americans or Asian-American community in general. This is what I fear as a K-pop fan and a believer of interracial relationship.
I wrote these warning and threat assessment on Quora for K-pop fans for the last few years. These are some of my posts that I warned about AMWF can faced backlash because of K-pop’s popularity:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-interracial-dating-with-Asian-women-and-white-men-appreciated-but-not-the-other-way-round/answer/Michael-Do-2
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Asian-male-white-female-relationships-so-rare/answer/Michael-Do-2
https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-the-Kpop-craze/answer/Michael-Do-2
I have more like these but these were all written before K-pop fans got involved in social justice and political activism. So I fear for the K-pop fandom, AMWFs, and Asian-American communities in the US.
If Chinese restaurant back in the late 19th century caused a xenophobic scare toward AMWF, then I fear the same thing could happen for K-pop (or any popular stuff from South Korea).
Michael, thank you so much for the comment. I can completely understand your concern about this — as it is, hate incidents against Asian Americans have skyrocketed over the past year (as tracked by Stop AAPI Hate), and white supremacists have become more emboldened to engage in domestic terrorism.