The end of open borders in the United states started with the first immigration laws in the late 19th Century that focused on limiting and prohibiting the entry of Chinese immigrants.

Page Act of 1875 

Passed March 3, 1875, the Page Act was named after its sponsor, California Representative Horace F. Page (R), who introduced the bill in order to "end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women". The law technically barred immigrants considered "undesirable," defining this as a person from East Asia who was coming to the United States to be a forced laborer, any East Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. 

Chinese Exclusion Act

The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed on  May 6, 1882, was the only U.S. federal law prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. Building on the earlier Page Act of 1875 which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first, and remains the only law to have been implemented, to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States.

Chinese Couplets: A Family's Journey Though Chinese Exclusion (56 min)

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More Videos:

• What Was the Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act?| PBS
• The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 | The China History Podcast
• United States v. Wong Kim Ark | PBS

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters

• Kurashige, L. (2016). Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Lew-Williams, B. (2018). The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard University Press.
• Railton, B. (2013). The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us About America. Palgrave Macmillan.

The Chinese Massacre: One of Los Angeles' Worst Atrocities

Vincent Who? The Murder of a Chinese-American Man (41 min)

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In 1982, at the height of anti-Japanese sentiments arising from massive layoffs in the auto industry, a Chinese-American named Vincent Chin was murdered in Detroit by two white autoworkers. Chin's killers, however, got off with a $3,000 fine and 3 years probation, but no jail time. Outraged by this injustice, Asian Americans around the country united for the first time across ethnic and socioeconomic lines to form a pan-Asian identity and civil rights movement.

Among its significant outcomes, the movement led to the historic broadening of federal civil rights protection to include all people in America regardless of immigrant status or ethnicity.

Vincent Who? explores this important legacy through interviews with the key players at the time as well as a whole new generation of activists whose lives were impacted by Vincent Chin. It also looks at the case in relation to the larger narrative of Asian American history, in such events as Chinese Exclusion, Japanese American Internment in WWII, the 1992 L.A. Riots, anti-Asian hate crimes, and post-9/11 racial profiling.

More Videos:

• BuzzFeed Video: The Largest Lynching In US History
• PBS Anti Chinese Race Riot

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters

• Darden, J., & Thomas, R. (2013). The declining Auto industry and anti-Asian racism: The murder of Vincent Chin. In Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide (pp. 155-180). Michigan State University Press.
• Lew-Williams, B. (2018). The Chinese must go: Violence, exclusion, and the making of the alien in America. Harvard University Press.
• Wei, W. (2016). The Denver race riot and its aftermath. In Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State (pp. 120-150). Seattle; London: University of Washington Press.
• Zhu, L. (2013). The road to Chinese exclusion: The road to Chinese exclusion. University Press of Kansas.

Facts & Figures (Encyclopedia Britannica) 

• Japanese American internment was the forced relocation by the United States government of approximately 120,000 of Japanese Americans to detention camps during World War II. 
• Japanese-American Population (at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941):
  • Continental US - ~127,000 Japanese Americans  
    • ~80,000 are Nisei  or second generation, meaning American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei or third generation, meaning the children of Nisei
    • ~47,000 are Issei, or first generation, meaning immigrants who were born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.
  • Hawaiian Territory - ~200,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii
• February 1942, the U.S. War Department created 12 restricted zones along the Pacific coast and established nighttime curfews for Japanese Americans within them.
• March 18, 1942 - the federal War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established with the mission to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war.”

A Bitter Legacy: The Treatment of Japanese Americans During WWI (77 min)

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This documentary examines issues before, during and after WWII, regarding the treatment of people of Japanese ancestry in America, most of them, American citizens. Many of these forces are still here and have repercussions today worldwide.

More Videos:

• History Channel Japanese-American Internment During WWII
• Diary Reveals Reality of Living in a WWII Japanese Internment Camp
• George Takei Was Sent to a Japanese-American Internment Camp at Age Five

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters:

• Bannai, L. K. (2015). Enduring Conviction : Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice. University of Washington Press.
• Hansen, A. (2018). Barbed Voices: Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese American Social Disaster. Louisville: University Press of Colorado.
• Inouye, K. M. (2016). The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration. Stanford University Press.
• Kaatz, K. W., & Ivey, L. L. (2017). Citizen Internees: A Second Look at Race and Citizenship in Japanese American Internment Camps. Praeger.
• Nagata, D., & Patel, R. (2021). “Forever Foreigners”: Intergenerational Impacts of Historical Trauma From the World War II Japanese American Incarceration. In Tummala-Narra P. (Ed.), Trauma and Racial Minority Immigrants: Turmoil, Uncertainty, and Resistance (pp. 105-126). American Psychological Association.
• Yamaguchi, P.  (2014). Experiences of Japanese American Women During and After World War II : Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards. Lexington Books.

Yellow Peril

The "Yellow Peril", also called Yellow Fear, Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter, is a racist, skin color-based metaphor that seeks to portray East Asian peoples as an existential danger to the Western world. Yellow Peril imagery cast Asians as exotic perils to white society, representing a potential economic, military, and social threat. (Cortés, 2013)

“Yellow Peril” and Anti-Asian Prejudice in the Shadow of Coronavirus

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters:

• Frayling, C. (2014). The yellow peril: Dr. Fu Manchu & the rise of Chinaphobia. Thames & Hudson. 
• Gates, P. (2019). Yellow peril, protest, and an Orientalist gaze: Hollywood’s constructions of Chinese/Americans. In Criminalization/Assimilation: Chinese/Americans and Chinatowns in Classical Hollywood Film (pp. 18-50). Rutgers University Press.
• Mayer, R. (2013). Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese supervillain and the spread of yellow peril ideology. Temple University Press.

Racial Fetishization as taking a sexual desire towards someone for their ‘exotic’ physical and cultural attributes they possess, specific to their race group. For example, skin, physical features, cultural practices and so on (Vera, n.d.).

Yellow Fever is the derogatory term used to describe an fetish for Asian, in particular Asian women, which is rooted in the stereotypes of Asian women being subservient, passive, and quiet, while also exotic and seductive (Chang, 2006), creating a trope of the hypersexual but docile Asian woman (Ramirez, 2021). 

• Why Yellow Fever Is Different Than “Having a Type” 
• What Is Fetishizing? Here's Why This Racist Behavior Isn't OK 
• What Is Fetishization And How Does It Contribute To Racism?
• The Madame Butterfly Effect: Tracing the History of a Fetish
• Why Yellow Fever Is Different Than “Having a Type”

Slaying the Dragon - Media Stereotypes of Asian & Asian American Women (59 min)

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More Videos:

• The Weird History of Asian Sex Stereotypes
• Stereotypology: Submissive China Dolls
• Self Hating Asian Woman Discusses Asian Fetishization

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters:

• Couzelis, M. (2018). Moving from the margins: Confronting the hypersexualization of Asian American females in graphic fiction. In Mathison Y. (Ed.), Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction (pp. 41-62). University Press of Mississippi. 
• Oharazeki, K. (2016). Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887-1920. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press. 
• Shimizu, C. (2007). The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene. Durham; London: Duke University Press. 

Model Minority is a term that has been used predominately in the United States to identify a minority demographic (whether based on ethnicity, race or religion) whose members are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success (education, income, profession, etc), especially when compared to other minority groups. 

Model minority is often applied to Asian Americans, who, as a group, are often praised for apparent success across academic, economic, and cultural domains—successes typically offered in contrast to the perceived achievements of other racial group. 

Model Minority Myth

The concept of the model minority is built on positive stereotypes of a particular ethnic group, for example Asians work hard and are good at math. While these characterizations of an entire grouping of people may seem positive and therefore not harmful, the use of stereotypes erases the differences among individuals. This myth overlooks the fact that Asian Americans are a diverse group of people, with unique cultures, backgrounds, and aspirations. 

• Model Minority Stereotype for Asian Americans
• Debunking the Model Minority Myth
• Asian Americans Are Still Caught in the Trap of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype. And It Creates Inequality for All

Why Do We Call Asian Americans The Model Minority? 

More Videos:

• The Model Minority Trope, Explained 
• Asian American 101: 'Positive' stereotypes cause harm

Library Resources: Books & Book Chapters:

• Hsu, M. Y. (2015). The good immigrants: How the yellow peril became the model minority. Princeton University Press.
• Phu, T. (2011). Picturing model citizens: Civility in Asian American visual culture. Temple University Press.
• Wu, E. D. (2014). The color of success: Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority. Princeton University Press. 
• Yano, C., & Akatsuka, N. (Eds.). (2018). Straight A's: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words. Duke University Press.