There may have been overlap as Chinese resistance to adopting American cultural norms may have led to the perception that thwy were unsuitable for for labor beyond railroad construction crews.
I agree, and I imagine that's where Zinn's perspective would take us. Something like: capital pandered to and/or fanned that perception of unsuitability, by installing and playing with quotas by nationality, even though it didn't really care who worked on what, as long as the labor was cheap. Pretty cynical, but could explain it.
Hi, and thanks for your new piece! Tramp Printer is a pretty special voice to discover and feature. And, off and on all day, I have been thinking about your core question here: why did the U.S. self-impose a “restriction diet” on immigration, with the quota system that emerged around the 1880s? Great question. I don't know, but I want to share a quick thought on it.
It would be profitable to explore whether capitalism and industrialization played the dominant role in quotas, not racial prejudice and alienation. Capitalism and prejudice certainly worked together, but perhaps what happened is that the former leveraged the latter and that’s how and why quotas emerged.
As it happens, when I looked up "Chinese Immigrants" in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, I found my way to this neat synthesis:
“[from 1877 on], industrial and political elites of the North and South would take hold of the country and organize the greatest march of economic growth in human history. They would do it with the aid of, and at the expense of, black labor, white labor, Chinese labor, European immigrant labor, female labor, rewarding them differently by race, sex, national origin, and social clas, in such a way as to create separate levels of oppression—a skillful terracing to stabliize the pyramid of wealth.” (Chapter 11)
Quotas sound like an example of “skillful terracing” to me, and the notion that mass immigration only even happened because of capital’s need for “aid” in its endeavor, rings true.
Wonder if you ever think about it this way, too. Thanks again.
The Chinese have a word for universalist delusionists - baizuo.
What is baizuo?
Baizuo whose rough translation from Mandarin is “White Liberal”, is “a Chinese neologism and a political epithet pejoratively used by the Chinese to refer to western leftist ideologies primarily espoused by white leftists.”
Baizuo according to the popular Chinese definition is a hallmark of virtue-signalling hypocritical humanitarians who support peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”. They are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”. They believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”. As per the Chinese, baizuo are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.
The connotation of baizuo in the Chinese context unambiguously resemble liberals that are termed as regressive or left-leaning liberals in popular parlance. Former US President Barack Obama was considered by the Chinese state media as an advocate of baizuo ideology.
However, the term baizuo is not limited to referring to the white liberal elites alone. The derogatory slang is also for those who romanticise Islamism and enthusiastically bat in favour of the Islamists. According to Zhang Chenchen, a PhD in political theory and science, baizuo first emerged to describe German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her decision to welcome more than 1 million third-world immigrants to Europe, which infringed upon Chinese people’s right to stay in Europe.
Additionally, other observations about baizuo include intellectuals who “advocate inclusiveness and anti-discrimination but cannot tolerate different opinions.” The political opinions of baizuos are considered so shallow and facile that they tend to maintain social equality by embracing ideologies that run against the basic concept of equality.
Do you think the Chinese, who have been and are ethnically cleansing Tibetans and Uyghurs, believe in racial equality?
I might have missed it, but have you ever written on the first immigration law enacted by the United State - the Naturalization Act of 1790? This set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character."
You can cherry pick one local newspaper spouting "racial equality" and repeat in without larger context, but that is a disingenuous view of history in the full context of the founders of the USA, up to and including the great emancipator Abe Lincoln, who said in a debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” and proposed total separation.
There may have been overlap as Chinese resistance to adopting American cultural norms may have led to the perception that thwy were unsuitable for for labor beyond railroad construction crews.
I agree, and I imagine that's where Zinn's perspective would take us. Something like: capital pandered to and/or fanned that perception of unsuitability, by installing and playing with quotas by nationality, even though it didn't really care who worked on what, as long as the labor was cheap. Pretty cynical, but could explain it.
Hi, and thanks for your new piece! Tramp Printer is a pretty special voice to discover and feature. And, off and on all day, I have been thinking about your core question here: why did the U.S. self-impose a “restriction diet” on immigration, with the quota system that emerged around the 1880s? Great question. I don't know, but I want to share a quick thought on it.
It would be profitable to explore whether capitalism and industrialization played the dominant role in quotas, not racial prejudice and alienation. Capitalism and prejudice certainly worked together, but perhaps what happened is that the former leveraged the latter and that’s how and why quotas emerged.
As it happens, when I looked up "Chinese Immigrants" in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, I found my way to this neat synthesis:
“[from 1877 on], industrial and political elites of the North and South would take hold of the country and organize the greatest march of economic growth in human history. They would do it with the aid of, and at the expense of, black labor, white labor, Chinese labor, European immigrant labor, female labor, rewarding them differently by race, sex, national origin, and social clas, in such a way as to create separate levels of oppression—a skillful terracing to stabliize the pyramid of wealth.” (Chapter 11)
Quotas sound like an example of “skillful terracing” to me, and the notion that mass immigration only even happened because of capital’s need for “aid” in its endeavor, rings true.
Wonder if you ever think about it this way, too. Thanks again.
The Chinese have a word for universalist delusionists - baizuo.
What is baizuo?
Baizuo whose rough translation from Mandarin is “White Liberal”, is “a Chinese neologism and a political epithet pejoratively used by the Chinese to refer to western leftist ideologies primarily espoused by white leftists.”
Baizuo according to the popular Chinese definition is a hallmark of virtue-signalling hypocritical humanitarians who support peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”. They are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”. They believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”. As per the Chinese, baizuo are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.
The connotation of baizuo in the Chinese context unambiguously resemble liberals that are termed as regressive or left-leaning liberals in popular parlance. Former US President Barack Obama was considered by the Chinese state media as an advocate of baizuo ideology.
However, the term baizuo is not limited to referring to the white liberal elites alone. The derogatory slang is also for those who romanticise Islamism and enthusiastically bat in favour of the Islamists. According to Zhang Chenchen, a PhD in political theory and science, baizuo first emerged to describe German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her decision to welcome more than 1 million third-world immigrants to Europe, which infringed upon Chinese people’s right to stay in Europe.
Additionally, other observations about baizuo include intellectuals who “advocate inclusiveness and anti-discrimination but cannot tolerate different opinions.” The political opinions of baizuos are considered so shallow and facile that they tend to maintain social equality by embracing ideologies that run against the basic concept of equality.
Do you think the Chinese, who have been and are ethnically cleansing Tibetans and Uyghurs, believe in racial equality?
I might have missed it, but have you ever written on the first immigration law enacted by the United State - the Naturalization Act of 1790? This set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character."
You can cherry pick one local newspaper spouting "racial equality" and repeat in without larger context, but that is a disingenuous view of history in the full context of the founders of the USA, up to and including the great emancipator Abe Lincoln, who said in a debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” and proposed total separation.