Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear Paperback – February 11, 2014

This is a review for Amazon, not for potential readers. I trust that the book is excellent.The envelope arrived torn and empty. There was no book and there's no "missing item" option on the return screen. I've requested that Amazon re-send me the book, but I have no book to return to them.

Don't be fooled by the title: This book provides a wealth of material about racist discourse and Eurocentrism well beyond the anti-Asian context. Part anthology and part critical analysis, Yellow Peril! is a tour-de-force that goes back all the way to European colonialism and the Enlightenment. It shows that engaging with colonialism is necessary not only to learn about the origins of racist stereotypes, but also to understand why they are so pervasive and continue to inform ways of knowing and cultural production to this day. Students and scholars interested in the history of racism and its legacies, and especially faculty looking for teaching materials on the topic, will enjoy and appreciate this remarkable book.

I always make it a rule to look at primary sources when I write a book, and this is an excellent compendium with well-thought out selections. It would also be useful for anyone who wants to conduct an informed discussion whether it be in a paper, a classroom presentation or an online forum.

A lot of little short (one para to 2-3 pages) snippets from various eras. Disappointing. I had seen the presentation on BookTV and was looking forward to discourses on Fu Manchu, the Dragon Lady, Doctor No, Big Stoop, etc. Mention only of the former, and not much on him. Book concentrates (barely) on anti-Oriental prejudices but wanders far afield into more general Western biases vs. "the others". Would not buy if I had a do-over.

This is a meditation on being Chinese American and being an immigrant. Very perceptive and interesting to read.

While nominally about the abusive stereotyping of Asians in Europe and America, Yellow Peril spends nearly half its heft dealing with xenophobia, prejudice and abuse through the ages. Yellow Peril itself was the conceit of Kaiser Wilhelm, who saw it in a dream in the 1880s, and had it made into a political cartoonish painting that was reproduced throughout the West. Sadly, it stuck, and flourished.Unlike most academic tracts that quote often and in short bursts, this book takes excerpts in their entirety, giving you a taste of style as well as content. It makes the read much more varied, especially when the content is as revolting as man's complete intolerance of anyone who is in any way different.It is also peppered with gloriously malevolent illustrations from ancient maps prejudicially naming countries and continents, to mass market book covers and political cartoons - including a racist,inflammatory cartoon against the Japanese by Dr. Seuss of all people. It just adds to the evidence that prejudice is ubiquitous and ingrained. I freely admit I had no idea attacks on Asians were so widespread or so intense. This has been a revelation.Respected academics, historians, philosophers and of course politicians all participate in propagating ignorant hatred. And their words are taken as truth. The yellow peril is only a more recent example. We have gone through eugenics and phrenology and all kinds of crackpot theories, particularly in the 1800s, all of which were received as solid science. They all prove "we" are better, more advanced, more evolved, superior. "They" are wretched, dishonest, dirty, and incapable of either assimilating (restrict immigration) or self-governing (invade and colonize). All nations feel this way about everyone else. It's how they keep together. Some examples from Yellow Peril:-13th century opinion was that the invading Mongol hordes were Jewish, because there is no mention of Mongols in the bible.-In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull authorizing perpetual slavery for all Saracens (Muslims), pagans and all other nonbelievers. With this, he justified and promulgated the development of the international slave trade.Which we still have not shaken.-We love to assign bizarre attributes to others, to mark them as infidels: Jews drinking baby's blood, Muslims as jihadists, American Indians as Redskins, Asians as Yellow. No truth in any of it, but these characterizations stick for ages. It helps when you invade. In Vietnam, Americans considered the people they were "saving" as gooks, and abused them at will.At bottom, it is the politics of fear. It's so much easier to find a scapegoat than to deal with issues. In America, whole political parties base their existence instilling fear in the populace. We pick easy targets to blame: "Arab `control' of oil prices, Japanese `unfair' competition and Chinese `manipulation' of currency help politicians and pundits protect Americans from understanding the glaring domestic policy failure underpinning their economic woes."The sad conclusion is that humans hate anyone who is different. It doesn't even have to be racial: Irish Catholics and Protestants, Muslim Sunnis and Shiites... We demonize them, belittle them, minimize them - at best. At worst, we abuse, plunder, rape and murder. And now, we can bomb like no one could ever before. And so we do.I will give the last word to a quote from another review of mine, for  By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey , the story of American blacks abusing African blacks in Liberia. A freed slave, who rose to high office in the mid 1800s, reflected:"How true it is, the greater the injury done to the injured, the greater the hatred of those who have done the injury!"Yellow Peril has a long list of antecedents.David Wineberg

An interesting study of the subject of the other in relation to American/European peoples. The use of the other as threat to safety and as a means of diverting peoples away from looking at they own leaders who may not be acting in their peoples best interest is well covered and reflected over the long period of use of the Asian area as a source of threat. An interesting read for anyone who has not looked into this subject.