Fw: H-ASIA: Idiosyncratic comment on "yellowness" (re: Michael Keevak's book announcement)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2011 10:43 PM
Subject: H-ASIA: Idiosyncratic comment on "yellowness" (re: Michael Keevak's
book announcement)

> H-ASIA
> April 23, 2011
>
> Idiosyncratic comment on "yellowness" (re: Michael Keevak's book
> announcement)
> *******************************************************************
> From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
>
>
> I have not read Michael Keevak's book--which he announced on H-ASIA
> yesterday ( _Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking_,
> Princeton Univ. Press) so do not presume to engage his arguments over how
> "yellowness" became entrenched in racial thinking. But I
> thought an anecdote or two of possible relevance might be of interest.
>
> A few years ago, I was looking into the early history of Asians who had
> come to my institution-- George Washington University, named Columbian
> University until the early 1900s. GW is located in Washington, DC, at that
> time firmly a southern city.
>
> Among two of the most interesting early Asian alumni were Philip Jaisohn
> (SoJae-pil) and Miyakawa Masuji. Jaisohn had a fascinating life, and was
> the first Korean to gain a medical degree in the US. Miyakawa was the
> first person of Japanese ancestry, it appears, to be allowed to practice
> law in the US. Both had lives of much greater significance than those two
> accomplishments. Both became American citizens. I won't go into their
> biographies, but instead will get to my point about the concept of
> "yellowness" and its relation, at the time, to that of "Mongolian."
>
> When digging into information on Jaisohn, I looked at his census record --
> and discovered that this Korean American was listed as "white"! He may be
> the only "White" Korean in the US history, for all I know. I do not
> believe
> that this was a casual "error." Rather, I gather that the logic of this
> classification went as follows: Chinese are "Mongolian," Koreans are NOT
> Chinese, ergo Koreans cannot be Mongolian. If, however, they are not
> Mongolian, and if the choices in the US at the time were to be classified
> as
> Mongolian, Caucasian, or Negro, what would a Korean be? Well, in Jaisohn's
> case, the census taker listed him as "white." This also meant that his
> marriage to a white woman could not be considered miscegenation.
>
> I am not sure what Miyakawa was listed as in the census, but he too stated
> that he was not "Mongolian," as Japanese were not "Mongolian," and that
> the
> Japanese belonged to the "Allophylic branch of the great white race." He
> based his claim on the work of some unnamed ethnologists and scientists.
>
> From other bits and pieces of information, I think that American legal
> cases
> in the second half of the 19th century involving Asians showed local
> variation. Some Japanese immigrants besides Miyakawa became American
> citizens, married whites, etc. But I also gather that this variation
> decreased sharply as we entered the twentieth century, and all East Asian
> immigrants to the US were considered by the US goverment to be
> "Mongolians"
> and the populace to be "yellow."
>
> Shawn McHale
> George Washington University
> (a dabbler in Asian American history -- my area of expertise is SE Asian
> history)
> **********************************************************************
> To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to:
> <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu>
> For holidays or short absences send post to:
> <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message:
> SET H-ASIA NOMAIL
> Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL
> H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/