Contagious Divides

This informative book illuminates an important chapter in the history of American culture. As the author explains, a society on the path to modernity engages in a process of standardization and the setting of norms that guide its governance and policies—including the adjudication of what constitutes true citizenship. To illuminate this process, Nayan Shah analyzes in great detail the construction of racism toward the Chinese in San Francisco from the Gold Rush to the middle of the twentieth century. In an extensive introduction, he explains his thesis: after being branded aberrant because of their deplorable housing conditions, lifestyles, and domestic arrangements, the inhabitants of Chinatown became gradually educated and socialized in American values. From its earlier nineteenth-century characterization as a threat to the Caucasian majority in the city, Chinatown was eventually incorporated into American society following World War I thanks to the efforts of a second generation of acculturated Chinese Americans. In Shah's view, the Chinese community—having improved their homes, changed their living conditions, and adopted the prevailing forms of domesticity—finally achieved access to the privileges and opportunities of "civilized" citizenship previously denied to them. Since then, and in spite of lingering racism, they have become a model minority engaged in all aspects of American society

Chinatown · Chinese americans · Citizenship · Immigration · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy