According to cultural critic, Edward said and others, race is a social construction that often serves certain political and social usefulness. For this question, examine said’s critique of Orientalism as well as the invention of the Yellow Peril and how these paradigms have, in turn, influenced the development of race relations, labor ideologies, and immigration legislations.

-Orientalism is the framework by which we understand the history of Asian immigration to the United States and its impacts on the perceived view of the East. This constructed concept of the orient created hostility in 19th Century America and led to notion of Yellow Peril.

-Said states that Orientalism is the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the use of clichés and outmoded analytical models for interpreting the Eastern world. Said holds Orientalism responsible for the inaccurate cultural representations that until recently have served as the foundation of Western study of the Eastern world.

-Said has a particular focus on the way the Middle East is portrayed, and considers Orientalism a source of persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabs and Muslims. He states that East Asian cultures dominate Western perspective of the region, and all others are frequently ignored.

-A central idea of Orientalism is that Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes that envision all “Eastern” societies as fundamentally similar to one another, and fundamentally dissimilar to “Western” societies. This a priori knowledge establishes “the East” as antithetical to “the West.”

-As the East was seen as barbaric, traditional, strange and different, the West was seen as civilized, rational, Christian, modern, and ideal. These constructed beliefs were the system in which Westernized people viewed people from the East as inferior, threatening, and exotic. This led to many problems between ethnic groups and the resistance of Americans to want to accept anyone from the East into their culture.

-American Orientalism reflects Said’s claim because it is based on the idea of domination of the West and its influence on the East.

-According to researchers, Orientalism was originated in colonial period, but today it “continues to shape attitudes, images and knowledge.

-The concept of Orientalism in American society has been shaped by Said’s paradigms regarding the relationship between the West and the East. In general, the roots of Orientalism in the United States are associated with the attitudes, beliefs and values of the immigrants who came from Europe to North America in the late 16-th century –early 17-th century.

-The concept of orientalism and increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants brought about much of the anti-Chinese hostility in the 19th Century. The hostility mainly derived from the workforce. Many Chinese immigrant men came to America looking for work. Since laws were passed in America restricting the amount of labor a Chinese immigrant could do, the immigrants were willing to accept lesser wages than the average white American man. This left an imbalance in the American economy and started leaving more Americans without a job.

-The Americans retaliated by creating more laws against the Chinese including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. This act explicitly says the Chinese are ineligible for citizenship in the United States, reducing the amount of Chinese Immigrants immensely.The Chinese were looking for a way out of China and with the accessibility of the ports, glamour of jobs, land of freedom, and promise of false hope in America; this was the place to be.

-Orientalism is the main caused for the Yellow Peril in the US, the belief that the expansion and influence of the East is a threat or danger to the West.

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