the 1970s. Similar to but distinct from Thai cuisine (they both use lemongrass, a tropical grass that yields an aromatic oil). Cuisine favors fresh ingredients and minimal use of oil. Vietnamese spring rolls aren’t fried, for example but are folded in rice wrappers. Like Indian cuisine, Vietnamese cooking has a long vegetarian tradition.
Typically family name first, personal name last. On second reference, personal name is sometimes used. But in the United States, Western word order common.
A legacy of the Vietnam War (1959-1975). See GOOK; SLANT: SLOPE.
Officially known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, it allowed Asians to apply for citizenship but set immigration quotas from each Asian country at only 100 annually. Liberalization of this law, in 1965, allowed the first large-scale migration of Asians into the United States in the 20th Century. See also ASIAN EXCLUSION ACTS; CHARLIE CHAN; ETHNICITY, mention of; EXOTIC; FU MANCHU; IMMIGRANT; ILLEGAL ALIEN; ILLEGALS; YELLOW PERIL; YELLOW SKIN.
“WHITE MAN’S BURDEN”:
An 1899 poem written by Rudyard Kipling about the American role in the Philippines, which became an American colony following the Spanish-American War (1898). The poem begins: “Take up the White Man’s burden– / Send forth the best ye breed– / Go bind your sons to exile / To serve your captives’ need; / To wait in heavy harness, / On fluttered folk and wild– / Your new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half-child.”
See ASIA, use and abuse of images of; ASIA, perception of; COLONIALISM; IMPERIALISM; STEREOTYPES.
Archaic, possibly anti-Semitic rather than anti-Asian. Refers to the “Yellow Kid,” a young boy from a cartoon strip popular in New York tabloids of the 1890s and, thus, synonymous with tabloid sensationalism. The boy wore a yellow nightshirt. He was Eastern European, possibly Jewish, and was bald because his hair had been shorn because of lice, a common sight in Lower East Side tenements.
Avoid, a slur. An imagined invasion of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by Asian “hordes,” specifically Japanese, who had become successful entrepreneurs in California agriculture. Led to racialist pulp fiction. See also CHARLIE CHAN; CHINA DOLL; DRAGON LADY; EXOTIC; FOREIGN-NESS; FU MANCHU; YELLOW SKIN.
YELLOW SKIN, Asian-ness of:
A persistent vestige of the age of scientific racism. Yellow skin is a sign of jaundice, a symptom of various diseases, including hepatitis. Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), the paleontologist, traced the terminology to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), who coined “Caucasian.” Blumenbach, a German naturalist, derived his terminology from Carl Linnaeus (the 18th-century Swedish botanist who developed such classifications as “homo sapiens”) and the medieval theory of physiology that human temperament arises from the presence of various fluids, or “humors.” (“Sense of humor” comes from this theory.) Linnaeus said the black, or relaxed, humor dominated in Africa and the white, or muscular, humor in Europe. Linnaeus wrote that the “luridus, melancholicus, rigidus” (pale yellow, melancholy, stiff) humor predominated in Asia. See also CHARLIE CHAN; CAUCASIAN; FU MANCHU; RACISM, history of; RACISM, scientific; YELLOW PERIL.