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hellamajestic's review against another edition
read this for one of my papers ok so it counts x
lukescalone's review against another edition
3.0
I'll start off by saying that this work is dense is theory-heavy. Much of my recent reading has consisted of dissertations that were reworked into books, but the author could have done a much better job of scaffolding his work in the background while still applying the same theoretical rigor. Nonetheless, this is an important work on the relationship between public health, immigration, and racial formation.
The text itself is situated between the San Francisco's 1876 Smallpox Epidemic and its 1939 Tuberculosis Epidemic. In between, there were two outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, as well as numerous outbreaks of other diseases. What is notable about the two named epidemics were the responses to the epidemic by San Francisco's City Health Officer. John Meares, City Health Officer in 1876, blamed the Chinese for the outbreak of the Smallpox epidemic, claiming that they defied "hygienic conduct" at every turn and ignored quarantines and public vaccination. The City Health Officer in 1939, in contrast, recognized that the tuberculosis rate among Chinese-Americans was 3z higher than the rest of the city, but he blamed the public infrastructure in San Francisco's Chinatown, especially its tenement housing, which was in disrepair.
Shah's big question, then, is: Why was there such an enormous divide in the responses between the two City Health Officers? Was it simply a question of a lack of racist behavior in the case of the second, or did the Chinese community drop its "wanton" behavior, or was it something else entirely?
Shah responds to the question with a thoughtful analysis of the transformation in American ideas about citizenship, based above all on its relationship to public health. During both periods, to be American was to be "healthy" and "clean," but transformation in thinking about public health led leaders to realize that peoples were not--in themselves--"dirty." In fact, the "wanton behavior" that the Chinese supposedly engaged in--above all spending time in opium dens and visiting prostitutes--was behavior paralleled by white male residents. Yet, increasing knowledge about public health, especially with regard to infrastructure, became increasingly important to how white Americans treated San Francisco's Chinatown. After the bubonic plague epidemics and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, white officials connected Chinatown to the larger public sewage system, which brought down disease cases tremendously. Moreover, the Chinese felt the need to adapt to more respectable white American norms--even if they were not followed by white Americans themselves. This was very much in the tradition of middle class progressives, who sought to remake the rest of American society in their own image (see [b:A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920|210827|A Fierce Discontent The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920|Michael E. McGerr|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388252248l/210827._SY75_.jpg|204060] for more on this).
In doing so, the Chinese gradually seen as cleaner by the rest of white American society, even if their "dirtiness" never existed in the first place. Accompanied by the recognition of infrastructure as one of the key factors in mitigating epidemics, Chinese-Americans became increasingly recognized as "Americans," even if it was impossible for any Chinese man or woman to naturalize under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (although later generations would receive birthright citizenship if they were born in the country). Unlike the case of Southern and Eastern Europeans, they did not become "white"--Chinese-Americans were still regularly otherized (along with African Americans, Asian Americans appear to still be permanently regarded as "other"), but they could at least increasingly achieve the status of a "model minority," even if description of Chinese-Americans in those terms did not emerge until the 1980s. I recognize that the narrative of the "model minority" is nonsense, but I do think that the concept is useful for thinking about how Chinese-Americans were, and are, treated in comparison to other immigrant groups.
If the narrative flowed a bit better without falling back on theoretical discussions, this work would be excellent, but the writing could have used a bit more work before publication. Nevertheless, it's worth taking the time to think about Shah's arguments here--I think there's a lot to them.
The text itself is situated between the San Francisco's 1876 Smallpox Epidemic and its 1939 Tuberculosis Epidemic. In between, there were two outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, as well as numerous outbreaks of other diseases. What is notable about the two named epidemics were the responses to the epidemic by San Francisco's City Health Officer. John Meares, City Health Officer in 1876, blamed the Chinese for the outbreak of the Smallpox epidemic, claiming that they defied "hygienic conduct" at every turn and ignored quarantines and public vaccination. The City Health Officer in 1939, in contrast, recognized that the tuberculosis rate among Chinese-Americans was 3z higher than the rest of the city, but he blamed the public infrastructure in San Francisco's Chinatown, especially its tenement housing, which was in disrepair.
Shah's big question, then, is: Why was there such an enormous divide in the responses between the two City Health Officers? Was it simply a question of a lack of racist behavior in the case of the second, or did the Chinese community drop its "wanton" behavior, or was it something else entirely?
Shah responds to the question with a thoughtful analysis of the transformation in American ideas about citizenship, based above all on its relationship to public health. During both periods, to be American was to be "healthy" and "clean," but transformation in thinking about public health led leaders to realize that peoples were not--in themselves--"dirty." In fact, the "wanton behavior" that the Chinese supposedly engaged in--above all spending time in opium dens and visiting prostitutes--was behavior paralleled by white male residents. Yet, increasing knowledge about public health, especially with regard to infrastructure, became increasingly important to how white Americans treated San Francisco's Chinatown. After the bubonic plague epidemics and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, white officials connected Chinatown to the larger public sewage system, which brought down disease cases tremendously. Moreover, the Chinese felt the need to adapt to more respectable white American norms--even if they were not followed by white Americans themselves. This was very much in the tradition of middle class progressives, who sought to remake the rest of American society in their own image (see [b:A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920|210827|A Fierce Discontent The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920|Michael E. McGerr|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388252248l/210827._SY75_.jpg|204060] for more on this).
In doing so, the Chinese gradually seen as cleaner by the rest of white American society, even if their "dirtiness" never existed in the first place. Accompanied by the recognition of infrastructure as one of the key factors in mitigating epidemics, Chinese-Americans became increasingly recognized as "Americans," even if it was impossible for any Chinese man or woman to naturalize under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (although later generations would receive birthright citizenship if they were born in the country). Unlike the case of Southern and Eastern Europeans, they did not become "white"--Chinese-Americans were still regularly otherized (along with African Americans, Asian Americans appear to still be permanently regarded as "other"), but they could at least increasingly achieve the status of a "model minority," even if description of Chinese-Americans in those terms did not emerge until the 1980s. I recognize that the narrative of the "model minority" is nonsense, but I do think that the concept is useful for thinking about how Chinese-Americans were, and are, treated in comparison to other immigrant groups.
If the narrative flowed a bit better without falling back on theoretical discussions, this work would be excellent, but the writing could have used a bit more work before publication. Nevertheless, it's worth taking the time to think about Shah's arguments here--I think there's a lot to them.
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