From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the Immigration Act of
1924 to Japanese American internment during World War II, the
United States has a long history of anti-Asian policies. But Lon
Kurashige demonstrates that despite widespread racism, Asian
exclusion was not the product of an ongoing national consensus; it
was a subject of fierce debate. This book complicates the exclusion
story by examining the organized and well-funded opposition to
discrimination that involved some of the most powerful public
figures in American politics, business, religion, and academia. In
recovering this opposition, Kurashige explains the rise and fall of
exclusionist policies through an unstable and protracted political
rivalry that began in the 1850s with the coming of Asian
immigrants, extended to the age of exclusion from the 1880s until
the 1960s, and since then has shaped the memory of past
discrimination.
In this first book-length analysis of both sides of the debate,
Kurashige argues that exclusion-era policies were more than just
enactments of racism; they were also catalysts for U.S.-Asian
cooperation and the basis for the twenty-first century's tightly
integrated Pacific world.