THIS CHAPTER TRACES intertwined histories of sinophobia and antisemitism in the age of “Yellow Peril” and social anxieties about plague and public health at the turn of the twentieth century. I trace how Chinese and Jewish diaspora solidarity movements emerged and took action in response to a geopolitical environment that vilified racialized urban minorities as sources of physical contagion and moral corruption. The essays and ethnographic writings of Chinese American author Wong Chin Foo and the journalism and short stories of Sui Sin Far (born in England to a white English father and a Chinese mother) combat the dehumanization of Chinese communities throughout North America, and both authors critique the era's medievalizing discourses that support harmful forms of white Christian supremacy.

Bubonic Plague Returns: Sinophobia and Antisemitism

In the year 1900, the bubonic plague struck San Francisco's Chinatown. As the first modern outbreak of the epidemic approached the west coast of North America, news reports sparked widespread fears over public health and the corrupting forces of crowded urban environments. The Sunday edition of the New York Journal (March 18, 1900), owned by William Randolph Hearst, featured the headline “Black Plague Creeps Into America,” accompanied by medieval iconography and biblical quotations. Reports describing “bubonic plague” as “the dreaded ‘black death’ of the Orient” stoked public fears in the age of “Yellow Peril,” a set of cultural discourses throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand that associated Asians collectively with socioeconomic threat, disease, and contagion. In one vivid example, the Lincoln County Leader (May 11, 1900) featured an illustrated map of the “Progress of the Plague Across the Pacific” from Australasia toward North America, stating that “[o]nce the plague gets a foothold among East Indians or Chinese coolies it is almost impossible to check it, except with the extermination of the population affected.” An illustration accompanying these headlines reveals “How Russia Cures the Bubonic Plague,” depicting a group of soldiers with their guns aimed to execute a group of “[un]fortunate coolies” who carry the “terrible disease.”

When reporters and government officials used phrases along the lines of “Black Plague”—and envisioned the prospect of “extermination” of entire populations deemed a threat to public health—these “Yellow Peril” discourses recalled violent scapegoating rhetorics of the medieval European past.