Dusky Peril

An article from the September 16, 1906 Puget Sound American describing recent "Hindu" immigration to Bellingham, Washington.

Dusky Peril is a term used by Puget Sound American a daily newspaper[1], published from Bellingham, Washington, USA, to describe the immigration of what it described as Hindus to the area, in its 16 September, 1906 issue by way of a feature article.[2] It has been considered as an expression of xenophobia similar to the term Yellow Peril, that found practice in white and non-white countries across the globe in those times.[3] The term is analysed to have both an ethnic and a religious dimension. The article is in response to the immigration of 17 individuals to the town.[4] The article's headline is "Have we a Dusky Peril: Hindu hordes invading the state" with the byline going thus, "Bellingham workmen are becoming excited over the arrival of East Indians in numbers across the Canadian border and fear that the dusky Asiatics with their turbans will prove a worse menance to the working classes than the "Yellow Peril" that has so long threatened the Pacific Coast."

Hindu-American reaction

Kaajal Ahuja writes that the graffiti "Get Out" written on the walls of a Hindu temple in Bothelo about an hour's drive south of Bellingham, brought back what she calls "painful memories (of the incidents of the early decades of the 20th century such as the eponymous feature article)" for the community.[5] Shefali Chandan writing in Jano conjectures that the emotions behind the circumstances that led to the ethnic cleansing of Bellingham in 1907, in which white mobs went door to door to locate Indian immigrants and forced their expulsion, resulting in the entire community numbering about 200 leaving the town for good, found expression in the feature article written less than a year ago.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "A Forgotten History of Anti-Sikh Violence in the Early-20th-Century Pacific Northwest". Slate. 2015-02-13. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  2. ↑ Coulson, Doug (2017). Race, Nation, and Refuge: The Rhetoric of Race in Asian American Citizenship Cases. SUNY Press. ISBN 9781438466613.
  3. ↑ Laffan, Michael (2017-10-19). Belonging across the Bay of Bengal: Religious Rites, Colonial Migrations, National Rights. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781350022638.
  4. ↑ Zhao, Xiaojian; Ph.D, Edward J. W. Park (2013-11-26). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History [3 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598842401.
  5. ↑ "Hindus "Get Out"". Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  6. ↑ "A "Dusky Peril": Trade Unions Resent Indian Labor - Jano". Jano. 2017-03-03. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.