Luke’s Reviews > Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans > Status Update

In 1910, [...] Koreans, hired to pick oranges, camped on Mary Steward's farm in Upland, California. Suddenly, one night, they were attacked by white farm workers [.] Steward armed the Korean workers and instructed them to defend themselves against the white rioters. "The minority Korean people in this great country of America," Steward declared, "have a right to live and work just as the other nationalities.["]

I will not speak of love when I level the immigration station!

-Lai, Lim, Yung (eds.), Island

Capital used Chinese laborers as a transnational industrial reserve army to weigh down white workers during periods of economic expansion and to hold white labor in check during periods of overproduction. Labor was a major cost of production, and employers saw how the importation of Chinese workers could boost the supply of labor and drive down the wages of both Chinese and white workers. The resulting racial...