"This book explores the striking similarities in the ways the Chinese and African American populations in the United States were disenfranchised during the mid-1800s. Najia Aarim-Heriot reveals that both groups were prevented from becoming members of the American political and social community by means of nearly identical negative stereotypes, shrill rhetoric, and crippling exclusionary laws.".

"The first detailed examination of the link between the "Chinese question" and the "Negro problem" in nineteenth-century America, this work forcefully and convincingly demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment that led up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society to white and non-white groups during the same period.".

"Najia Aarim-Heriot argues that previous studies on American Sinophobia have overemphasized the resentment labor organizations felt toward incoming Chinese workers. This focus has caused crucial elements of the discussion to be overlooked, especially the broader ways in which the growing nation sought to define and unify itself through the exclusion and oppression of nonwhite peoples."--BOOK JACKET.