Morrison sawno salvation or promise in addressing one’s powers toward changing theconsciousness of those who profess such beliefs

acollective of Black workers in the late 1960s that linked the racist hierar-chies within auto factories in Detroit to US imperial wars in SoutheastAsia (see chapter 4).

As DRUM founder Monami Maulik writes, “Wenever framed our analysis nor centered our campaigns on bias crimesagainst Muslims or South Asians alone. Instead, we worked proactively tomodel Muslim and other youth of color organizing together to end over-policing and for dignity in their schools.”12 DRUM advocates a “transfor-mational solidarity” in which “masses of oppressed communities choose toforgo something that would benefit them, and do not take it because itcomes at the expense of other oppressed communities

predisposition within Black social formations

hey can serve to negate collective iden-tities and historical perspectives, demanding that efforts to address disad-vantage be channeled through individuals, not groups, and that pastinjustices play no part in present claims.

o one would have thought ofadmitting them as citizens in a civilized community

t individual Natives could gainUnited States citizenship and all of the rights afforded by that status, ifNatives would accept a tract of land and swear off allegiance to theirNation

e Indian Civilization Act

upon the same powers and dominion within their territory

ost notably, the last three presidential administrationshave invoked the Indian Wars of the nineteenth century to argue forsimilar powers in the context of the War on Terror. Following 9/11, theBush Administration argued for parallels between tactics used by sus-pects of terror and by Native Nations and pointed to the Indian Warsas a model for respons

The Chief Justice rooted national power over Indian affairsnot in constitutional text or principles, but in domestic incorporation ofthe so-called “doctrine of discovery” — a public international law doc-trine that gave the right to Christian and civilized societies to assertdomain over “discovered” lands and the power to exclude “all otherEuropeans” from so acquiring. 1

t was in the context of its engagement with Native peoples

o this end, the IRA provided formal federalrecognition for each Native Nation to organize and, by majority vote,form institutions to self-govern. 121 The Act offered the Native Nationsthe opportunity to ratify a written constitution, which the United Stateswould recognize as governing within each Nation’s territory, and toform a separate corporate charter in order to foster economic develop-ment and manage natural resources.

ince that time, the political branches have departed from the formaltreaty process.114 For the latter years of the nineteenth century, thisgenerally meant unilateral lawmaking by Congress and the Executive,and the oppressive imposition of policies upon Native Nations withoutany collaboration or consen

olonialism, like slavery, was an original sin in the “New WorldGarden.” The garden, it turns out, was not at all “new,” and the colonistsinherited both an empire and a slave state along with their independ-ence.

“master narrative

In particular, federalIndian law and colonialism have shaped deeply the treaty power, thewar powers, the plenary power doctrine, our federal structure, as wellas a range of other public law doctrines

e longuedurée

Forcing colonized peoples to engage in our democratic process toavoid subordination only furthers the colonial project

In fact, if we define federal Indian law as the lawof national power and rights developed in the context of Native Nationsand Native peoples, much of constitutional law actually is federalIndian law

his binary paradigm serves as a founda-tion to our public law, as constitutional law and theory have adoptedimplicitly a focus on slavery and Jim Crow as the sole paradigm case tounderstand how to avoid subordination of minorities.

“how do you sum up genocide?”

assumed he meant the photograph of my grandfather, family hero, wartime Resistance fighter. Everyoneasks about Grand-pere.

hy he goes back to that camp, day after day, in thewind and cold and rain, now that they have rooms inthis warm house, I don't know, but I'm not having himtramp filth and disease into my establishment.

he twins plus one, GPS and I are walking by the sideof the street. We make it in seventeen minutes. That'sgood enough.There is nothing special on the other side. It looksthe same. But now we are in France

To compensate forsomething. I heard them, but I was busy thinking of anew name

can make jokes at any time but even I don't under.cl ,,stand why he laughs. 'How do you sum up genoc1 e.

He explainsthat 'sum' is used in different ways but that summing upis also something that we might have to do in the future.When it comes. The summing up of our situation. Ofwhat is going on in our country

ourism does notwant to see any dead bodies floating onto the sand.

You survivedthe crazy people who want to keep their beach clean,free of refugees. They think refugees make their summerincome leave through the back door

Puglia

How can you cross a border, go from onecountry to another, and be there in eleven minutes? Ittook us two weeks to get here.

Rather than wash individuals clean of any differentiating character-istics as a logical step prior to the assignment of rights, the recognition ofqultural identity as an irreducible component of personal identity re-quires that we ask how group membership ought to be taken into ac-count

n the discourse of law, ownership ofsome interest is the most important relationship one can have to land.Yet according ownership this role occludes the important constitutivepower specific land has for people and communities.

By enter-ing the universe of legal discourse, the term "Tribe," in the context of theNon-Intercourse Act, has no meaning for the internal perspective of peo-ple claiming that status. Instead, "Tribe" means a group of indigenouspeople who have structured their existence in such a way that outsiders,specifically legal experts, would say the grouping is a "Tribe."

egardless of whetherthe self-constructed reality of the Mashpee corresponds to the legalmodel. Worse, these reified social relations are projected upon a back-ground of settled expebtations that run directly counter to the claims theMashpee made.

ower in a material way. The suits sought to shift control over the mostbasic material resource, land. What made the Mashpee's challenge par-ticularly disconcerting to the white landowners was that it was con-ducted according to rules the now-frightened, non-Indian landownersfelt compelled to respect-a lawsuit

not only their right to historical change, but also the reality of their para-doxical continued existence

The court interpreted Mashpee adaptation to thedominant culture, necessary for their survival as an independent people,as proof the Tribe had surrendered its identity. That interpretation in-corporates a dominant motif in the theory and practice of modem Amer-ican pluralism. 86 Ethnic distinctiveness often must be sacrificed inexchange for social and economic security

First, in claiming blood as a measure of identity, the defense ar-gued (to the all-white jury) that "black intermarriage made theMashpees' proper racial identification black instead of Indian.

For one cannot truly enjoy theother, identifying with him, and yet at the same time remaindifferent

Within the idiom of docu-mentary evidence as written record, because the Mashpee Indian cultureis rooted in large measure on the passing of an oral record, their historycould only signify silence

account of their history w

positivistic

The judge is to ask herself: "If I let this evidence in, will it add anyprobitive value to the facts we already know?" This inquiry begs thequestion of whether the "facts" already admitted are those that ought tobe in

T]he residents of Mashpee had man-aged to keep alive a core of Indian identity over three centuries againstenormous odds.

f the Mashpeewere no longer a "Tribe" (or if they never had constituted a "Tribe" inthe first place), the protection provided by the Non-Intercourse Actevaporated. If, however, the Indians retained their tribal status, then thetransactions that resulted in the loss of their village were invalid. At thevery heart of the dispute was whether the Mashpee were "legally" a peo-ple and thus entitled to legal protection

it asserted independence within thecontext of the laws of the state of Massachusetts

"we, as a Tribe, will ruleourselves, and have the right to do so, for all men are born free andequal, says the Constitution of the country.

Beyond reflecting archaic notions of tribal existence in general, theMontoya requirements incorporated specific perceptions regarding race,leadership, community, and territory that were entirely allen to Mashpeeculture. The testimony revealed the Montoya criteria as generalized eth-nological categories that failed to capture the specifics of what it meansto belong to the Mashpee people.

It is becoming more and more apparent that each definition ishighly subjective and idiosyncratic and generated for a particular pur-pose not necessarily having anything to do with the Non-IntercourseAct of 1790.2

udge Skinner agreed to allow expert testimony from various socialscientists regarding the definition of "Indian Tribe."

The legal boundaries made apparent in the Mashpee's story re-quire that they remain frozen in time: Cultural evolution itself is prohib-ited for the Mashpee

heproblem with conflicting systems of meaning is that there is a history andsocial practice reflected and contained within the language chosen. Torequire a particular way of telling a story not only strips away nuances ofmeaning, but also elevates a particular version of events to a non-contin-gent status

We suggest that first they must be translated by means of examples thatlaw can follow-precedent, and examples that law can hear-evidence.

. Indianhistory indeed is inscribed on the land of North America. Its inscription,however, has faded for most Americans because the inscription existswithout any tie to the proper names that give these words significance.The remnants of language attached to real places prompt romanticimages of America's pre-European past.8 The telling of this past (his-tory), like all stories, is replete with meanings, and as with most narra-tives, its very telling is an expression of power

“The most cherished civil rights of Indian people are notbased on equality of treatment under the Constitution and the generalcivil rights laws.”67 Ultimately, what Indians are seeking from the Courtis something much different. They are arguing for a right to a degreeof “measured separatism,” that is, the right to govern their reservationhomelands and those who enter them by their own laws, customs, andtraditions, even when these might be incommensurable with the domi-nant society’s values and ways of doing things.

“The most cherished civil rights of Indian people are notbased on equality of treatment under the Constitution and the generalcivil rights laws.”67 Ultimately, what Indians are seeking from the Courtis something much different. They are arguing for a right to a degreeof “measured separatism,” that is, the right to govern their reservationhomelands and those who enter them by their own laws, customs, andtraditions, even when these might be incommensurable with the domi-nant society’s values and ways of doing things.

he lessons of Brown strongly suggest that the long- established racialstereotypes and imagery in the Court’s decisions and precedents mustbe fi rst exposed and then attacked. Otherwise, the persistence of a lan-guage of racism in American society and in the Court’s case law willmake discovering such a community of interests, material or otherwise,between a particular minority group and the dominant society virtuallyimpossible

he salutary effects of the growingnumber of high schools and colleges that have abandoned the use ofstereotyped Indian mascots and insignia, 48 for instance, are instan-taneously diminished in a singularly reinforcing jolt to the Americanpublic’s racial imagination by a single, widely reported decision, issuedby a federal district court judge sitting i

real change comes principally from attitudinal shifts in the populationat large. Rare indeed is the legal victory—in court or legislature—that isnot a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus.”4

TheCourt simply cannot be ignored by Indian rights advocates. It’s the pro-verbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla that blocks the way of every legalstruggle aimed at protecting Indian rights in the United States today.And as every international human rights lawyer knows, you certainlycan’t ignore the Supreme Court if you want to use the internationalhuman rights system’s adjudicatory processes to protect Indian rights.Domestic remedies normally have to be exhausted fi rst to even get ahearing in that system

, “Rehnquist Court Holds ThatIndians Have Inferior Rights to Self- Government Because They OnceWere Savages” or “Court Continues Its Racist Old Ways in Indian Law,”even though these are precisely the types of things the Rehnquist Courtis in fact doing in many of its present-day Indian rights decisions.

The legal history of racism against Indians as perpetu-ated by the justices of the Supreme Court demonstrates, in a compel-ling and undeniable fashion, the pervasive and continuing subversivepower of certain well-known ways of talking, thinking, and writingabout Indians. 3

nd Oliphant is simply one of many instances in which a Supreme Courtjustice, post-Brown, relied on a long- established tradition of negativeracist stereotypes, apocrypha, and images of Indian savagery to justifythe Court’s decision in an important Indian rights case.

his “principle,” he writes,would have been obvious a century ago when most Indian tribes werecharacterized by a “want of fi xed laws [and] of competent tribunalsof justice.

Oliphant holds that an Indian tribe lacks criminal jurisdiction overnon-Indians committing crimes on its reservation, even if the crime wascommitted against the tribe’s own members.

e see Supreme Court justices who persist in relying upon andciting cases and legal precedents replete with hostile racist stereotypesof Indians as inferior savages with lesser rights than other Americans

Most people seem to assume that because Elvis and Brown revolu-tionized America’s racial imagination when it came to blacks, the storymust have gotten better for all the other minority groups in Americaafter that. 21 At least that’s the lesson they’ve been taught to believe:Everything got better in America, racially speaking at least, after Elvisand Brown.

The case,decided in 1886, is unembarrassedly cited and relied upon, for instance,by the twenty-fi rst- century justices of the Rehnquist Court as still agood authority on Indian rights in America today.

. Thejustices of the Kagama Court nevertheless unanimously declared thatunder U.S. law, Indians were regarded legally as “wards of the nation.”Because they were “dependent on the United States—dependent largelyfor their daily food; dependent for their political rights”—these “rem-nants of a race once powerful, now weak and diminished in numbers”were under the plenary authority of Congress

Some of the most hostileracial attitudes in nineteenth- century America toward Indians can befound in the Indian rights decisions of the Supreme Court

hat the white man’s civi-lized rule of law was “opposed to the traditions of their history, to thehabits of their lives, to the strongest prejudices of their savage nature,”or that attempting to measure “the red man’s revenge by the maximsof the white man’s morality”15 would offend basic norms of civilizedjustice and basically be a total waste of time

They know what theselanguages are all about: These languages are about the use of negativestereotypes, racial images, and apocryphal tales to justify the stigmaof inferiority attached to certain racially subordinated group

o one should be at all surprised to discover thata number of long- established and well-known languages of racism inAmerica can be found reflected in many of the Supreme Court’s mostimportant decisions on minority rights under the Constitution and lawsof the United States

We all know that other minority groups in oursociety have also been subjected to this ever- evolving narrative traditionof American racial profiling and to its use of a well-known language ofrace-based stereotypes and denigrating racial imagery

There is, in other words, a language ofracism in America directed at Indians, and most of us, whether we areconscious of it or not, are very familiar with it

hat makes the cartoon so funny to those people who think they getit is this rather confounding reversal of a commonly held racial stereo-type. That disorienting shift in perspective makes us laugh, or at leastchuckle, because we never really thought about Indians like that

pocry-phal

person somehow picks up alongthe way while growing up in America, or so I’m told. It’s all part of ourracial imaginatio

In his letter to theNew York Tribune editor, Koo began by asking, "Will not the thinkingAmericans—the liberty loving and justice seeking people—lend a willingear to the plea of a Chinese student for fair play and a square deal?"

In closing, the letter de-nounced the sensationalism of yellow journalism that "ha[s] aroused ill-feeling of the American toward the Chinese, hurt the Chinese market, andput Chinese dignity in danger when a Chinese walks in the streets

T. G. Horn,President of the Chinese Y.M.C.A., wrote a letter to the New YorkTimes emphasizing that criminal behavior was neither unique to norwidespread among the Chinese American community as alleged by thepress. Similar to writings by black middle-class leaders in this periodwho labored to improve the status of their "race" and their commu-nity’s public image, Horn wrote to defend the reputation of the Chinesecommunity in America.

In this way," the Chinese charge d’affaires as-sured, "you will help to remove any stigma that may be attached to ourpeople on account of this case."

Instead, the appeal had the unintended result of legitimizing fur-ther state surveillance of the Chinese immigrant community under thedubious claim of protecting the Chinese from themselves

The laundry ownerstated that the boy had complained of headaches and began ravingabout the Sigel murder. The Boston Globe explained that "the disgracecast upon his race by the recent murder in New York [had] preyed uponhis mind."2

Leon Ling, providing assistance to the murder investigation was criticalfor ameliorating their much tarnished public image.

Taken together, such portrayals worked tomake Chu Gain appear as Leon Ling’s safer alter ego. In one instance theNew York Times went as far as to offer the theory that Sigel had wantedto marry Leon Ling, but that her mother had preferred her to marry ChuGain, a "thrifty Chinaman" with "quite a snug fortune."7 Yet the publicwas hardly so willing to condone this interracial romance even when theChinese partner was of a more acceptable socioeconomic class, preferringinstead to condemn Sigel’s daring to engage in such familiar relations withChinese me

As discussed in chapters 2 and 3, the belief thatChinatowns were "terra incognita" full of secret tunnels that allowed thecity’s clannish Chinese American residents to move clandestinelythroughout the city was already well-established and popularizedthrough popular tales of Chinatow

ple iden-tification of physical or biological differences between Chinese and non-Chinese. Popular images of Chinese men as wearing queues and dressingin traditional Chinese clothing were just as important in defining racialdifference.

as social scientistswere beginning to divide the world’s population into assigned racialcategories, in vernacular culture the deployment of racial classificationsremained highly irregular.

The examples of these racial^classifications, whether formally through the legal system or informallythrough ordinary daily encounters, demonstrate the instability and elas-ticity of whiteness as a socially and culturally constructed categor

Well, it does look like him, but then, I’m not much on identifyingChinamen. They all look alike to me, more or less." Instead, Halsteadhad much more faith in his ability to identify the trunk and confidentlyclaimed that "I would know that trunk the moment I saw it.

he constant reporting of mistaken arrests suggests the degree towhich police and laymen’s attempts to identify the suspects through racehad been ineffective. These mass arrests reconfirmed earlier notionsthat the Chinese were simply physically indistinguishable to whites, asdepicted in a 1905 New York Times cartoon with a befuddled police-man attempting to "find the guilty one" in a sea of identical lookingChinamen.

lthough newspapers in major cities abroad such as London andParis had reported on the Sigel murder shortly after the discovery of herbody, it was the NYPD’s aggressive pursuit that impelled foreign policedepartments into action.

Equally invasive searches also took place in foreign lands. In early Julypolice in Budapest began to sweep the Chinese residential area after ananonymous source stated that Leon Ling was hiding in the home of a localChinese family.6

’seeing’ the missing Leon continued yesterday all over the United States,with the result that many innocent Chinamen unfortunate enough to wearAmerican dress underwent embarrassing inquisitions without any new clueto the fugitive being obtained."

. The Eighth Precinct police also arrested C. J. Kong becausethe man was said to be "Americanized" and resembled Leon Ling. Kongwas only recently released from the workhouse where he had served thirtydays for a charge of vagrancy

ore importantly, he noted that "one was a verygood-looking Chinaman, with the Chinese characteristic not verystrongly, stamped. This man was well dressed. His companion was ofa more decided Chinese cast and was more shabby in appearance."

hinese and whites insisted such relationships occurred chiefly as aresult of the white women’s dire physical or economic needs and not theChinese partners’ masculinity or sexual desirability.1

month earlier Galvin had embarked onhis campaign to "cleanse" Chinatown by closing gambling halls and re-moving all white women in the neighborhood. Sigel’s death fueled strongsupport for Galvin’s campaign.

and throughout the countrypolice officials and lay citizens alike responded vigorously to Commis-sioner Bingham’s call to inspect all Chinese

By 1924, nearly six years afterIng Ine How had left the United States, Julia decided to send Arthur toChina as it was the only way for father and son to be reunited. In effectthe exclusion acts, by refusing to grant legal immigration status toChinese laborers such as Ing Ine How, worked to turn these interracialfamilies into a similar form of split transnational households endured bymany of the city’s Chinese "bachelor" laborers, who were forced toleave behind their Chinese wives in their home villages.7

These census figures suggest the extent to which Chinatown’sworking-class male population turned to intermarriage to establish fami-lies in the United States, challenging the social isolation imposed by anti-Chinese immigration legislation.

In 1921twenty-four-year-old Olga Claudine Chin traveled with her young daugh-ter, Carlton Chin, from her native country, Trinidad, to join her Chinesehusband in New York City. Unlike Amelia Smith Olga Chin was, ac-cording to H. D. Baker, the American Consul in Trinidad, "only partlyChinese, being mostly of colored race

A more common optionavailable to Chinese men was the practice of interracial marriage sinceNew York, similarly to other states in the Northeast and Midwest, didnot have any anti-miscegenation laws.

Writers employed these gendered narra-tives of female oppression to form the key tenets that distinguished anenlightened and egalitarian Euro-American civilization from a morallycorrupt and despotic Chinese society. Social reformers and missionariesalso used these stories to garner financial support and public sympathyfor their Chinese missionary activitie

uch news stories increasinglyalerted New Yorkers to the surprising numbers of Chinese-white couplesliving in their midst.

Though Koyama was not Chinese, butJapanese, his distinctly Asian physical features led him to face the sameracial antipathy directed at Chinese men involved with white women.According to a New York Herald article, the two had called on manyministers but they "declined when they caught sight of Mr. Koyama

arly silent films such as The Heathen Chinese andthe Sunday School Teachers,

In his attempts to follow up the story, the Eagle reporter not onlyfailed to locate the alleged groom but also came to the conclusion that noChinese laundry ever existed at the said location.1

hools in the city and could say with satisfaction that most of the teach-ers were "elderly women." The young women who had been allowed towork, she felt, were "picked out of a select class. Should she flirt, shewould summarily be discharged from further duties by the superintendentif he learned of it. And the superintendents are on the watch for anythingof this kind."

horns adamantly protested Lewis’s claim that Chineseattended Sunday schools simply to become acquainted with young whitewomen rather than to seek religious instruction. Moreover, Thornsthreatened to take the matter to a court of law.92 Some of the Eagle’sreaders also wrote the editor to protest Lewis’s remarks.

Young women,who were seen as particularly given to sentimental and emotional ex-cess, were especially susceptible and needed even greater protectionrather than exposure to Chinese heathens who were, for the most part,popularly portrayed as insincere converts harboring lecherous feelingstoward their white female teachers

his image of the woman missionary as a maternal figure and theirChinese male adult charges as small children in need of protection andnurturing drew upon Victorian notions of women’s particular moral au-thority as derived from their feminine virtue.8

Inthis manner, the Guild retained a clearly Protestant orientation, but withan emphasis on the material needs of the city’s Chinese population.Indeed, the majority of the Guild’s work was clearly not religious, butinvolved providing legal advocacy and welfare services:

In the letter’s closing Rees wrote, "Pardon my intrusion in writingyou on this matter that may seem a small one, but I like this Chinamanand am anxious to help him if I can."5

ffect that the wife of a Chinese laborer is a person whose original entryinto this country is prohibited by said act, the Department has no power,under the law, to grant your request."

hen Tipple saw no immediate aid forthcoming, hethen wrote to Mayor Hugh Grant to report that Sam Lung was "nightlystoned by boys" and that "repeated complaints have been made to policeofficers and to the captain of the precinct, but no relief has beenafforded."4

Through AIWA, they redefine their status from members of deval-ued social groups into grassroots leaders with the experiences, skills, andknowledge to change policy and spearhead innovations in the workplace,industry, and broader society

But, as she learned about the history of white settler colonialism,the 1960s civil rights movement, and California migrant farmworker strug-gles, she began to see her personal troubles as part of larger structures ofdomination and oppression. Hai Yan was particularly moved by AIWA’sseminar on English-language dominance, stating “Once I learned that En-glish ½can be usedŠas a tool to oppress us, I had to figure out where the wayout lies. I had to find my own way out.

identities as tools to be used in complicated, flex-ible, and strategic ways

level, English-language ability, or position in the social, economic, and polit-ical orders

Social movement groups embrace intersectionality asa radical yet viable strategy because the core problems that women of colorface are themselves both intersectional and radical.

Despite these religious leaders’ claims that Sigel was not a missionaryto the Chinese and that Leon Ling was not a Christian, these statementscame too late. The image of Elsie Sigel as the young, innocent missionaryand Leon Ling as her insincere pupil was deeply impressed upon the vastmajority of the nation’s newspaper readers, and the press and public con-tinued to describe her as the murdered Chinatown missionary

NFERNAL.

llowing for frequent encounters with the opposite sex. Evenmore disturbing were those opportunities for middle-class women to in-teract with non-white men, that critics saw as harboring the potential forinterracial sexual relations. These authors suggested that professionalwomen should be either more carefully monitored or restricted in their ac-tions and movements in their work and travels through the city.

onetheless argued that the sentimen-tality of the female teachers prevented them from protecting themselvesfrom unscrupulous men like Leon Ling, who "has posed for years as a con-vert of extraordinary piety."

"[w]hen arrested and brought into the police courtsthey claim to be the wives of Chinese, and either produce marriage cer-tificates or bring their alleged husbands to swear to the matrimonial re-lation."61 Police and courts similarly treated the white wives of Chineselaborers with great suspicion.

Ely did not so much challengeWing’s testimony in terms of its factual accuracy as to simply paint Wingas an unreliable witness because she had a Chinese husband and residedin Chinatown.

From using narrativesof innocence and victimhood and feigning cooperation with social work-ers, police, and courts, to giving false biographical information, theseteens learned from their peers to employ a range of strategies to avoid ar-rest and institutionalization

e court granted the NYSPCC custody of Cormanuntil "a home was found for her with a family in a neighboring city,where she will have excellent opportunities for good."3

women and children

he biracial children they bore pointed to their role in the moralpollution and mongrelization of the white race

nstead the conclusion emphasizes her mentally and physically brokenstate. She remains the play’s central tragic figure, a warning against femaleindulgence in "oriental luxuries" and interracial sex

In other words, theappearances of Moy Key, Gonzales, and Rivers transform this seeminglybasic dime novel seduction/abduction/rape plot to an allegory of racialconflict, national struggle, and empire expansion. By defeating both Gon-zales and Moy Key to rescue Mildred, Jack Rivers simultaneously pro-tects both white womanhood and the American nation from defilement.

"did notseem to worry and maintained the expressionless stolidity characteristicof their race," painted the women as victims rather than making them ac-countable for their decision to enter the Chinese laundries.

New Yorkers became convinced that the city’s white female popu-lation, whether as middle-class missionaries, working-class laborers, orurban consumers, were learning to traverse the city’s racially and classdistinct neighborhoods in ways that increasingly threatened their re-spectability and safety.

hinese ownerswere probably warranted in fearing that their businesses could becomethe targets of mob violence or heavy police surveillance

In Washington, D.C., newspapers reported seeingsigns in Chinese posted in laundries that warned workers to limit severelytheir interactions with white female customers, restricting conversationsto "yea, yea, and nay" and for "business" purposes only.72 Similarlyworded posters were also reportedly seen in Chinese-owned laundries inNewark, New Jersey.73 As the circulation of these notices makes clear theSigel murder impacted all types of social interactions between Chinesemen and white women

Seen as apotentially immoral force, police and neighbors vigilantly monitored theactivities in these Chinese establishments.

The vulgar actions and manners ofthese "Chinamen," drawing upon Vaudeville conventions of racial per-formances with exaggerated accented speech and slapstick humor, morelikely provoked laughter than fear. Other films, however, employedthese same recognizable racial tropes to more dramatic effect.

In 1907 aChinese man accidentally bumped into a girl on a crowded city street. Herscreams of "lynch him" alerted the crowd and resulted in the man’s arrestfor disorderly conduct. He was later discharged by the magistrate.

expected the same rights and protections granted toother New Yorkers, frequently taking their complaints to city officials.

His companionslater identified a suspect, but the man was acquitted at trial.

Reformersenacted these bans to ensure that these establishments would no longerattract female customers and provide opportunities for mingling betweenthe sexes or races. Instead the establishment would return to being asaloon—a leisure space reserved for working-class men.

anti-vice organizations such as the Committee of Fourteen, formed in1905, operated independently from the city’s police and employed theirown investigators and means to enforce anti-vice legislation.

The word "Chinatown" written across the spider’s web, representsthe Chinatown neighborhood as an unforseen trap that ensnared unsuspectingyoung white female missionaries, the embodiment of Christian "goodintentions."

The guidebook made clear that Doyers Street served asthe main site of illegal activities occurring within Chinatown, because thestreet’s bends and folds made perfect hiding places for the quarter’s tongwars and vice activities

n 1880, when thearea occupied by Mott, Pell, and Doyers started becoming known asChinatown, Chinese residents comprised a minority of the neighborhood’sresidents. Even as late as 1910 many native-born whites and Europeanimmigrants continued to reside in the area designated on maps and guide-books as Chinatown

owever white women, who "hit the pipe" particularly inthe company of Chinese men, were clearly labeled as "degraded." Opium,seen as a drug facilitating racial and sexual transgressions, posed atremendous social threat

opium and its derivatives could be found in a range of com-monly consumed patent medicines and tonics prescribed for a wide range ofailments, including gastrointestinal distress, food poisoning, parasites, anxi-ety, and pain. The smoking of opium, however, was an activity specificallyattributed to the politically disenfranchised Chinese immigrant populationand was thus easier to target for regulation

healso reproduced the same racial and cultural hierarchies present in theworks of others writing about Chinese communities in the United Statesduring this period: "That there is the most radical difference between thecivilization of the Orient and that of Western nations needs no affirma-tion. It is manifest at a glance. These people have been born and edu-cated under that form of civilization which has prevailed in the Chineseempire for thousands of years. Our civilization is the outgrowth of a fewcenturies. Theirs is the most ancient form of any surviving nationon earth; ours the most modern."30 Here, the binary oppositions of Eastversus West—as social backwardness against progress—worked toshape the constructions of Chinatown as the cultural other for modernmiddle-class New Yorkers and other non-Chinese readers.3

Through interactions with the inhabitants on forays intoworking-class ethnic neighborhoods, these writers attempted to experi-ence the "real" city, proclaiming themselves to be manly, intrepid ex-plorers possessing expert knowledge of these uncharted areas

By cata-loguing, naming, and describing these locales, such books rendered eachneighborhood’s hidden dangers visible, allowing nonresidents to tra-verse the terrain unharmed. The following description of New YorkCity’s Chinatown, listed under "Chinese" in the 1879 edition of Apple-ton’s Dictionary of New York and Vicinity’, depicted the neighborhoodin a manner that exemplifies the usual entries found in most New YorkCity guidebooks of this period

ut also undertook campaigns to "cleanse"Chinatown through the organizing of religious missions and anti-vicecrusade

women who dared to engage in such sexual and racial trans-gressions would either become trapped or remain permanently tainted bytheir association

"Slummin

It is a shock to the law-abidingpeople of this country to learn that in nearly all our great cities there aresettlements of Orientals who are with us but not of us,

It is a shock to the law-abidingpeople of this country to learn that in nearly all our great cities there aresettlements of Orientals who are with us but not of us, who administertheir own affairs according to their own conception of what is right andwrong,

PITE THE FACT that the victim and chief suspects neither livednor worked in Chinatown and that the murder itself did not occur inChinatown, the press and police nonetheless connected the murder tothis part of the city. Newspapers such as the New York Evening Journalreferred to the murder as a "Chinatown mystery.

It doesn’t make any difference to me whether their parents plead andprotest, these girls will be treated as common criminals, until they learnthat I mean to protect the womanhood of Pittsburgh against the inroads ofthe ’ydl°w peril’ in its vilest form.

Despite Sarah Crew’s complaints and herwealthy and respected businessman father, the two were held overnightwithout bail and McQuaide planned to have her "lined up in the morn-ing with the usual grist of Saturday-night drunks.

Throughout the country, Americans responded to the Sigel murderby investigating and monitoring in their hometowns the same spaceschiefly identified as occupied by Chinese workers—homes, Protestantmissions, "chop suey" restaurants, and hand laundries—that New Yorkpolice, reporters, and social reformers were targeting. As with NewYork, the residents in these areas grew alarmed by the permeability ofsupposedly established boundaries separating Chinese men from thegeneral populatio

Several Japanese men were also falsely arrested, includingMarshal Kobayashi, a lecturer residing in the Bronx. In Morristown,New Jersey, a Japanese butler for an American family was also mistak-enly arrested when police thought he resembled the missing neighbor,Chong Sing.

First, she undermined racial borders by treating Leon Ling as though hewere a "white man," as one reporter claimed, meaning that she saw himas a social equal

Sigel’s decision to leave the protection of her comfortable, white middle-class surroundings in upper Manhattan and accompany Leon Ling to ex-plore the immoral and criminal underside of Chinatown in working-classlower Manhattan ultimately led to her undoing

By 1909 newspaper articles and stories about the activities of the"heathen Chinee" were not unknown in New York or other parts of thecountry.6 A glance through some of the city’s major newspapers—NewYork Herald, New York Times, World, New York Tribune—and popu-lar magazines reveals that period’s sensationalistic reporting of China-town life as defined by sordid underground vice activities or exoticcultural peculiarities.

t’s not that everybody who was organized on these campaigns was themselves an abolitionist,” Gilmore told me, “but instead thatabolitionists engaged in a certain kind of organizing that made all different kinds of people, in all different kinds of situations, decide forthemselves that it was not a good idea to have another prison.

I feel like a movement to end mass incarceration and replace it with a system that actuallyrestores and protects communities will never succeed without abolitionists. Because people will make compromises and sacrifices, andthey’ll lose the vision. They’ll start to think things are huge victories, when they’re tiny. And so, to me, abolition is essential

people would go to prison for a set period of time, rather than to wait for the punishment to come. Thepenitentiary movement in both England and the United States in the early 19th century was motivated in part by the demand for morehumanitarian punishment. Prison was the reform

Abolition means not just the closing of prisons but the presence, instead, of vital systems of support that many communities lack.Instead of asking how, in a future without prisons, we will deal with so-called violent people, abolitionists ask how we resolve inequalitiesand get people the resources they need long before the hypothetical moment when, as Gilmore puts it, they “mess up.

but what it is as a practice requires subtler understanding.

I get where you’re coming from,” she said. “But how about this: Instead of asking whether anyone should be locked up or go free, whydon’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place?” She wasasking them to consider why, as a society, we would choose to model cruelty and vengeance

Both feared the loss of superiority. SomeBlack people had reservations about how they’d sustain themselves without the steady,yet violent, protection of their owners. Police abolition triggers similar anxieties today—moral, economic, and otherwise

Communities can demand hiring and budget freezes,budget cuts, and participatory budgeting opportunities to ensure that police will notbe refunded in the future. States should stop the construction of new prisons andbegin closing remaining ones by freeing the people inside. No new police academiesshould be established. ese are only a few suggestions from a broader set ofabolitionist demands

. Rather than thinking of abolitionas just getting rid of police, I think about it as an invitation to create and support lotsof different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most exciting, as anopportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the rst plac

ust because I did notknow an answer didn’t mean that one did not exist. I had to study and join anorganization, not just ask questions on social media.

Whatwill we do with murderers and rapists?” Which ones? e police kill more than athousand people every year, and assault hundreds of thousands more.

Cops escalate violence disproportionately against people with disabilitiesand in mental-health crises, even the ones who call 911 for help. e police officerswho are doing the “right thing” maintain the systems of inequality and ableism inblack communities. e right thing is wrong.

e Obama administration’s DOJ objected todismissing thousands of old cases that were the result of unconstitutional policing,and protected the police department from criticisms that community organizersshared with the judge in cour

Police manageinequality by keeping the dispossessed from the owners, the Black from the white, thehomeless from the housed, the beggars from the employed. Reforms make policepolite managers of inequality. Abolition makes police and inequality obsolete.

Grown-ups fought too, stressed from working hard yet never having enoughbill money or gas money or food money or day-care money.

e called 911 for almost everything except snitching.Nosebleeds, gunshot wounds, asthma attacks, allergic reactions. Police accompaniedthe paramedics

In 35 jurisdictions, a progressive district attorney had no significant effect on the rate of serious crimes. A modicum of mercy, it turned out, did not lead to lawlessness.

City governments “can provide as much, if not more, safety as police, without the unavoidable toxicity that comes with force” when they work with residents and local organizations to strengthen the social fabric of neighborhoods,

ut, more important, police presence can deter crime without increasing arrests overall.

Last year, for instance, researchers looked at more than 67,000 misdemeanor cases in Suffolk County, Mass., which includes Boston, and found that people arrested but not charged for offenses like drug possession and shoplifting were less than half as likely as those who were prosecuted to be arrested again two years later for a new crime.

Mohsin Hamid

ALF A CENTURY LATER Nadia returned for the first time to the city of herbirth, where the fires she had witnessed in her youth had burnedthemselves out long ago, the lives of cities being far more persistent andmore gently cyclical than those of people, and the city she found herself inwas not a heaven but it was not a hell, and it was familiar but alsounfamiliar, and as she wandered about slowly, exploring, she was informedof the proximity of Saeed, and after standing motionless for a considerablemoment she communicated with him, and they agreed to meet

She felt she was beginning to belong, and when one told her about theoption of living at the cooperative, and that she could avail herself of it ifher family was oppressing her, or, another added quickly, even if she just

threshold of the shanty

LL OVER THE WORLD people were slipping away from where they hadbeen, from once fertile plains cracking with dryness, from seasidevillages gasping beneath tidal surges, from overcrowded cities andmurderous battlefields, and slipping away from other people too, peoplethey had in some cases loved, as Nadia was slipping away from Saeed, andSaeed from Nadia

We are all migrants through time

people who looked more at home than she was, even the homeless oneswho spoke no English, more at home maybe because they were younger,and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, thateveryone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives,because we can’t help it.

hen he prayed he touchedhis parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feelingthat we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man andwoman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who comeafter us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every humanbeing, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow,

homeland

nd yet it was not quite true to say there were almost no natives,nativeness being a relative matter, and many others considered themselvesnative to this country, by which they meant that they or their parents or theirgrandparents or the grandparents of their grandparents had been born on thestrip of land that stretched from the mid-northern-Pacific to the mid-northern-Atlantic, that their existence here did not owe anything to aphysical migration that had occurred in their lifetime

She fell in behind her parents, who nodded at Saeed in recognition, andhe turned and led them all from that place, a place that was alreadybeginning to be theirs, to another where going forward they could reliablyfind a meal

Nadia wanted to say more to Saeed than that, but just then her throat feltraw, almost painful, and what else she would have liked to say was unableto find a way through to her tongue and her lips.Saeed also had things on his mind. He knew he could have spoken toNadia now. He knew he should have spoken to Nadia now, for they hadtime and were together and were not distracted. But he likewise could notbring himself to speak.