Nast and the Chinese Problem

     In the comic "Every Dog (No Distinction of Color) Has His Day," Thomas Nast shows John Chinaman and an American Indian reviewing the bulletin board.  The posters show Indians being forced to go West by the trains and the Chinese chasing the trains heading East.  Besides the large poster there are several smaller posters with racial tension beginning at the very bottom, and moving upward, revealing the bigotry over the ages.

     The lowest poster is a Know-nothings poster for Protestants against Catholics Immigrants, specifically the Irish and Dutch during the 1850's.    This is followed by what appears to be German anti-Semitism, and then the large "Chinese Problem" which was a major discussion point in 1879, leading up to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.1  Above this are the small Klu Klux Klan Poster and "The Chinese Must Go" from Dennis Kearney and the Workingman's Party.  The lower caption reads, Red Gentleman to Yellow Gentleman. "Pale face 'fraid you crowd him out, as he did me."  And the far left has what appears to be an African American whose bubble reads "My Day is coming."

      Nast, who created this work in 1879, was relating the removal of American Indians to the pending Chinese Exclusion Act.  Nast also jabs at Dennis Kearney who he refers to as a "Real American," but was actually born in Ireland, and was once subject to similar persecution in America.  Nast's cartoon identifies the ever changing anti-Semitism in early America which began with the American Indians, followed by the Catholics, German, Chinese, and soon Africans.

1.   Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford, 1992), 20.

2.   William Wei, The Chinese-American Experience: An Introduction, http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/1Introduction/BillWeiIntro.htm, February 14, 2012.