And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World Series win...

[George Thompson]

>
> I got that but I thought that the notion that the Chinese were opium
> dealers was the strangest of the stereotypes, because I presume that
> most Americans in the early 20th century heard of the Opium Wars.
>
Americans of 2010 might be presumed to know a lot of stuff that in fact most of us don't, and and doubtless the situation in 1910 wasn't much better.  How it can have been worse is a question, of course.

In any event, at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, tour guides, Chuck Conners being the best publicized among them, used to lead guided tours of Chinatown, always featuring a visit to a genuine opium den, where there was always to be seen a genuine white woman so degraded by her habit that. . . .
Well, what can be said, it's too sad.  Though there were skeptics who questioned the genuineness of these shows.

Meanwhile, HDAS I has a number of entries for expressions beginning "Chinese . . . ", all of course derogatory, the earliest dating to 1898.  So by the end of the 19th C, "Chinese" had joined "Dutch", "French" &c as a term of disparagement.

Meanwhile, the term for these guides to Chinatown was "lobbygow".  HDAS II has this only from 1930, used historically.  A quick check of Proquest Times & Tribune shows a nice item from 1925: PASSING OF THE LOBBYGOW, New York Times, April 26, 1925, the Magazine Section, p. 23.
Later on I will try checking the papers in the American Memory file, to see whether there is anything from Conners lifetime.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

We have seen the best of our times, and they were a long time ago, and not so very good, at that.

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010 9:32 am
Subject: Re: And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World Series win...
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> I got that but I thought that the notion that the Chinese were opium
> dealers was the strangest of the stereotypes, because I presume that
> most Americans in the early 20th century heard of the Opium Wars.
>
> Paul
>
> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I said stereotype.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu>wrot=
> > e:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender: ?? ?? ?? American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster: ?? ?? ?? Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> >> Subject: ?? ?? ??Re: And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World
> Series
> >> win...
> >>
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> > ------
> >>
> >> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> >> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > The popular American stereotype of the Chinese in the early 20th
> C. was
> >> not
> >> > that they were "cheap," but that they were inscrutable, violent,
> probab=
> > ly
> >> > unassimilable, often sinister, users and purveyors of opium,
> eaters of
> >> dogs,
> >> > cats, and rats, atheistic, extremely prolific, and occasionally possess=
> > ed
> >> of
> >> > odd but profound wisdom unattainable by anybody else. =C2 (Thus
> Earl D.
> >> > Biggers' Charlie Chan, inspired by a real detective, was a giant
> step
> >> > forward in ethnic understanding.)
> >>
> >> Purveyors of opium? The Chinese fought, and lost, two wars to try to
> >> stop British opium trafficking.
> >>
> >> Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org