Anticipated racial hierarchy shaped Chinese students’ experiences overseas before any encounter

Evidence

Racial classifications between different population groups were so important that they often preceded and shaped real social encounters. The poet Wen Yiduo, for instance, sailed for the United States in 1922, but even on board his courage ebbed away as he felt increasingly apprehensive of racial discrimination in the West. In America he felt lonely and homesick: he described himself as the “exiled prisoner.” … His resentment against “the West” culminated in a poem entitled “I am Chinese”: … I am Chinese, I am Chinese, I am the divine blood of the Yellow Emperor, I came from the highest place in the world, Pamir is my ancestral place, My race is like the Yellow River, We flow down the Kunlun mountain slope, We flow across the Asian continent, From us have flown exquisite customs. Mighty nation! Mighty nation! — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3335

Categorization

• SEED: A vivid angle: racial classification preceding actual social contact as a general mechanism — how anticipated discrimination frames immigrant experience before arrival, applicable to any diaspora.