Yellow Peril (sometimes Yellow Terror) was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with Chinese immigrants as coolie slaves or laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid-20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.
The term refers to the skin color of East Asians, and the belief that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of living.
Read more about Yellow Peril: Origins, New Zealand, South Africa, American National Origins Formula, Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words yellow and/or peril:
“The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year’s seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
““Because a few complacent years
Have made your peril of your pride,
Think you that you are to go on
Forever pampered and untired?”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)