The Eurasian in Shanghai

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, Social Science on 2010-11-27 20:19Z by Steven

The Eurasian in Shanghai

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 41, Number 5 (March, 1936)
pages 642-648

Herbert Day Lamson

Although hybrid offspring tend to form an intermediary group of cultural contact between the native and the alien in societies where they are found, the Eurasian in Shanghai finds himself discriminated against by both parent-stocks. Since his father is often a poorly paid transient and his mother frequently is from the servant class, his biological inheritance is low grade and his opportunities for educational and social advantages few. The cultural blending of the white and the yellow races that has gone forward has not come through the Eurasian, but through the large number of the upper strata of natives who have visited and studied in foreign lands and have brought back varying degrees of that culture.

The Eurasian in Shanghai occupies an intermediate position biologically, and somewhat socially in so far as he is the subject of social discrimination at the hands of both alien and native groups. Over the mixed blood hovers the traditional stigma of illegitimacy. The ostracism is not absolute, there are no lynchings and no laws against mixture, but, granted this prejudice on the part of the two parent-groups, the hybrid offspring differ outstandingly. Not that they are biologic freaks, but the fact of being “half-caste” gives thejn a position in the social structure which interferes with their mobility and social contacts even in a so-called cosmopolitan society. For this reason this intermixture has important sociological consequences.

Each of the ethnic groups, the native and the alien in Shanghai, has tended to remain socially somewhat isolated from the other, though individuals have, through legal or illegal mating, produced a group of hybrid offspring of varying nationalities. This has come about chiefly through the taking of native women by alien men. The resulting mixed bloods have been subjected to estrangement and isolation. The British brought with them from India their prejudice against the half-caste, and the alien population has been strongly influenced by this point of view. On the whole, the Chinese disapprove of miscegenation and discriminate against the hybrid, especially if the latter has hybrid-racial visibility and follows the alien in belittling the native. This is one reason why the Eurasian…

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