Until the coming of the Chinese, no immigrant group differed sufficiently from the European American root stock to compromise basic social institutions such as the Christian church, religious ethics, monogamy, or the natural rights theory and the belief in material progress.  The Chinese were a threat to the melting pot view of immigration. Traders who went to China before 1840 depicted the Chinese as ridiculously clad, superstitious, dishonest, crafty, and cruel.  They saw them as men who lacked courage, intelligence, and skill and as men who were willing to live under despotic rulers. Diplomats who went to China between 1785-1840 were critical of the vice, corruption, and oppression they observed.  Although they expressed respect for their religious tolerance and general religious indifference, they still viewed them as totally depraved.  Wives of missionaries who traveled into the interior wrote articles to ladies magazines that dwelt on the horrors of opium, polygamy, infanticide and filth.

Early Chinese social and political development was seen as the result of "alien germs" which were transmitted from generation to generation as an "educational heirloom" not the product of an "inherent proclivity".  As a "naturally non-progressive race" the Chinese would soon exhaust these gifts.  The idea was advanced that social characteristics were as fundamental and immutable as physical characteristics and it was unreasonable to expect the Chinese to adjust to American institutions.  Acculturation was seen as taking place in favor of the longest established traits not the superior ones.  Thus Chinese culture would become dominant and this would not be in the best interest of the US.  The view of Chinese immigration to California and the west was seen as having a negative impact on the communities there. It was felt that these areas would degenerate as a result.  Some writers of the period were optimistic that as a superior race Americans had nothing to fear.  Others felt that it was foolish not to exploit the cheap labor before shipping them back.  Chinese cultural and biological dissimilarity meant that it was undesirable for them to remain in the US on a permanent basis.  Many debaters favored exclusion only because they felt the Chinese were unassimilable.

Debates about the relationship of culture and biology in the United States were fundamental to the issues of slavery and immigration.  As a result of Darwin’s publications, the role of religion and biology in defining human beings was of great importance to the establishment of democracy in the United States.  If "all men are created equal" then how do we manage people who are dissimilar in culture and biology?  The development of "scientific racism" was a way of reassuring the Euro-American of his place not only in American society but also in the eyes of god.  The easiest way to justify exclusion is through incompatibility and the belief that this was biological obviated any social responsibility for the treatment of Blacks, Native Americans and Asians.

Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, p. 154-159.
 

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