ABSTRACT

Early in history slave traders rounded up African villagers and transported them to the New World in chains. En route, many died; those who survived were sold and forced to work in the fields and houses of a colonial nation bent on economic development and expansion. When the colonists arrived in Virginia and Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, they brought with them images of the Indian created in England and Europe. Early explorers described native peoples of the new world as innocent, ingenuous, friendly, and naked. At first, relations between the two groups were cordial. With Asian-Americans, we find the same pattern: The dominant depiction in popular culture is negative and the stereotype shifts to accommodate society's changing needs. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Chinese were welcomed to the United States for their labor: They were needed to operate mines, build railroads, and carry out other physical tasks necessary to the country's development.