How did East Asians become yellow?
Journal
Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics
Pages
204-208
Date Issued
2018
Author(s)
Abstract
This chapter offers a brief historical intervention explaining the rise of the term yellow for racial thinking about Asians. Using his binomial nomenclature species-naming system, the Swedish taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus separated Homo sapiens into four continental types, with distinct colors assigned to each. Over two decades later the German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach also classified Asians as yellow in his five-race scheme. Although some early twentieth-century anthropologists claimed to have proven that Mongolians (Asians) were physically yellow in an attempt to place Asians lower than Europeans, the initial categorization of yellow had no visual or biological basis. As Asians continued to refuse to take part in Western systems (Christianity, international trade), Europeans’ perceptions of Asians’ skin color darkened. Moreover in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the yellow idea began to spread to East Asian cultures themselves.
Type
book part