Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act

Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. By Andrew Gyory. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. xiv, 354 pp. Cloth, $49.95, issN 08078-2432-1. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-80784739-9.)

In Closing the Gate, Andrew Gyory burdens the Chinese Exclusion Act with unusual significance. "The foremost racist law passed after the Civil War, . . . it was an effortless segue to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and the institutionalization of racism in the Twentieth Century." What made the act more appalling, according to Gyory, is that it was born of political opportunism, not racism. Traditional causes-western political pressure, general racism, and the advocacy of eastern laborwere of less consequence than political manipulation to capture the presidency.

Disagreeing with Alexander Saxton's The Indispensable Enemy ( 1971 ), Gyory argues that labor was not racist with regard to the Chinese, rather that...