Stereotypes of China and India
WALKER, RICHARD L.
WRITERS and WRITING Stereotypes of China and India Scratches on Our Minds. Reviewed by Richard L. Walker By Harold R. Isaacs. Professor of international relations, John Day. 416 pp....
...Isaacs stresses that "American-Indian encounters are rarely casual...
...He shows how very much of our thinking about China and India has been in terms of stereotypes...
...By following up impressionistic statements and descriptions first elicited from his subjects with some such questions as, "Where did you get that idea...
...University of South...
...6.75...
...In a series of intensive interviews over a period of 14 months, he probed the experiential and intellectual backgrounds of his subjects to find the sources of their impressions and attitudes on these two countries...
...There are many conclusions to be drawn from this book...
...Also worth close attention is Isaacs's discussion of our treatment of the Chinese-Americans in the United States and his analysis of the American missionary effort in China and India and its relation to the popular images...
...Isaacs feels that many of our mental images are in form of oppo-sites (such as the good Charlie Chan image of the Chinese vs...
...Harold Isaacs, a competent journalist and an extremely lucid and entertaining writer, has undertaken to sort out some of the background images in the minds of 181 leaders of action and opinion on the American scene with regard to China and India...
...Isaacs's own...
...Isaacs seems to assume that the really important sources for the images he evokes from his subjects are ones which can be consciously recalled, and as a result he may have underplayed items equally important in scratching the minds: pictures and illustrations, platform speakers and radio programs, and periodical literature— none specifically remembered...
...The results are presented not in terms of tabulations of dry statistics but as a highly readable survey which enables Mr...
...Such comments should not obscure the fact that Isaacs has written a timely and important book, but they should alert the reader to the fact that it is—especially in its political interpretation—preponderantly Isaacs and not interviews...
...3) the interrelations and interactions of Americans with Chinese and Indians over more than a century...
...He talks of the Indians, for example, in terms which would lead his reader to think of a people who are really united and share overwhelmingly common national traits instead of being, as they are, a people divided by great racial and geographic barriers and speaking more than 200 different languages...
...he has attempted to pin down what have been some of the key sources for American attitudes...
...Nor has Isaacs himself escaped the type of image-thinking he exposes...
...What are some of these images in our minds when we talk about peoples in Asia...
...Isaacs to utilize his long experience as a reporter in Asia and his familiarity with the literature dealing with it...
...This latter item will not find a friendly reception among great numbers of Americans who can trace some sort of intimate connection with the missionaries in China and India, but Isaacs's presentation for the most part rings true...
...or even the mystique which Isaacs himself helped build around the phrase "the Chinese Revolution"—are not tracked down...
...This is especially true regarding India, where American experience has been more limited...
...The obvious one is, of course, that we are abysmally ill-informed about China and India...
...Carolina We have frequently flattered ourselves in recent years that we have passed beyond the stage which considers the residents of Asia as "inscrutable Orientals...
...and they do not necessarily become valid because they are thrown together with the results of the interviews...
...Many will also question the assertion that the Confucian code of manners held that "most human contact is superficial and should be kept that way," as well as Isaacs's feelings about "the oddly artificial relations between Washington and Formosa...
...the bad Fu Manchu image), and that either one of these can be called up in the popular mind depending on the circumstances...
...The book is loaded with fascinating snatches of information and stimulating insights...
...Again, some serious reservations should be recorded with regard to the interviewing itself...
...The fact that the Indian speaks English frequently intensifies hostility, for "the sharing of a tongue makes it easier for differences and difficulties to make themselves felt...
...Indeed, one of the difficulties of the volume is separating Isaacs from interview, for there are many places where Isaacs is open to question...
...Very important images and myths—such as "agrarian reformers," "Maoism...
...Strong emotions get involved...
...and (4) intellectual currents which have played a role in those relations...
...to be sure, days when the sampling and interview technique is a major vogue in academic circles, and it has been used with great skill in this book...
...It will come as a shock to many to find out that some of the fondest notions about themselves and their relations with Chinese and Indians are based upon the "illusion of superiority...
...Isaacs's work will prove thought-provoking and challenging even to the old hands and the presumably detached academic specialists...
...But then, it may be wondered whether a similar study directed toward the scratches which France and Russia—or any country or section of the United States, for that matter— have left on the American mind would not result in uncovering similar ignorance expressed by strange caricatures and vagueness...
...In tracing and analyzing them, Isaacs brings out many intellectual exchanges of interest and importance...
...His analyses of the flip-flops in American attitudes toward the Chinese over the period of our relations with them and in our reactions to and images of Gandhi and Nehru are especially acute...
...Why do many Americans dislike the Indians and yet have warm feelings toward the Chinese...
...Further, with regard to politics and the political interpretation of events, Isaacs apparently prefers to rely on his own view rather than to probe for sources during the interviews...
...We get confirming evidence, for example, of the impact which Pearl Buck's The Good Earth had on the American mind, both as book and as movie...
...For example, the reader learns how Chinese and Indian philosophy stimulated Emerson and Thoreau and that Gandhi in turn read and was influenced by Thoreau in his South African days...
...Isaacs's thesis that we tend to think and analyze in terms of a whole series of images and types which are too frequently grotesque and inaccurate has been eloquently argued before by Herrymon Maurer and others, but he has buttressed his argument with interviews of almost two hundred American leaders...
...for example, his assertion that the early pro-Chiang partisans in America came almost exclusively from among the missionaries "together with a few maverick American journalists...
...Yet, a close examination of some of the images which cross our minds when we discuss "the Chinese" or "the Indians" reveals that in many respects we are probably no better informed today than we were half a century ago...
...But this should not obscure the fact that much of the book and many of the ideas are Mr...
...These are...
...Where do our images, ideas and impressions come from...
...Some of our images are not very flattering either to their subjects or to ourselves...
...The survey covers: (1) official American relations with China and India...
...2) the hooks, movies and personalities that have made the greatest conscious impact on the American scene...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 23
