Summary Of The Mississippi Delta Mississippi

As a result, the Chinese “served as middlemen in [the] segregated society and developed characteristics that differentiated themselves even from Chinese/Asian communities in coastal regions” (Kung and Hahn, The Mississippi Delta Chinese: An Audiovisual Narrative). Quon said that “the whites were empowered, the blacks, definitely out of power, and then the Chinese were kind of in the middle. We knew it was not right, but what could we do” (Kung and Hahn)? Raymond Wong had said, “We were-in-between, right in between the blacks and the whites. We’re not black, we’re not white so that by itself gives you some isolation” (Block, “The Legacy Of The Mississippi Delta Chinese”). It was clear the Chinese did not fit into either black or white communities. The Delta Mississippi had always been a predominately biracial society. Most people think the Mississippi is black and white and are usually thrown off by a Chinese face with a Southern accent. It would have been easier for whites and blacks to classify the Chinese if they had also been laborers in the cotton field, but as mentioned earlier, the Chinese were quick to take advantage of an opportunity that would redefine their social standing in the Delta society and establish “their presence as businessmen in small grocery stores” (Jung, 17). The location of the grocery store and its customers dictated how people viewed the Chinese owner.
When the customers were mostly white, the Chinese owners were viewed as “Inscrutable Orientals with wisdom Caucasians lacked,” but when most of the customers were black, the Chinese owners were viewed “with