Ace Preston returns to South Korea with Bok Chul Kang | Photo 02

"The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency—of utter worthlessness. The Chinese is the perfect type of industry"; "The Chinese is no coward"; "[The Japanese] would not of himself constitute a Brown Peril …. The menace to the Western world lies, not in the little brown man; but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management."
Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea and land, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done, there is a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a melancholy responsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel, which is ours, indubitably ours …"our own great race adventure" has an ethical dimension, it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies.

Jack London's 1904 essay "The Yellow Peril"