Scratches on Our Minds Revisited: Chinese Influences on the Shaping of American Images

Abstract

Nearly half a century ago, the pioneering MIT social scientist Harold Isaacs, using a research design methodology, explored seriously for the first time the subject of American images of Asia and Asians, primarily of China and the Chinese. Isaacs's study, published under the provocative title Scratches on Our Minds, caused a generation of scholars to think conceptually about what had been up to that time a collection of stereotypical and highly subjective treatments of China and the Chinese developed for Americans primarily by journalists, missionaries, and trade representatives.