In this paper I examine P. T. Barnum's attempt to bring the first “sacred white elephant” to America, and his subsequent “white elephant war” with rival showman Adam Forepaugh, through the lens of Afro-Asian comparative racialization. I look at several accounts of white elephants that describe their skin color in terms of the US's Black/white race dichotomy and ask why this animal was a popular figure for examining the US's shifting attitude toward race and transpacific imperialism in the late nineteenth century. By reading the “white elephant war” through a comparative framework, I argue that the heterogeneous histories of both African American and Asian racialization inhered and intersected in this specific instance of racial comparison, while tracking the overlaps and oversights that this analysis reveals.

中文翻译：

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白色欺诈：白象、暹罗和比较种族化

在本文中，我通过非裔和亚裔比较种族化的视角，研究了 PT Barnum 将第一只“神圣的白象”引入美国的尝试，以及他随后与对手表演者 Adam Forepaugh 的“白象战争”。我看了一些关于白象的描述，这些描述根据美国的黑人/白人种族二分法来描述它们的肤色，并询问为什么这种动物成为研究 19 世纪末美国对种族和跨太平洋帝国主义态度转变的流行人物。通过比较框架来解读“白象战争”，我认为非裔美国人和亚洲人的种族化的异质历史在这个特定的种族比较实例中继承和交叉，同时追踪这一分析揭示的重叠和疏忽。