" At the state’s constitutional convention of 1878, John F. Miller warned: “Were the Chinese to amalgamate at all with our people, it would be the lowest, most vile and degraded of our race, and the result of that amalgamation would be a hybrid of the most despicable, a mongrel of the most detestable that has ever afflicted the earth.” Two years later, California lawmakers enacted legislation to prohibit the issuance of a license authorizing the marriage of a white person with a “negro, mulatto, or Mongolian. "

― Ronald Takaki , Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans