Social insults were more overt. As the underclass being ridiculed shifted, the racist lampoons and blackface burlesques sometimes gave way to other conflations, such as the stage Irishman Paddy, drunken and belligerent, a cruel caricature often in blackface himself. Political nativism and xenophobia encouraged similar mean-spirited responses to perceived threats of the time. After 1848, when the first substantial influx of Chinese immigrants began seeking their fortunes in the California Gold Rush, "Chink" characters joined the minstrel walkaround. Hokum enjoyed the license to be outrageous, since the clowning was purportedly "all in fun".