American nativism racialized over time rather than starting as racism
Evidence
In denying that nativism was necessarily racist, I was laying the basis for a further set of distinctions, that is, between varieties of nativism. The interplay between three strands of nativism formed the overall design of the project, and its special feature was the story of how nativism became racialized and thus tremendously intensified. The older of the two additional strands, anti-Catholicism, was rooted in the wars of the Reformation. In Protestant countries it inspired fears that priests and their mentally enslaved followers were conspiring to subvert republican institutions. The third strand was anti-radical nativism, which identified immigrants as shock troops of class warfare, European style. All three nativisms remained very much alive throughout the period I was studying, but the racist strand came more and more to the fore. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2003
Categorization
- XREF: Directly supports the reader’s core thesis: anti-Catholic, anti-radical, and racial nativism as three coexisting strands with racialization intensifying — evidence that race is one passing stage of a manufactured-enemy dynamic, not a primordial fixed form. — connects to: Nativism’s core charges repeat for centuries and shift only toward racism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 757; Anti-European nativism recycled emotions first aimed at nonwhite groups — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 763; Racial nativism began as a defensive swing requiring no new intellectual input — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 804 (+8 more)
- ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’: anti-Catholic nativism rooted in Reformation wars parallels how moral panics target a church labeled as mentally enslaved by priests.
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that nativism became racialized and thus ‘tremendously intensified’ — and that nativism could still espouse assimilation while racism could not — carries dense theoretical weight for the group-solidarity-through-enemy question.
Broader Connections
- Nativism abandoned ideological conversion for permanent racial exclusion once radical threat dissolved
#corroborates(0.90) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1580