Anti-immigrant hostility in the 1880s targeted culture, not subversiveness or unassimilability

Evidence

Except perhaps where they were caught up in domestic tensions such as those in the Pennsylvania coal fields, the southern and eastern Kuropeans did not as yet seem a distinctive threat to national unity or survival. Thus the criticism of the Italians and of the Jews—the groups which fared worst in most places—fastened on stereotyped traits, not on imputations of subversive activity or total unassimuilability. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 391

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s research question about the stages of enemy-construction: here dislike precedes the security threat narrative, which attaches later. Pairs with Tocqueville-adjacent material on the sequencing of prejudice. — connects to: Anti-Jewish feeling in nineteenth-century America was status competition, not ideology — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 2019; Deindustrialization shifted the immigrant image from temporary worker to permanent cultural outsider — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3152; 1880s nativism attacked immigrants indiscriminately, not by ethnic type yet. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 383 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Jewish feeling in nineteenth-century America was status competition, not ideology #corroborates (0.82) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2019
• Deindustrialization shifted the immigrant image from temporary worker to permanent cultural outsider #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3152