Confidence in ordinary people’s capacity tended to counteract nativism before 1910

Evidence

Buoyed by their own self-assurance, progressives were often attracted to the equalitarian idealism that Ross and Commons thought unrealistic. Compared with previous middleclass reformers, progressives drew from the hopeful atmosphere of the early twentieth century a larger confidence in the capacity of ordinary people to set things aright if given the means to do so. … The Avena, a liberal journal which had quaked at the foreign peril in earlier years, now accused nativists of blaming immigrants for the failures of America’s own economic institutions. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 682

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the ‘professed conviction vs. measured bias’ thread — here egalitarian conviction did restrain nativism, a case against the ‘conviction never predicts’ suspicion. — connects to: Contact with foreigners plus environmental explanation of poverty dissolved nativist belief — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 700; Racial nativism matured only when public confidence recovered — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 762; Institutional confidence loss, not ethnic competition, drives nativism to the national agenda (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial nativism matured only when public confidence recovered #corroborates (0.90) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 762
• Institutional confidence loss, not ethnic competition, drives nativism to the national agenda #contradicts (0.85)
• Prosperity reversed anti-immigrant sentiment fastest where nativism was newest #complicates (0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 631
• Ordinary people readily attribute mental states to groups despite long-standing scholarly rejection #exemplifies (0.75)
• Persistent ethnocentric judgments provide the subsoil in which nativism later grows #qualifies (0.70) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 149
• Ingroup identity salience is historically contingent, not psychologically fixed #expands (0.70) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2191
• Confidence and trust are not zero-sum but mutually required by complex societies #responds-to (0.70)
• Nativism is a distinct phenomenon, a defensive nationalism of perceived national crisis #expands (0.70) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 971