Imperial racist ideas re-imported into the US conditioned immigrant minds

Evidence

In this new American Empire, American racist ideas went through what seemed very much like a revolving door, constantly going out into the colonizing world and then coming back into the country after conditioning the immigrant minds of the people arriving in the United States in the early 1900s. When Irish, Jewish, Italian, Asian, Chicana/o, and Latina/o people in America were called anti-Black racial epithets like “greasers” or “guineas” or “White niggers,” some resisted and joined in solidarity with Black people. But most probably consumed the racist ideas, distancing themselves from Black people. Blacks in the early twentieth century would joke that the first English word immigrants learned was “nigger.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 752

Categorization

• XREF: Circulates racist ideas globally and shows their self-reinforcing function — connects to Kendi’s claim that racist ideas do the work of justifying and reproducing hierarchy rather than causing it. — connects to: A new nationalism rechanneled existing race feelings onto immigrant targets — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1012; European immigrants’ racial difference had to be intellectually manufactured — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 768; Pre-Civil War channels pre-shaped later American xenophobia — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 72
• SHARE: The joke that immigrants’ first English word was ‘nigger’ is a sharp, specific anecdote for someone interested in how racism gets absorbed by newcomers.