Mass immigration from 1830 to 1930 triggered nativist white backlash

Evidence

Before the mid-nineteenth century, when the Catholic population was negligible, anti-Catholicism was driven by ideology rather than demographic realities. After three million Catholics from Ireland and Germany immigrated to the United States between 1846 and 1855, Protestant nativism surged. The additional four million Catholic Italians and two million Poles who immigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920 bolstered the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 287 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

That the arrival of the new immigrants in large numbers would generate instant dislike was, therefore, only to be expected. But the initial hostility they suffered consisted almost wholly of the conventional reaction against their culture and appearance. 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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 567; Racial nativists reframed discrimination as equal justice to justify the 1890 census base — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1926; Early 1900s nativism ranked white immigrant groups into inferior castes. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 232 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Catholic nativism peaked after mass Catholic immigration, not before it #corroborates (0.97) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 287
• Early hostility to new immigrants was cultural contempt, not nativism #complicates (0.88) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 391
• Anti-immigrant hostility in the 1880s targeted culture, not subversiveness or unassimilability #complicates (0.82) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 391