National confidence and optimism suppressed racial fear of European immigrants

Evidence

The easy juggling of race concepts, which kept parochial and cosmopolitan ideas revolving in a single orbit, depended partly on the whole structure of national confidence and partly on the continuing vagueness of the race-idea. Whatever palpitations one might feel about a foreigner’s political or religious loyalties, the notion that European immigrants might endanger the great inborn spirit of the nation strained credibility. The age was too optimistic to entertain such a fear, and the immigrants’ own lineage seemed too closely connected with the great Gothic family to inspire alarm. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 201

Categorization

• XREF: Core evidence that threat-belief intensity tracks confidence/optimism, not fixed ethnic categories — directly serves reader’s question of what regenerates or decays manufactured enemies. — connects to: Racial nativism matured only when public confidence recovered — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 762; Racial ideology can be confident and tolerant when no threat feeds it — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 640

Broader Connections

• Racial ideology can be confident and tolerant when no threat feeds it #corroborates (0.80) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 640