Nativism’s ideological enemies got remade as biologically fixed racial ones

Evidence

This is not to say that foreigners no longer seemed a national menace after the early months of 1920. The sense of danger was still vivid; the 100 per center’s thirst for conformity remained unslaked. But his conception of the foreign peril changed so profoundly that Americanization became wholly irrelevant to 1t. From fear of a radical danger, nationalists reverted in 1920 and thereafter to a racial bias. Radicalism, and the hyphenism that preceded it, had been ideological infections; presumably one might set up ideological defenses against them. But the racial danger was in the blood. Why try to educate men inherently incapable of receiving American ideals? Why try to change people who are biologically unchangeable? — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1580

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the reader’s hypothesis that the manufactured ‘enemy’ category passes from ideological to racial form — racialization as a transitional hardening, not fixed endpoint. — connects to: Nativism’s core charges repeat for centuries and shift only toward racism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 757; Racial nativism grew only when it fixed on an identifiable new immigrant type — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 832; Nativism abandoned ideological conversion for permanent racial exclusion once radical threat dissolved — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1580 (+10 more)
• QUESTION: The key theoretical question for the reader: if the radical/ideological enemy was defeated, was racialization a retreat to a more ‘primordial’ ground, or itself another constructed category that could also shift?

Broader Connections

• Nativism abandoned ideological conversion for permanent racial exclusion once radical threat dissolved #corroborates (0.95) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1580
• Anti-Catholic and anti-radical nativism defined enemies first while racial nativism defined the in-group first #expands (0.90) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 55
• American nativism racialized over time rather than starting as racism #expands (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2003
• Failed official coercion pushed nativism back toward racial and religious targets #corroborates (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1807
• Biological racism was replaced by a coded cultural new racism #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1871
• Racist policy drives successive new biological theories to justify it #expands (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1178
• Liberalism is organically embedded in the racialized nature-value hierarchy #expands (0.72)
• Classical biological racism has given way to multiple historically specific racisms #complicates (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1875
• German racial-biological nationalism emerged as a substitute for failed political nationhood #exemplifies (0.70) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 446