Reformers weaponized racial-extinction fear by analogizing to lineage-extinction anxieties

Evidence

The threat of racial extinction (miezhong), a powerful message of fear based on more popular anxieties about lineage extinction (miezu), was often raised to bolster the reformers’ message of change in the face of imperialist aggressions: “They will enslave us and hinder the development of our spirit and body… The brown and black races constantly waver between life and death, why not the 400 million of yellows?” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3314

Categorization

• XREF: Plausibly connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ themes and to the rhetoric of civilizational decline in any nationalism. — connects to: Darwinism converted racial pride into defensive anxiety about survival — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 785; Fear of humanity’s own extinction drove the Endangered Species Act’s stringency — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 314