Southern congressmen framed southern European immigrants as racially impure
Evidence
Neither Gompers nor Lodge realized that another section was taking their cause just as much or more to heart. The South as well as the Far West was stirring with nativist ferment. In fact, two southerners seized the initiative in Congress. An Alabaman, Oscar W. Underwood, was the first to raise the immigration question when the legislators convened in December 1905. Breaking irrelevantly into another debate, Underwood instructed the House on the pure whiteness of the old immigration in contrast to the mixture of Asiatic and African blood coursing in the veins of southern Europeans. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 984
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Confirms for the reader the racialization of the ‘enemy’ category (white-Anglo vs. ‘mixed Asiatic/African blood’ southern Europeans) occurring within the nativist frame rather than replacing it.
- XREF: connects to: Southern congressmen racialized southern Europeans by analogy to miscegenation with Blacks. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 2304; Southern European immigrants were lynched for being racialized as Black — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 392; Southern and eastern European immigrants were racialized before entering whiteness after WWII — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 227 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Southern congressmen racialized southern Europeans by analogy to miscegenation with Blacks.
#corroborates(0.95) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 2304 - European immigrants were racially stratified despite sharing legal Whiteness
#corroborates(0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 386 - Southern and eastern European immigrants were racialized before entering whiteness after WWII
#corroborates(0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 227 - Southern and western race-feelings diffused nationwide to shape immigration views
#expands(0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1033 - Italians in the American South were raced toward Blackness and lynched
#expands(0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 392 - Southern European immigrants were lynched for being racialized as Black
#expands(0.72) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 392 - Southern and Eastern Europeans were once branded unassimilable in the USA
#corroborates(0.72) - European immigrants’ racial difference had to be intellectually manufactured
#expands(0.72) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 768 - Early-1900s American intellectuals classified Southern and Eastern European immigrants as racially inferior
#corroborates(0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 239 - Italian immigrants faced Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws
#expands(0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 393 - European immigrants earned whiteness by adopting anti-nonwhite antagonism
#expands(0.70)