The idea of racial mixing fear grew from classical decline narratives

Evidence

Undoubtedly the most important reason for the trend lay in the pride of ancestry stimulated by the chaotic social climbing of the Gilded Age. At a time when parvenus were managing practical affairs and clamoring for admission to the choicest circles, there was compensation and a measure of status in associating one’s personal lineage with the original fount of national greatness. Thus Anglo-Saxonism became a kind of patrician nationalism. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 195 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Racial mixing is framed as a realistic threat to group survival — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1048; Reformers weaponized racial-extinction fear by analogizing to lineage-extinction anxieties — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3314; Segregation drew on degenerationist fear and racial historicist separation as twin fuels (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial ideology grew from status anxiety, not empirical perception of threat #complicates (0.72) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 195