American Racism

ANT 440B
Fall 2001

America is a child. Compared to the thousands of years of history to which, for example, Egypt, Greece, or Italy lay claim, America’s short four hundred years seems hardly enough time to establish a culture, an identity, a history. However, America does, without a doubt, have an identity and a history, and a rich one at that. A part of this is the fact that America is a diverse nation. Immigrants have been coming to this New World since the 1600s. However, sentiments towards foreigners and peoples of different race have not always been friendly. In fact, America’s history holds a wealth of information about the attitudes towards the non-English, non Anglo-Saxon peoples. The time period of most interest in this regard is that from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War I. Within this timeframe a number of trends are clearly evident in social, scientific, and economic attitudes towards race, which will be discussed in further detail.

In order to comprehend these trends, it is important to first look at the concept of race that dominated this period of American cultural history. A “race,” according to the widely held 19th century belief, was a people who shared some common heritage (Paul 106). This common heritage could be skin color, nationality, language, and/or cultural heritage. It wasn’t even necessary for those final three factors to be the same for separate ethnic groups to be considered a single race – just so long as there were historical similarities. This definition of race has allowed great room in American history for the mistreatment of and discrimination against certain peoples. Aside from this definition, the term “race” was also used in a broader sense: the Anglo-Saxon “race,” or the human “race” (Paul 106). It will become clear later on just how important this concept of the Anglo-Saxon “race” was to American history. For now, however, it is enough to keep in mind that what 19th century people called “race” is what today’s people call “ethnicity.”

Now that the 19th century concept of “race” has been clarified, it would be prudent to gain a brief overview of the history of American immigration, of which was the very basis of the race “problem” in America, before moving on to a detailed analysis of the particular decades in this time period. Immigration into the United States did not begin in the mid-1800s; it has been continuing since the very first ship of English settlers arrived. However, the number of immigrants for those two hundred years prior is miniscule when compared to the number of immigrants that entered the country in the years following the Civil War. After the Civil War, industrial advancements offered hope to many foreigners looking to leave the harsh conditions of their own countries. The bright ideals, growing economy, and wide-open spaces of the United States inspired many foreigners to immigrate and start a new life. Also, technological advancements in transportation allowed for faster and safer travel by ship. The result was an immigration wave that was the first, though not the largest, of many more such waves to come (Higham 15). During the 1880s the number of immigrants coming to the U.S. was at an all time high, and the number of foreigners who had already immigrated was astounding. However, despite the benefits that the arrival of these immigrants offered – such as an increase in population, cheap foreign labor, and a boost to the economy – distrust, anger, and fear of the immigrants soon took over the minds of the American people.

In the period after the Civil War, however, this fear of the foreign was not yet evident. The nation was occupied rebuilding itself and strengthening its damaged economy. Of course interest in racial differences had been in existence in the United States since around the 1830s, but the mid- to late-1860s was not as developmentally important in scientific attitudes towards race as were the decades to follow. American interest was turned inward, and the matter of immigration – and the benefits and/or disadvantages of immigration – was not yet in the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. Despite this fact, immigration was occurring: Europeans, Asians, and other foreigners were coming to the United States. In fact, during this time of industrial revolution, Chinese immigrants built a large portion of the railroads being constructed in the West. For the most part, there was no national interest in developing racial science. However, there remained a heightened sense of awareness when it came to those of a different race, a result brought about by the war (Shipman 109). Aversion was felt towards different groups. For example, the Chinese were seen as uncouth and un-Christian, and their culture was looked down upon. They were tolerated, though not treated well, because of the cheap labor they provided for the railroad companies; the railroads then provided immense benefits: connecting the country; faster travel; faster transportation of food and manufactured goods. Of course, the Chinese weren’t the only such examples; the Native American population had been considered “savages” since colonial times, and at one time slavery of African Americans was said to be condoned in the Bible.

Nevertheless, the years after the war saw a successful and prosperous Reconstruction, and on the heels of such national, economical, and technological success arrived the 1870s, a decade of complacency and confidence. The economy was still growing strong, as was the population. The influx of immigrants remained constant; in fact, immigration was heartily encouraged. America was portrayed as a wonderful savior for the destitute “huddled masses” (Higham 23). Its message of freedom and financial gain was a tempting one. The immigrants came to work in the mines and factories for extremely low wages, thus allowing these companies to make a greater profit. For the most part, this was seen as positive.

Alongside this seemingly positive attitude in the ‘70s, however, there developed stereotypes of the cultural groups entering the country; oftentimes they were unflattering stereotypes. For example, the Jews were seen as greedy, immoral, and untrustworthy (Higham 27). The Irish were seen as uneducated, unskilled, and undesirably Catholic by many Protestant Americans (Higham 26). In addition to these emerging racial (or ethnic) stereotypes, the 1870s saw an increasing interest in Darwin, especially in his theory of natural selection. In relation to this, there arose the belief that Anglo-Saxons were “God’s chosen people” and that the Anglo-Saxons had asserted, and would assert, “its Darwinian right to exist” (Higham 32). Of course this implied that other races and/or ethnicities were not “God’s chosen people” and were inferior.  According to Darwin’s theory, there are fit and unfit members of a species; the genetic traits contained by members of that species that are not suitable to a given environment will be weeded out through the process of natural selection. Faith in the ability of Americans to assimilate all of these newcomers was strong (Higham 20). There was no reason to believe otherwise. The Anglo-Saxons were the superior race – the fit. No matter what mixing occurred between races, the Anglo-Saxons traits were strong enough to dominate other traits. Actually, some believed that mixing races – interbreeding – was a good thing, and that the stronger Anglo-Saxon traits would overcome the undesirable traits, and complement the desirable traits, of other races, producing “superior…racial mixture” (Higham 21). Perhaps this theory was why immigration was still welcomed, instead of the negative stereotypes cultivated for other groups hampering the economic benefits of immigration.

As seen, the 1870s, though a time of confidence and progress for America, was clearly the beginning of racial thinking on a national level, and the 1880s saw even more development of that thinking. The ‘80s was perhaps the most pivotal decade in the history of racism in the United States; during this decade, the confidence of the ‘70s crumbled, the number of immigrants arriving each year grew even more, and foreigners were feared and blamed for social and economic problems. What was called the “crisis of the eighties” (Higham 68) began when people suddenly became nervous at the sheer number of foreigners coming into the country. This decade saw the largest wave of immigration the country had yet experienced. Yet, of the enormous amounts of immigrants than came to America each year, many of them ended up living in slums (Higham 36) and working in unsafe and low-paying jobs. Each passing year saw the rise of poverty in many large cities. However, they still kept coming, for, even though their shelter and wages in America were barely enough to live on, it was still better than the places that they had left. As a result of these continuingly growing cities and climbing poverty, crime also increased. The American people became disgruntled and pointed fingers at the foreigners. The uncouth, unskilled, uneducated, non-Americans were bringing down the economy, were crowding the cities, were tainting the American population with their foreign cultures, religions, and work ethics. These foreigners who worked for next to nothing kept wages down for American workers, thereby forcing their standards of living to lower as well.

This booming growth in the percentage of foreigners produced the theory of “race suicide,” coined by a sociologist named Edward A. Ross (Paul 100). A large part of this theory was the supposition that foreigners reproduce far more than do the American people. People feared that in only a few generations’ time immigrants and their descendents would outnumber the American population. They feared that “America’s … national character” would be “bred out” (Higham 142). The hereditary traits of all of these numerous foreign races would dominate those desired and heralded Anglo-Saxon traits. Despite the fact that this belief contradicts the conviction of the 1870s that the “American race” (Higham 32) could assimilate any foreign threat, the notion of “race suicide” was a popular one, and the ‘80s saw practically the entire nation demanding restriction on immigration. One result of this demand was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, “the first federal statute to bar entry to a group specifically for reasons of race” (Paul 98).

In response to the crisis in the ‘80s, the following decade saw the development of two different types of racial attitudes: race thinking and race feeling (Higham 132). Race feeling can be likened to today’s concept of xenophobia. It relates to the emotions that people feel towards other groups based on visible physical features such as skin color (Higham 132). Based on these physical features, such as skin color, a person, or people, is wary, distrustful, and perhaps even fearful of a particular group or race. Race thinking, on the other hand, can be explained as “the ideas” (Higham 132). It is not based on the emotions of people, and as such it tends to have a bit more credibility, although the amount of that credibility is debatable. Race thinking tends to depend on the physiological aspects of different races, such as the above-stated example of skin color.

The situation in the 1890s was one of escalating anti-foreign sentiments. The American culture was seen as threatened by these Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans, etc. However, the ‘90s also saw a change in the way these immigrants were viewed, or at least some of them. With a decline in the number of northwestern European immigrants and a dramatic increase in the number of southeastern European immigrants, there simultaneously arose a new delineation of the bad immigrants and the not-so-bad immigrants. Northwestern Europeans were seen as more closely related to the American-English Anglo-Saxon “race.” As a result, there was drawn a “sharp racial contrast between northwestern and southeastern Europeans” (Higham 141), and the southeastern Europeans suddenly became even more undesirable to Americans. Despite these changing racial views, one thing remained the same – the Anglo-Saxon “race” was still superior.

From the 1880s, through the 1890s, and into the 1900s, the theory of “race suicide” remained strong. Books and articles were written extolling the fear that the Anglo-Saxon “race” would be overrun by other “inferior” peoples (Higham 147). If possible, the national sentiments of pro-Anglo-Saxons seemed to grow, fed by President Theodore Roosevelt proclamations, who declared it a “duty’ (Paul 102) for Americans to have more children in order to counter the fecundity of the foreigners, and the confidence in America’s ability to assimilate still remained steady. The scientific view of race in this time period stated that racism was “a product of biological evolution” (Quoted in Paul 107). By this time, about fifty years after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest was widely held by scholars. Naturally, all but the Anglo-Saxon “race” were unfit – physically, intellectually, and morally inferior. Anti-foreign sentiment increased greatly in some areas. Finally, World War I saw the “first big international conflict between America” and a major source of immigrants – Germany. During this period, a division was made. Americans were good and Europeans were bad. The Europeans weren’t only the lower “races”; they were the enemies. The culminating belief was that any mixing that occurred with an “inferior” race  would result in an “inferior” offspring.

In conclusion, the five decades from 1865 to the end of World War I in 1918 saw a number of changes in patterns of immigration into the United States. Also evident was the progression of attitudes towards race and foreigners, from tolerance in the ‘60s, to encouragement in the ‘70s, to fear in the '80s. The 1890s saw a continued national interest in the “crisis” and resulted in several types of racial theories, such as race thinking and race feeling. 1900 to 1918 saw a steady continuation of the anti-foreignism trend, as well as the continued belief that American culture can assimilate anything. Yes, America is a young nation, but its history is a unique result of the diversity of which it is comprised.
 
 

Works Cited

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 London: Rutgers university Press, 1998.

Paul, Diane B. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995.

Shipman, Pat. The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the Use and Abuse of Science New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.