Nativism in United States politics
Specific nativist antagonisms may and do, vary widely in response to the changing character of minority irritants and the shifting conditions of the day; but through each separate hostility runs the connecting, energizing force of modern nationalism.
While drawing on much broader cultural antipathies and ethnocentric judgments, nativism translates them into zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively American way of life.
Rooted deeply in cultural biases and economic rivalry, Anglo-Americans harbored suspicions and often scorned the language, traditions, and religious practices of the Palatines.
[21] According to Erika Lee, in the 1890s the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were, “convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.”[22] In the 1890s–1920s era, nativists and labor unions campaigned for immigration restriction following the waves of workers and families from Southern and Eastern Europe, including the Kingdom of Italy, the Balkans, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire.
[25] The National German-American Alliance, funded by the beer industry, played a leadership role in opposing prohibition and women's suffrage in the Midwest.
[27] A powerful influence came from big business and heavy industry, such as steel and mining, because they depended on cheap immigrant labor; steamship companies also helped out.
The new configuration also allowed the women's movement to gain enough support to put suffrage over the top, and it also succeeded in making the final push towards national prohibition.
American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time, it was directed at undocumented workers, mostly Mexicans, resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996.
[31] By late 2014, the "Tea Party movement" had turned its focus away from economic issues, and towards attacking President Barack Obama's immigration policies, which it saw as a threat to transform American society.
The New York Times reported: According to Breanne Leigh Grace and Katie Heins, Republicans have recently been using their control of state legislatures to establish nativistic immigration policies.
In 2017 and 2018 they introduced 86 bills around the country to limit refugee resettlement, with their goal being to block Brown, Muslim, and Third World arrivals, which they associated with terrorism and feared as enemies of white, Christian American civilization.
In his 2016 bid for the presidency, Republican candidate Donald Trump was accused of introducing nativist themes via his controversial stances on temporarily banning foreign Muslims from six specific countries entering the United States, and erecting a substantial wall between the US-Mexico border to halt illegal immigration.
[40] In a decision in June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced on visitors who lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".
Denis Kearney, an immigrant from Ireland, led a mass movement in San Francisco in the 1870s that incited racist attacks on the Chinese there and threatened public officials and railroad owners.
In October 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated and separate schools.
Thus Kawakami's books especially Asia at the Door (1914) and The Real Japanese Question (1921) tried to refute the false slanders generated by deceitful agitators and politicians.
The publicists confronted the main allegations regarding lack of assimilation, and boasted of the positive Japanese contributions to American economy and society, especially in Hawaii and California.
[47] From the 1840s to the 1920s, German Americans were often distrusted because of their separatist social structure, their German-language schools, their attachment to their native tongue over English, and their neutrality during World War I.
Potter quotes contemporary newspaper images: You will scarcely ever find an Irishman dabbling in counterfeit money, or breaking into houses, or swindling; but if there is any fighting to be done, he is very apt to have a hand in it."
Even though Pat might "'meet with a friend and for love knock him down,'" noted a Montreal paper, the fighting usually resulted from a sudden excitement, allowing there was "but little 'malice prepense' in his whole composition."
In addition, the cartoons of Thomas Nast were especially hostile; for example, he depicted the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall machine in New York City as a ferocious tiger.
In contrast to the view that Irish women were shiftless, slovenly and stupid (like their male counterparts), girls were said to be "industrious, willing, cheerful, and honest—they work hard, and they are very strictly moral".
[73]In 1862 during the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant issued an order (quickly rescinded by President Abraham Lincoln) of expulsion against Jews from the portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi which were under his control.
The sudden rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the mid 1920s, the antisemitic works of Henry Ford, and the radio attacks of Father Coughlin in the late 1930s generated tensions nationwide.
[87] On the other hand, a report of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations revealed a significant decrease of 48 percent in anti-Jewish crimes in LA compared to 2013.
Some of the worst episodes include the attack on the funeral procession of Rabbi Jacob Joseph by Irish workers and police in New York City in 1902;[90] the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia in 1915;[91] beatings of numerous Jews in Boston and New York by Irish gangs in 1943–1944;[92] the murder of talk radio host Alan Berg in Denver in 1984;[93] the Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn in 1991;[94] and the murder of 11 congregants in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting of October 2018.
[95] According to Phillip Gonzales, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Hispanics in New Mexico frequently organized "juntas de indignación", which were protests against discrimination.
Hundreds attended meetings that protested housing discrimination; Washington's perception of "backwardness" in the territory that delayed statehood; racist comments by government officials; and admission policies at the University of New Mexico.
[101][102] From 2018 onwards, Trump deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the U.S.–Mexico border,[103] to stop most Central American migrants from seeking U.S. asylum, and from 2020 used the public charge rule to restrict immigrants using government benefits from getting permanent residency via green cards.
[113] Trump also declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, intending to divert $6.1 billion of funds Congress had allocated to other purposes.
