A Know-Nothing Party cartoon from the 1850s, back when Irish and German immigrants were the threat to America As We Know It.
America As We Know It has been ever teetering at the edge of the abyss for hundreds of years thanks to immigration:
1753: Ben Franklin:
“Those [Germans] who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own nation […] Not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it. […] but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in one or two counties.
“Few of their children in the country know English. […] The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German. […]
“In short, unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies […] they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
1835: Lyman Beecher, an evangelical preacher and reformer, warned of the:
“danger from the uneducated mind [that] is augmenting daily by the rapid influx of foreign emigrants, unacquainted with our institutions, unaccustomed to self-government, inaccessible to education, and easily accessible to prepossession, and inveterate credulity, and intrigue, and easily embodied and wielded by sinister design. […]
“In the beginning this eruption of revolutionary Europe was not anticipated, and we opened our doors wide to the influx and naturalization of foreigners. But it is become a terrific inundation; it has increased upon our native population from five to thirty-seven percent, and is every year advancing….”
His anti-Catholic sermons led to a wave of church burnings. (It was his daughter’s book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852) that,more than anything else, turned opinion in the North against slavery, leading to civil war.)
1925: John Dos Passos had a character in his book “Manhattan Transfer” say:
“No I tell you, Wilkinson, New York is no longer what it used be when Emily and I first moved up here about the time the Ark landed …. City’s overrun with kikes and low Irish, that’s what’s the matter with it … In ten years a Christian wont be able to make a living … I tell you the Catholics and the Jews are going to run us out of our own country, that’s what they are going to do.”
2019: James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a White Evangelical Protestant leader and supporter of Trump, said this after being moved to tears by the conditions he saw at a US border camp:
“I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation.”
In practice, White America assimilated enough newcomers, or at least their children, while enlarging its identity, from Wasp to Nordic to European American and from Protestant to Christian to Judaeo-Christian.
– Abagond, 2019.
Sources: “The select works of Benjamin Franklin”; “Manhattan Transfer” (1925) by John Dos Passos; The Way of Improvement (a blog by historian John Fea).
See also:
- US border camps
- The Hispanic Invasion
- Know-Nothing Party
- ways of looking at the US:
- The Third Enlargement of American Whiteness
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Abagond 
They also, by law declared all of the Middle East as white even though most of them are brown.
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What we see over and over and over again is that these nativists and white nationalists have little faith in the U.S. experiment of a democratic republic. They think it is fragile and can only be upheld by the white “race” or even only by certain European ethnic groups to the exclusion of others.
Instead, history shows us that each successive wave of immigrants embraces the great American experiment. By the second or third generation, most cannot even imagine going back to their ancestral land because this is their home, these are their freedoms and their rights, these are their responsibilities to uphold as native-born citizens of the United States.
As Abagond has pointed out before, African Americans whose ancestors were brought here against their will and who suffered terribly under slavery and Jim Crow and continuing discrimination, who have every reason to turn their backs on this nation, instead strive to make the U.S. live up to the words and ideals of the Declaration and the Constitution, to fulfill the promise of the great experiment.
How weak is the faith of these nativist and white nationalists! They are blind to the resiliency and strength of this nation, blind to the power of the promise of freedom that draws people from all over the world to dedicate the work of their hands and their hearts and their minds to keep that promise alive.
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Reading about the Rock Spring massacre in Wyoming in 1885 and The Chinese Exclusion Act. An the violence against the Chinese laborers. I think about the maggots who echo the sentiments “ Make America Great Again. America has never been great to non white people. Even those who are telling other marginalized groups of people to go back where they came from, those very same people had ancestors who immigrated here from somewhere in Europe and some of them were considered to be undesirables and had to change their last names and assimilate into white society. Those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it.
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and^^^
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James Dobson, and his Focus on The Family movement who thinks the only right one is the so called family unit that looks like those old 1950’s black and white television shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver. His ministry only focuses on “whiteness.” This is the mindset of the Religious Right who is always very wrong. And of course it’s always about the American way, which is the good and right way of doing and being.
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And with all that, black was still black
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@ Pumpkin
Yeah. Whiteness “enlarges” to include everyone, except Black folk. Black remains Black….
Will Black people in 2068 be terrorized by a KKKlan made up of people named Hernandez, Jimenez, and Garcia?
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@Afrofem: Do you think in the future Hispanics/Latin X will assimilate into whiteness? Like the Jews, Italians, Irish etc..
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@ Mary Burrell
Abagond and others have made convincing arguments about future Latinx assimilation. Some Latinx already consider themselves White and have nasty anti-Black attitudes to boot. They show their backsides to native born Black folk every chance they get. However, it seems everyone in this country in on that particular bandwagon, including African and Caribbean immigrants. (SMH What on earth are they thinking?)
Yet who do they expect to stand in solidarity with them when they are attacked by White Supremacists? Those very same Black people they threw under the bus just yesterday.
I care about other people because I recognize their shared humanity. I also know that anything White Supremacists do to others, they will do to Black people. In fact, mass imprisonment of Black people during the War on Drugs was a precursor to
immigrant detentionconcentration camps at the border during this war on so-called “illegal immigration”. Plus the Drug War is still ravaging Black communities nationwide.However, I am under no illusions about so-called “People of Color” solidarity. The lure of Whiteness and White privilege is too great for non-Black people to resist. Heck, many Black people can’t resist that lure.
I feel that any advancement Black people make in the USA will come entirely by our own efforts. I am also keenly aware that any Black advancement will be attacked and undermined by all the other groups.
The ugly truth is that White people and other groups base their social and economic wellbeing on the degradation of Black people. When we advance, they become anxious and angry. Anti-Blackness is a primary thread in the fabric of America. Pull that thread out and the whole bolt of cloth unravels. In that way, they are all White Supremacists to me.
It is likely Black people will have to move elsewhere to prosper and determine their own futures. If that makes me an Afro-Pessimist, so be it.
P.S. Even if every Black person in America emigrated to another continent next year, White people would still try to pin their social ills on Black people for generations to come…“the lingering effects of Black pathology, blah, blah, blah.”
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@Afrofem: It’s true that some Latin X do have anti-black sentiment. I have personally been on the receiving end of that anti-black sentiment.
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@ Afrofem: Salient points.
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@ Abagond
“America As We Know It has been ever teetering at the edge of the abyss for hundreds of years thanks to immigration:”
The above statement sounds good! But what does it really mean? What abyss?
This nation still is the most powerful nation on earth! The racial strive is between the blacks, the many Hispanics arriving in the nation and the mixture of whites that when evaluated do not make up a majority; however a mixture of ethnic, religious, European nationalist with the same skin color.
There is no consensus among those people black people call white, they are constantly at each others throats and always have been.
Because the white people are in such a disarray it is impossible for black people to become a part of that group! There is no real group to affiliate with!
My experience with whites has been from the very worse to the very best individual. which one do I emulate?
All of my supporter have been white! While living among blacks most of my life, I have spent working in a “white world mainly in a supervisors role, hardly ever as a worker. Even as I worked with those who were against me others supported me. I was able to retire from the military after 20 years service and a bank after 15 years.
Because I was a high school drop out this should not have happened, since many black college graduates seem to find it difficult to advance in the “white world”.
I notice that there are some regulars on this site. Mary Burrell, Afrofem, and Solitaire. I would “a ss u me” they are highly educated and perhaps have not achieved the goals they imagined they should. No one achieves their highest goals; however, all around them blacks with the proper education and training are moving into higher positions both within the black race and also in the white race. There is no way to determine what the percentages are because it is done quietly.
Success in the system requires a willingness to do a lot of hard work and an acceptance of others and activities that are different! A desire to “do your own thing” usually will not make a person a winner within most organizations.
YES, Abagond, there is much strive, denial and mistreatment in this nation; however you should evaluate some of the other nations before you completely write off this nation! You are well read in those subjects you cover, almost like “Artificial Intelligence” Pick a subject and let the computer do the work. You should visit at least 10 African nations 5 European nations and maybe a few Asian nations before you condemn this nation.
Black people get kicked in the butt all the time, but, where do they go to receive better treatment with the tools they have to offer.
So, on with the Reparation, give the descendants of slave a big boost of some kind, I imagine most visualize a couple hundred thousand, but maybe that will not be enough maybe 5 hundred thousand! For some reason it has not yet been announced what the acceptable amount is! The whites who were not even in this nation, and were probably serfs where they came from are going to be delighted to take their money and give it to the blacks!
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@Afrofem
Hugs(Apologies if that was too personal)
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@ Mary Burrell
Do you think Latinx will be the Darkest White People over the next generation?
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@ August Noone
That was not too personal. This is a digital forum after all. LOL!
What are your thoughts on the subject of the Latinx Enlargement of Whiteness over the next generation?
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@Afrofem: America will probably be quite brown especially will interracial marriages between many black men and Latina women producing mixed race children.
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There are already many Latinos/Hispanics that default into whiteness. Especially those Afro-Latinos who don’t want to acknowledge the African bloodlines.
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Yes they will be terrorized by those names.
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@Afrofem: My sentiments exactly. Whilst showing empathy for others, that does not preclude them from throwing you under the bus. They out racist the racist if they can garner some white privileges. They are white supremacist adjacent.
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@ Afrofem
While I was thinking over a response to your question, I read Herneith’s post and I can say from personal experience that he is spot on with his analysis. He summed it up pretty good.
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@ August Noone
Herneith is XX. She has a knack for eating rich foods while keeping her girlish figure. 😄
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Im a she, not a he.
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@Herneith
My sincere apologies madam. This has been a rough day.
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No worries.
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Hispanics are largely white under US census laws, as are Middle Easterners. I wonder, did the legislators who categorised them as such do so in anticipation of a future enlargement of whiteness?
Hispanics are mainly Catholic Christians too and have far older ties to the American continent. They have more in common with white Americans than Jewish immigrants did in the early 20th century. On paper they should easily assimilate, but Trump and the MAGA crowd seem to have doubled down on excluding them from the white club…. It’s strange seeing that winning over Hispanic voters will become a demographic necessity for Republicans.
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Go to the Supreme Court. They had a person file to become white.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/
it doesn’t say whitney’s ethnography just born in NY, British maybe?
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There is a case.
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@ v8driver
Looks like he was of English ethnicity and from early colonial stock down most or all of his lines:
Thomas Richard Whitney
https://www.geni.com/people/Henry-Whitney/6000000010744515593
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@Solitaire @ V8driver @ para @ abagond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
Read the entire article closely. See what a mess the US is in when it comes to race
A part: “The Census Bureau includes the “original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East” among white people.[47] Under pressure from advocacy groups, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would consider establishing a new, MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world, separate from the “white” category. If approved by the Census Bureau, the category would also require approval by Congress.[48][49][50]
The courts ruled Arabs, Syrians, Middle Easterners, and Armenians as not white in the following cases: In re Halladjian (1909), Ex parte Shahid (1913), Ex Parte Dow (1914), In re Dow (1914), and In re Ahmed Hassan (1942). The courts ruled Arabs, Syrians, Middle Easterners, or Armenians to be white in the following cases: In re Najour (1909), In re Mudarri (1910), In re Ellis (1910), Dow v. United States (1915), United States v. Cartozian, and Ex Parte Mohriez (1944).[“
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@solitaire had to be lol 🙂
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