Nativism means anti-immigrant prejudice. (another word we could use: xenophobia)
Nativism was quite pervasive in the late 19th-early 20th century, and nativists often made immigrants scapegoats for the era’s problems: labor violence, alcoholism, illiteracy, prostitution, poverty, crime. (we could make other arguments about the true causes of these problems: rapid urbanization, industrialization, exploitation, economic inequality, etc.)
You’ve read some documents that exemplify nativist attitudes.
In addition to the Immigration Restriction League, two other prominent anti-immigrant organizations operated in this era: the American Protective Association (which was virulently anti-Catholic) and the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan arose immediately after the Civil War in the South, but died down by the 1880s. The KKK experienced a massive rebirth around 1915. In its second-coming, the Klan was a national organization and hated (and terrorized) not just African Americans but also ‘foreigners’ and women with ‘loose’ morals. The Klan plays an important role in the story of race relations in Detroit and figures prominently in the book Arc of Justice. So stay tuned for more.
Interested readers can link to the Klan Manual:
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-KKK.htm
Nativism was also expressed through legal policies. In class discussion and readings, we have learned about laws that banned peoples coming from Asia and the Middle East either from entering or from becoming American citizens.
Racialist thinking:
It was very common for people during this era – really, any people – to think in racialist terms about human beings. The belief was widespread that God had divided humans into ‘races’, that these races were organized in a hierarchy (superior to inferior), and that they were always in competition with one another. WASPs believed that “Anglo-Saxons” (or “Aryans” or “Teutons”) were the superior race in the world and, once those races reached America, represented the pinnacle of western civilization. They devised a strata of races below them, and usually referred to ethnicities as races (e.g. the ‘Italian race’) and at the bottom they relegated Asians, true Native Americans (i.e. Indians), and Africans.
[Here’s an example of racialist thinking from a popular high school biology textbook of the period. http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-scopesText.htm]
Eugenics was a movement (a pseudo-science) during this era devoted to improving the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating. (the word literally means “good” “genes”)
In his well-known text Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911), Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport argued that weakness in American society was due to the unnatural preservation (by modern medicine) of the “feeble-minded” and “unfit.” “The population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South East Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature . . . more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape, and sex-immorality.” And “the ratio of insanity in the population will rapidly increase.”
Eugenicists of the period called for sterilization, controlled breeding, institutionalization, and the death penalty for unwanted peoples. Some states did implement sterilization programs, mainly targeted at disabled peoples and criminals.
[Interested? See http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-eugenics.htm
I also posted a Eugenics Archive website on the list of ‘Related Websites’ on the course webpage.]
Also pervasive in this era were ‘better baby’ and ‘better family’ contests (for instance at county fairs and other civic celebrations) that judged people’s genetic qualities.