The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy is a book by Lothrop Stoddard, published in New York in 1920, and reprinted in 1922. It played on nativist and racist themes to warn that white supremacy was in jeopardy world-wide, as the colored races (especially the Asians) would soon revolt against white rule. Stoddard warns against what he saw as dangers to the white, "Nordic" domination of the world from other races and from "inferior" white or "mongrel" races. Stoddard urged the white empires to leave Asia and Africa and allow independent nations to form (as happened after 1945). The main dangers to white supremacy, he argued, were immigration and competition in the marketplace by Asian factories manufacturing cheaper goods using cheaper labor.

The book sold well (10 printings in two years), but there were a few favorable reviews in serious journals;, but few scholars incorporated his ideas. The few citations to it in the scholarly literature use the book as as an example of racism. The book was better researched and written than Madison Grant's similar book, The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Grant wrote the preface to Stoddard's book. Stoddard's book was, however, well received by black nationalists, especially followers of Marcus Garvey. It influenced Harlem intellectuals such as Hubert Harrison (1883-1927), who was known as "the father of Harlem radicalism."

Stoddard saw the main danger for the white race domination over the world as coming from the "Yellow race" and especially from the Japanese. He was echoing a concern raised by the german Kaiser in the 1890s. The threat from the 'brown' and the 'black' he saw as less likely. He predicted that overpopulation in India would lead to "such a cycle of strife as would devour its human surplus and render distant aggressions impossible." . a "black 'renaissance'" was, he thought, even less likely, unless the white race stops holding firm and show weakness. South and central America, Stoddard predicted, "will be neither red nor black. It will ultimately be either white or yellow. The Indian is patently unable to construct a progressive civilization. As for the negro, he has proved as incapable in the New World as in the Old."

Stoddard condemned what he saw as the unjustified optimism of the "whites" regarding their continued world domination. The Russo-Japanese War where "the legend of white invincibility was shattered" was to Stoddard a watermark in human history. As a result of the Industrial revolution, which forced people to live in proximity to one another the Nordic race , he claimed, had allowed itself to be "invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and Jews."

This undesirable development, says Stoddard, can still be corrected. The situation "is not yet irreparable... Decisions - firm decisions - must be made. Constructive measures - drastic measures - must be taken." The white race, who lost his solidarity because of on-going disputes between whites, is even more "hampered by Versailles, and harassed by Bolshevism." It may have to abandon "the outer dikes" (areas where there are no white settlements) but must hold firm to "the inner dikes" where there are such settlements. Most importantly, it must fight immigration: "migrations of lower human types like those which have worked such havoc in the United States must be rigorously curtailed."

Stoddard's book expressed a popular notion of cultural despair following the horrors of the World War. Oswald Spengler, the German historian, was much more influential in reflecting the pessimism and seeing the 19th century as unduly optimistic in its views regarding progress. In line with widely held pessimistic views about the future of European dominance and 'the white race' after World War I Stoddard warns against what he saw as the 'dangers' of racial mixing. Some evidence of this popularity can be discerned Tom Buchanan's view in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby that Stoddard is correct in his prediction, and from the echo of some of Stoddard's racial warnings in Charles Lindbergh's 1939 essay Aviation, Geography, and Race.[1].

Stoddard's book fell into disrepute, along with similar 'scientific' racial concepts that were prevalent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In recent years, though, some white supremacists and blacj nationalists have touted its "prophetic" merits.

Sources

• The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy