Roof’s attitude isn’t new. White supremacists have vacillated between
fear and fetishization of Asians for over a century. Beginning in the
mid-19th century, immigrant Chinese laborers and Japanese farmers
suffered violence at the hands of whites who feared they were losing
their jobs and livelihoods.
By 1920, as Congress moved to ban all Asian immigrants, Lothrop
Stoddard’s book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White
World Supremacy,” began to rise on the best-seller lists. Fear was
giving way to fascination in some circles. In his book, Stoddard warned
that white civilization might “be swamped by the triumphant colored
races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption.”
He concluded that, of all the nonwhite peoples, the Japanese and the
Chinese posed the biggest threat to global white rule. He strongly
supported closing off Asian immigration to the U.S. But he also argued
that, because of what he called their “industriousness” and “strategic
guile,” Asian deserved whites’ “mutual comprehension and respect.”
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