The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-SupremacyStoddard, Lothrop
History
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Stoddard, Lothrop
Caucasian race; Race relations
And a South African, writing of the effects of Hindu immigration into
Natal, remarks in similar vein: "The condition of South Africa--especially
of Natal--is a warning to other lands to bar Asiatic immigrants.... Both
economically and socially the presence of a large Oriental population is
bad. The Asiatics either force out the white workers, or compel the latter
to live down to the Asiatic level. There must be a marked deterioration
amongst the white working classes, which renders useless a great deal of
the effort made in educational work. The white population is educated and
trained according to the best ideas of the highest form of Western
civilization--and has to compete for a livelihood against Asiatics! In
South Africa this competition is driving out the white working class,
because the average European cannot live down to the Asiatic level--and if
it is essential that the European must do so, for the sake of his own
happiness, do not educate him up to better things. If cheapness is the
only consideration, if low wages are to come before everything else, then
it is not only waste of money, but absolute cruelty, to inspire in the
white working classes tastes and aspirations which it is impossible for
them to realize. To meet Asiatic competition squarely, it would be
necessary to train the white children to be Asiatics. Even the
pro-Orientals would hardly advocate this."[163]
The lines just quoted squarely counter the "survival of the fittest" plea
so often made by Asiatic propagandists for colored immigration. The
argument runs that, since the Oriental laborer is able to underbid the
white laborer, the Oriental is the "fittest" and should therefore be
allowed to supplant the white man in the interests of human progress. This
is of course merely clever use of the well-known fallacy which confuses
the terms "fittest" and "best." The idea that, because a certain human
type "fits" in certain ways a particular environment (often an unhealthy,
man-made social environment), it should be allowed to drive out another
type endowed with much richer potentialities for the highest forms of
human evolution, is a sophistry as absurd as it is dangerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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