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
All this gives a clearer idea of the difficulties involved in a successful
guarding of the gates. But it also confirms the conviction that the gates
must be strictly guarded. If anything further were needed to reinforce
that conviction it should be the present state of those white outposts
where the gates have been left ajar.
Hawaii is a good example. This mid-Pacific archipelago was brought under
white control by masterful American Nordics, who established Anglo-Saxon
institutions and taught the natives the rudiments of Anglo-Saxon
civilization. The native Hawaiians, like the other Polynesian races, could
not stand the pressure of white civilization, and withered away. But the
white oligarchy which controlled the islands determined to turn their
marvellous fertility to immediate profit. Labor was imported from the ends
of the earth, the sole test being working ability without regard to race
or color. There followed a great influx of Asiatic labor--at first Chinese
until annexation to the United States brought Hawaii under our Chinese
exclusion laws; later on Filipinos, Koreans, and, above all, Japanese.
The results are highly instructive. These Asiatics arrived as agricultural
laborers to work on the plantations. But they did not stay there. Saving
their wages, they pushed vigorously into all the middle walks of life. The
Hawaiian fisherman and the American artisan or shopkeeper were alike
ousted by ruthless undercutting. To-day the American mechanic, the
American storekeeper, the American farmer, even the American contractor,
is a rare bird indeed, while Japanese corporations are buying up the
finest plantations and growing the finest pineapples and sugar. Fully half
the population of the islands is Japanese, while the Americans are being
literally encysted as a small and dwindling aristocracy. In 1917 the
births of the two races were: American, 295; Japanese, 5,000! Comment is
superfluous.
Clear round the globe, the island of Mauritius, the half-way house between
Asia and Africa, tells the same tale. Originally settled by Europeans,
mostly French, Mauritius imported negroes from Africa to work its rich
soil. This at once made impossible the existence of a white laboring
class, though the upper, middle, and artisan classes remained unaffected
by the economically backward blacks. A hundred years ago one-third of the
population were whites. But after the abolition of slavery the negroes
quit work, and Asiatics were imported to take their place. The upshot was
that the whites were presently swamped beneath the Asiatic tide--here
mostly Hindus. To-day the Hindus alone form more than two-thirds of the
whole population, the whites numbering less than one-tenth. Indeed, the
very outward aspect of the island is changing. The old French landmarks
are going, and the fabled land of "Paul and Virginia" is becoming a bit of
Hindustan, with a Chinese fringe. Even Port Louis, the capital town, has
mostly passed from white to Indian or Chinese hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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