Race suicide was an alarmist term used in
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
, coined in 1900 by the sociologist
Edward A. Ross
Edward Alsworth Ross (December 12, 1866 – July 22, 1951) was a progressive American sociologist, eugenicist, economist, and major figure of early criminology.
Early life
He was born in Virden, Illinois. His father was a farmer. He attend ...
. Racial suicide rhetoric suggested a differential birth rate between native-born Protestant and immigrant Catholic women, or more generally between the "fit" or "best" (white, wealthy, educated Protestants), and the "unfit" or "undesirable" (poor, uneducated, criminals, diseased, mental and physical "defectives," and ethnic, racial, and religious minorities), such that the "fit" group would ultimately dwindle to the point of extinction. Belief in race suicide is an element of
Nordicism
Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book ''The Passing of the Great Race'' ...
.
In anti-East Asian discourse, the concept is associated with the "
Yellow Peril
The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racist, racial color terminology for race, color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East Asia, East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a ...
".
In 1902, US President
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
called race suicide "fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country" and argued that "the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people." Likewise, in 1905, he argued that a man or woman who is childless by choice "merits contempt."
In Canada, the idea of race suicide was espoused by
W. Stewart Wallace
William Stewart Wallace (23 June 1884 – 11 March 1970) was a Canadians, Canadian historian, librarian, and editor. His historical reference works were considered "of inestimable value in Canadian studies." Canadian professor of political econo ...
, the author of "The Canadian Immigration Policy," which cited the native-born population's "struggle to keep up appearances in the face of the increasing competition" as a purported cause of its low birth rate. Wallace claimed that immigrants did not increase a nation's population but merely replaced it.
References
Further reading
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External links
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*{{cite journal , last1=Ross , first1=Edward A. , author-link=Edward A. Ross, title=The Causes of Race Superiority , journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , date=1901 , volume=18 , pages=67–89 , doi=10.1177/000271620101800104 , jstor=1009883 , issn=0002-7162, jstor-access=free
Eugenics
Anti–East Asian sentiment in the United States
Anti-immigration politics in the United States
Natalism
Nordicism
White genocide conspiracy theory