Path to National Suicide mentioned in high school history text book

Paul K. writes:

In an interesting article at VDare, Steve Sailer says that you get a mention in the high school history text Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic (McGraw-Hill, Fourth Edition).—as a bad guy, of course:

Consider that there are almost as many people of Mexican descent in the U.S. as there are blacks. Everybody can name famous blacks. But how many famous Mexicans can you remember?

Let’s see how many I can now recall after reading the book. There’s Cesar Chavez, and then there’s Sammy Sosa, who is cited on p. 1123 (interestingly enough, that is the same page on which Lawrence Auster appears as a bogeyman for writing The Path to National Suicide). But, he’s not Mexican, he’s Dominican. (Sammy, I mean, not Larry.)

Phantom Blogger writes:

I didn’t know you were so famous, millions of kids are reading a book with you mentioned in it (negatively mind you).

D. from Seattle writes:

Steve Sailer has a great article at Vdare (“The War over History”) that describes how modern history schoolbooks describe and celebrate everyone’s accomplishments except that of the truly accomplished. He even mentions you and The Path to National Suicide.

- end of initial entry -

Malcolm Pollack writes:

Here is the passage from that McGraw-Hill history text (which I found here):

But the mix of cultures was not always benign. Throughout the course of American history, when immigration flows increased, members of the dominant culture often reacted defensively. The Know-Nothings of the 1850s took as their slogan “Americans should rule America,” and nativists of the early twentieth century succeeded in sharply restricting immigration. During the 1990s the debate continued over how diverse the United States could become without losing its central identity.

Restriction again became a goal of those citizens worried about American identity. In 1916 Madison Grant had written The Passing of the Great Race to warn that unrestricted immigration might lead to racial suicide. In 1990 Lawrence Auster published The Path to National Suicide, in which he complained of the “browning of America.” The new restrictionists in Congress proposed the Immigration and Stabilization Act of 1993, but neither the Democrats, who controlled Congress, nor President Clinton supported major changes in immigration policy. The following year, restrictionists used a different strategy in California. Their Proposition 187 ballot initiative denied health, education, and welfare benefits to illegal aliens. Despite the opposition of most major religious, ethnic, and educational organizations, the measure passed with a lopsided 59 percent of the vote. In the end, though, the proposition was not put into effect because a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the provision denying education to children of illegal aliens.

I found the passage here. The document is a collection of excerpts on the subject of immigration, taken from various books.

LA replies:

Thanks for sending. Of course it’s pure liberal propaganda, with anything short of open borders seen as wicked.

It’s quite an honor to be treated as the equivalent of Madison Grant. His book The Passing of the Great Race had a major influence in changing American opinion about immigration after the World War, and helped lead to the 1921 and 1924 national quota acts which drastically reduced immigration and made possible the unified, peaceful, and confident America of the mid 20th century.

I read Grant’s book many years ago, reading an old edition of it over a couple of days at an out-of-the-way branch of the New York Public Library (I don’t remember if it was before, during or after the writing of PNS, but it was around the same period). I liked it very much, except for the excessively anti-Semitic component, which lowers its level, and the somewhat overly reductive racialism. I liked his writing style. It’s a book that leads the reader to a larger, organic view of civilization and of how the fall of great civilizations in the past may be repeated by us. Whatever its flaws, its theme that the racial composition of a society matters profoundly, cannot be gainsaid.

LA continues:

I should clarify that while The Passing of the Great Race played a significant role in shaping the climate of opinion that led to the national quota acts of the early 1920s, those laws did not in themselves reflect Madison’s racial views. They were not “anti” or “pro” any group. Both laws simply expressed the idea that America’s ethnic composition should not radically change. They used recent census figures as a basis for establishing immigration quotas for each nation that would keep immigration in in line with the existing national-origin composition of the United States. The 1921 Act was temporary; the 1924 Act was permanent, and remained substantively in place until 1965. The 1924 Act was a high-level intellectual, moral, and political achievement in American history, and the men who helped create it and pass it (I forget their names at the moment but will look them up) deserve to honored. And let us remember that without Republican presidents Harding (who signed the ‘21 law) and Coolidge (who signed the ‘24 law), it wouldn’t have happened.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 29, 2010 12:30 PM | Send