Abstract

Nativism is conceptually different from xenophobia. A xenophobe is not necessarily a nativist. Nativism can broadly mean binarism and racism together. This study traces the history of American politicians’ nativist rhetoric and its reflection on the life of the immigrants. In the United States, nativism has largely been a part of the leaders’ political and cultural agendas and motivated the Black-White racial binarism. Moreover, nativism continues to second this binarism and secure it from criticism by projecting it as a high level of nationalism. This paper investigates, firstly, how the nativist speech influences common man; and secondly, how the life of the immigrants is affected by this discourse. This study contrasts with many dominant theories, which hypothesize that American political discourse is controlled by the elites and directed by their nativist agendas. This study, however, finds that American political discourse is subject to the nativist pride of common white citizens who share this anima with the elites.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.