"It is claimed, but with what truth we cannot say, that there is a well-defined propaganda among the aliens of colour to bring about the degeneration of the white race"
About this Quote
That coy little hedge - "It is claimed, but with what truth we cannot say" - is the sentence's most revealing move. Murphy flirts with doubt only to launder a racist conspiracy theory into respectable conversation. She poses as a careful observer while handing the reader an insinuation strong enough to stick: there might be a "well-defined propaganda" among "aliens of colour" to "degenerate" whites. The alleged uncertainty functions as a rhetorical inoculation. If challenged, she can retreat to the claim that she merely reported what others say. If believed, the fear does its work anyway.
The phrase "aliens of colour" collapses multiple targets into one threat: immigrants, nonwhite citizens, and anyone deemed outside the national body. Calling it "propaganda" frames nonwhite political agency - organizing, speaking, even existing visibly - as a coordinated attack. "Degeneration" is doing heavy lifting, borrowing the pseudo-scientific vocabulary of eugenics to cast racial hierarchy as public health. The white race is positioned as fragile, needing protection by the state; nonwhite people are positioned as contaminant and saboteur.
Context matters: Murphy wrote within an early 20th-century reform culture that mixed women's activism with moral policing and nation-building. That era's "protective" politics often relied on panic about sexuality, drugs, and miscegenation, converting private anxieties into legal categories. The intent isn't just to stigmatize; it's to legitimize surveillance, exclusion, and sterilization as reasonable governance. The subtext is simple: if whiteness is under siege, then extraordinary measures become common sense.
The phrase "aliens of colour" collapses multiple targets into one threat: immigrants, nonwhite citizens, and anyone deemed outside the national body. Calling it "propaganda" frames nonwhite political agency - organizing, speaking, even existing visibly - as a coordinated attack. "Degeneration" is doing heavy lifting, borrowing the pseudo-scientific vocabulary of eugenics to cast racial hierarchy as public health. The white race is positioned as fragile, needing protection by the state; nonwhite people are positioned as contaminant and saboteur.
Context matters: Murphy wrote within an early 20th-century reform culture that mixed women's activism with moral policing and nation-building. That era's "protective" politics often relied on panic about sexuality, drugs, and miscegenation, converting private anxieties into legal categories. The intent isn't just to stigmatize; it's to legitimize surveillance, exclusion, and sterilization as reasonable governance. The subtext is simple: if whiteness is under siege, then extraordinary measures become common sense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|
More Quotes by Emily
Add to List
