2009
DOI: 10.1525/phr.2009.78.4.505
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Anti-Catholicism and Race in Post-Civil War San Francisco

Abstract: In San Francisco during the 1870s, conflicts over public schools, immigration, and the bounds of citizenship exacerbated long-simmering tensions between Protestants and Catholics. A surging anti-Catholic movement in the city——never before studied by scholars——marked Catholics as racially and religiously inferior. While promising to unite, anti-Catholicism actually exposed splits within Protestant San Francisco as it became utilized by opposing sides in debates over the place of racially marked groups in church… Show more

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Cited by 7 publications
(6 citation statements)
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“…Irish Americans were considered Celts, a lesser white race (Ferguson, 2018; Jacobson, 1999; Painter, 2010; Saxton, 1971). Scholars have shown how Irish Americans in nineteenth century California experienced greater social and economic mobility than their compatriots on the East Coast, where racial and class hierarchies were more established and rigid (Campbell, 2002; Jacobson, 1999; O’Neill, 2009, Paddison, 2009). Still, although some Catholic Irish Americans rose to prominence in San Francisco, Protestants and those racially coded as Anglo-Saxons remained at the apex of the social, racial, and economic hierarchies in California and throughout the U.S. (O’Neill, 2009).…”
Section: Swamp Reclamation and Racial Formations In Californiamentioning
confidence: 99%
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“…Irish Americans were considered Celts, a lesser white race (Ferguson, 2018; Jacobson, 1999; Painter, 2010; Saxton, 1971). Scholars have shown how Irish Americans in nineteenth century California experienced greater social and economic mobility than their compatriots on the East Coast, where racial and class hierarchies were more established and rigid (Campbell, 2002; Jacobson, 1999; O’Neill, 2009, Paddison, 2009). Still, although some Catholic Irish Americans rose to prominence in San Francisco, Protestants and those racially coded as Anglo-Saxons remained at the apex of the social, racial, and economic hierarchies in California and throughout the U.S. (O’Neill, 2009).…”
Section: Swamp Reclamation and Racial Formations In Californiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Still, although some Catholic Irish Americans rose to prominence in San Francisco, Protestants and those racially coded as Anglo-Saxons remained at the apex of the social, racial, and economic hierarchies in California and throughout the U.S. (O’Neill, 2009). According to Paddison (2009: 507), “Irish Catholics in postbellum San Francisco inhabited an ambiguous religious-racial space, considered neither fully white nor fully Christian.” This racial status placed Irish workers toward the bottom of the economic hierarchy where they found employment primarily in unskilled, poorly paid jobs (Saxton, 1971). In the 1850s, this included filling the city’s tidelands.…”
Section: Swamp Reclamation and Racial Formations In Californiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A Class of people largely ignorant, degraded, and vicious is a burdensome class and demands care, patience, and watching," (quoted in Paddison 2009, p. 512). Given the United States' Protestant origins, the mass migration of Irish Catholics represented an ever growing population that was viewed as being idolatrous, superstitious and, most importantly, incapable of surrendering their loyalty from the Pope to the President (Brighton 2008;Orser 2007;Paddison 2009). In sum, "Irish Catholics were thought to be part of a priest-controlled machine," incapable of individual thought or action without the direction of the Catholic Church (Brighton 2008, p. 42).…”
Section: Irishmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…With the rise of union activism in the United States many companies used Chinese immigrants as strikebreakers, consequently infuriating white working-class Americans who viewed the ever-growing Chinese community as a direct threat to their livelihood, resulting in cries that the "Importation of Chinese Barbarians into the Country Must Be Stopped by the Ballot or Bullet,'" (quoted in Orser 2007, p. 155). Nativist reactionary responses to the influx of Chinese labor included violence as well as political action (Paddison 2009). The rise to prominence of the Know Nothing party and their Nativist agenda brought the production of toys such as "The Chinese Must Go!"…”
Section: Chinesementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Discourse on race ⁄ethnicity and religion in the West has thus been very complex for a very long time. As Joshua Paddison (2009) shows, for example, civic and religious leaders in late nineteenth-century San Francisco mobilized racial and religious loyalties as they debated public schools, Chinese immigration, and American citizenship. As Protestants and Catholics forged a coalition based on white Christian identity, they constructed Chinese immigrants as both religiously and racially different.…”
Section: Race and Ethnicitymentioning
confidence: 99%