Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
—George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1954
In folklore, the bogeyman is the embodiment of evil, a sinister creature lurking in the shadows that is used to scare children into behaving. It has no set form, allowing it to reflect our innermost fears. The bogeyman serves as a cautionary tale. A parent might tell their child, “Don't walk home alone after dark or the bogeyman will get you!” Most children grow out of their fear and eventually see it for what it is: a figment of their imagination. The bogeyman is a metaphor for the dark side of human nature and the potential evil that could be lurking around the next corner. Remarkably, from time to time, groups of adults come to believe in the existence of bogeymen—not as monsters from their childhood, but as real-life evildoers who pose an imminent threat to society. They are what anthropologists refer to as “the Other”: people who are so alien in appearance and custom that they are seen as irrational, immoral, perverse, and—all too often—evil. These bogeymen are the product of fear, ignorance, and prejudice, and they appear in the form of social panics that arise from deep-seated tensions that accumulate during times of national crisis such as the specter of war, civil unrest, and economic turmoil.
In this book, we examine several waves of panic in American history involving the exaggerated fear of immigrants. Outbreaks reflect popular stereotypes of groups targeted solely for their ethnicity or religious beliefs. During periods of great fear, there is a tendency to release pent-up tensions by creating scapegoats. Psychologists refer to this as the “kick-the-dog syndrome” or displaced aggression. When someone has a bad day at work, he may come home and yell at his wife, who in turn may scold her son for the smallest infraction. Having no one to take out his anger on—the son kicks the dog. A similar process occurs in society. During times of crisis, people search for scapegoats.1 Ironically, the most vulnerable are the easiest targets: immigrants, asylum-seekers, and minorities. This process of blaming others for society's problems reduces anxiety and offers a simplistic explanation for complex issues of the day.
Despite its reputation as the world's leading light for justice and equality, the United States has often failed to uphold these ideals. At the base of the Statue of Liberty rests a bronze tablet with the words: “From her beacon-hand glows worldwide welcome…‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’” Written by Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, these words have come to symbolize America's history of welcoming immigrants from every corner of the globe, and embracing them regardless of skin color, ethnic heritage, or religious beliefs. Yet this often-touted pillar of American democracy with its emphasis on acceptance, tolerance, and diversity has been true only some of the time. It is more myth than reality. For at certain times in our history, the golden doors have been slammed shut, and the welcome mat removed. These periods of intolerance and fearmongering are fueled by sensational media reports and alarmist claims by politicians, police, lobbyists, and vigilante groups, who are worried over the new threat. Momentum soon snowballs into an unstoppable force that gives rise to harassment, persecution, and scapegoating.
During the nineteenth century, Americans endured the Great Catholic Scare, fostered a fear of Mexicans, imposed a ban on Chinese migrants, and engaged in the systematic persecution of Native Americans. At the time, “Indians” were not citizens and were considered foreigners in their own land. A second wave of scares arose during the twentieth century, amidst the fog of war: the German-American hysteria of World War I, the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the Jewish refugee spy panic of World War II. In each instance, people of a particular ethnicity or religious affiliation were under suspicion for aiding and abetting the enemy, usually on the flimsiest of evidence and little more than rumor and hearsay. One prominent example were Jewish refugees who desperately sought sanctuary on American soil after fleeing Nazi brutality, only to be refused entry over fears that they were agents for Hitler. As a result, countless men, women, and children perished in the Holocaust. These events parallel the American government's present-day reluctance to accept Islamic refugees, over fears that they are terrorists. The overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. In any given year, Americans are more likely to die from falling out of bed or slipping in their bathtub than at the hands of a terrorist.2
Throughout history, every society has experienced scares involving sinister forces. Whether the threats are real or imaginary, fear stokes the flames of hysteria far beyond the actual danger posed to the public. Sociologists refer to these episodes as social panics. Over the past fifty years, there have been many examples. They range from sensational claims over the dangers of the spread of AIDS and video-game violence, to serial killers, overuse of mobile phones and the internet by teenagers, and Satanic cults.3 While no one denies that serial killers exist, or that teens are not preoccupied with social media, in each instance, the threat is dramatically overblown.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, there were a spate of claims about a network of Satanic cults abusing children and sacrificing infants during secret rituals.4 Many people were falsely accused. During the early 2000s, a similar panic emerged over the threat posed by online sexual predators, which prompted US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to name as his top priority in 2005 the apprehension of an estimated 50,000 online offenders. A flurry of news reports highlighted the problem. In May 2006, ABC News reported that one in five children had been approached by an online predator. This claim was traced to a study that defined “sexual solicitation” so broadly as to include teen-on-teen flirting. This explains why not one of the “solicitations” led to a sexual encounter or assault.5 As for the claim of 50,000 web predators, it turns out that it was from the TV show Dateline NBC. When pressed for their source, host Chris Hansen admitted that there was none; he had attributed the figure “to law enforcement, as an estimate.”6
In chapter 1, we examine Roman Catholics. From 1830 to 1860, a fear of all things Catholic swept America. While followers were a feature of the social landscape since colonial times, anti-Catholic sentiments rose dramatically in the 1830s with the upswell of nativism, which held that established or native-born citizens were superior to new or recent arrivals. Nativists opposed all immigration, but especially the immigration of Catholics, who were rumored to owe their allegiance to the Pope instead of the president of the United States. Followers were widely believed to be part of a conspiracy to bring down the government and install a Catholic leader.7 In the three decades before the Civil War, anti-Catholic propaganda was rife in the popular press.8 During the scare, riots broke out in several cities. One of the worst clashes took place in 1844 when the streets of Philadelphia ran red with blood as thirteen people died and Catholic homes and churches burned to the ground. Within this cauldron of suspicion and fear, misinformation and wild tales flourished. Rumors centered on claims that convents were hotbeds of depraved sexual activity and moral perversion, including accounts of orgies and the ritual killing of babies born to deflowered nuns.9
Chapter 2 investigates the unequal treatment of Americans of Mexican ancestry since the 1840s, when the US “annexed” parts of Mexico and the inhabitants became citizens. Mexican Americans were portrayed as an inferior race that was dirty, lazy, and inherently prone to thievery and gang recruitment. Signs proclaiming “No Dogs, No Negroes, No Mexicans” were proudly displayed in the windows of many bars and restaurants across the American Southwest from the late nineteenth century to the early 1950s. Between 1848 and 1928, nearly six hundred people of Mexican heritage were lynched.10 During the Great Depression, upward of a million Mexicans were forced onto trains and sent back to Mexico over the misguided belief that they were taking “American” jobs. Many were lawful American citizens or residents who had every right to stay. When in 2015, then presidential candidate Donald Trump warned of Mexican immigrants being rapists and drug dealers, he evoked stereotypes that older Mexican Americans would vividly recall.11
President Trump's efforts to ban travelers and refugees from several Muslim-majority countries for fear of them being terrorists parallels the events of 1882 when Congress blocked Chinese immigration for ten years. In chapter 3, we examine this period, which was in response to fears that Chinese migrants were taking jobs from “real” Americans, and diluting the “racial purity” of the “white” population. Instead of reducing tensions with the Chinese community, the law's passage triggered a surge in reports of harassment and violence along the West Coast. There were even several murders of Chinese workers after they refused to leave their gold claims or defied attempts to run them out of town. By 1892, the ban was extended and was not repealed until 1943.
Chapter 4 looks at attempts to eradicate “savage” customs of Native Americans by declaring them criminal offenses punishable by fines and hard labor.12 At the time, “Indians” were considered foreigners; they were not granted citizenship until 1924. As Europeans immigrated to the New World, the clash of civilizations resulted in violent skirmishes with the early colonists. Even after the government made peace with the various tribes, the fear of Native culture remained so great that in 1883 war was declared on Native “superstitions.” The Code of Indian Offenses outlawed such practices as plural marriages, traditional dances, communal feasts, and the use of medicine men. The code was a form of ethnocide—an attempt to wipe out an entire set of cultures and insert in their place “superior” Western values. The code was not amended until 1933.13
During World War I, the fear of German spies and saboteurs gripped the nation. At its height in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson warned Congress that German subversives loyal to the fatherland “filled our unsuspecting communities with spies and conspirators.”14 Chapter 5 documents this tumultuous time as German Americans were harassed or beaten on suspicion of having sympathies with the kaiser. Several were murdered by vigilante mobs. Many communities took the extreme measure of banning the teaching of German in schools and the playing of German music, while Germanic-sounding businesses, streets, and cities were given English-sounding names. Some families sought to avoid suspicion and harassment by adopting anglicized surnames: Schmidt became Smith, and Müller was changed to Miller.
Chapter 6 examines the plight of Japanese Americans during World War II, when the Justice Department ordered the internment of citizens of Japanese heritage, fearing that they were sympathetic to the emperor and might act as spies and saboteurs. These bleak, remote “relocation centers” were essentially prison camps set up soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Upward of 120,000 ethnic Japanese were forced to leave their friends and neighbors and live in isolation. Walt Disney was even enlisted by the War Department to produce racist propaganda films and cartoons depicting buck-toothed Japanese soldiers as demonic, animalistic, and subhuman.15 The scare did not happen overnight, but had its roots in the long-standing fear of Japanese in California beginning in the 1890s, and the widespread belief that they were part of an inferior Mongolian race. America was also at war with Italy and Germany, yet these nationalities and ethnic groups were not subjected to mass internment.
The disturbing account of the US government's treatment of German Jews fleeing the Nazis during the Second World War is the subject of chapter 7. Despite widespread reports of persecution, America closed its doors to most Jewish refugees amid fears that they were Nazi spies or that their values would corrupt the moral fabric of society. Shaped by wartime paranoia and bigotry, it was not until 1944 that the government reversed its policy after the Treasury Department issued a scathing report on anti-Semitism in the State Department. Sadly, for many Jews, it was too late. Parallels are drawn with recent attempts by the Trump administration to bar Islamic refugees. Of the approximately 1.7 billion Muslims who constitute 23 percent of the global population, the Central Intelligence Agency estimates that only a tiny fraction are terrorists.16 The risk of any one person becoming a casualty of a terror attack is minuscule. Since the late 1960s, the number of Americans killed in such attacks is about the same as those struck by lightning.17 One recent study of terrorist acts on US soil over the last forty years found that the odds of dying at the hands of a refugee in such an attack are one in 3.64 billion.18 You are more likely to be killed by a vending machine toppling over or being crushed by a falling TV.19 Our treatment of Jewish refugees from Germany in World War II continues to haunt America's legacy as an inclusive and tolerant people.
Chapter 8 explores the present-day hysteria over the threat from Islamic terrorists intent on mass murder, slipping into the country by posing as refugees and immigrants. The statistics tell a different story. While the threat is real, it is primarily from within. Most American terrorists are homegrown. It is estimated that the government spends $75 billion annually to combat domestic terrorism.20 This expenditure is far out of proportion to the external threat from migrants. A recent study of domestic terrorism in the United States spanning four decades found that out of 3.2 million refugees, not one death was caused by a Muslim. The odds of an illegal immigrant killing someone in a domestic terrorist attack are over 10 billion to one.21 Attempts to halt the intake of refugees and immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries because they allegedly pose a security threat is based on fear. It is an exercise in chasing ghosts. The Trump administration's attempts to use a religious test to determine who can or cannot enter the country sets a dangerous precedent.
In chapter 9, we look at the lessons from our history of fear and intolerance of foreigners, how to identify social panics, and the enormous toll that these scares take on society. Foremost are those who have been unable to flee war-torn countries such as Syria after being refused entry into the United States on the grounds that they themselves were terrorists. The failure to take in Syrian refugees in their hour of need parallels the treatment of German Jews fleeing Hitler during the Second World War. The evidence is clear: refugees—Syrian or otherwise—pose little risk from terrorism. The pursuit of phantom enemies and the exaggerated strength of real ones place a strain on the country's human and financial resources and threaten to stain America's global reputation as a tolerant and welcoming society.22
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF SOCIAL PANICS
The term moral panic was popularized by sociologist Stanley Cohen, who gained international prominence for his 1972 book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, about two English youth groups—the Mods and the Rockers. In May 1964, the British press published sensational accounts about the supposed threat from these two rival gangs as they engaged in violent clashes along the country's south coast, prompting outrage and alarm. Over a thousand youths took part in the unrest, jeering, throwing stones, and destroying deckchairs that were used to make bonfires. Cohen found that journalists, politicians, and the police had overreacted to a series of relatively minor incidents. The media stoked fears by using inaccurate terms like “riot,” “orgy of destruction,” and “gangs.”23 The groups were not even gangs, but unrelated youths who were loosely lumped together. While some panics are forgotten and pass into folklore, others have lasting repercussions and can result in new laws and permanent government policies.24
Social panics are part of the human condition. They function to unify communities against a common threat and help people to feel better by blaming their problems on others. Common historical scapegoats include religious and ethnic minorities, foreigners, Jews, heretics, women, indigenous peoples, and the poor. In short, anyone who is different from those in power. In recent times, Islamic refugees have been targets. The greatest social panic of the twentieth century was the fear of Jews in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Likened to rats and parasites, Jews were portrayed as amoral, obsessed with money, and conspiring to destroy the German culture and economy. Jews became scapegoats for all that was wrong in German society. It is the ultimate example of what can happen if a panic is allowed to grow unchecked.
Migrants often bear the brunt of stereotyping and scapegoating, due to their appearance and customs. Society often casts a suspicious eye on those who are different from what is considered to be the norm for a particular time and place. We are all potential deviants, which is just a label given to someone who breaks the norms of society. During the Salem witch trials of 1692, most of those suspected of practicing witchcraft were women who stood out for having been overly assertive or eccentric for the time. The first three women to be accused had dubious reputations.25 Sarah Osborne had a volatile temper and stopped attending church. She raised eyebrows when, shortly after the death of her husband, she married her servant, before which time they had apparently been engaging in premarital sex. Osborne and her new husband drew further ire of the community for trying to disinherit her sons, which was widely viewed as a family betrayal. Sarah Good was destitute and forced to live off the charity of others for her survival. She was known for her aggressive begging and was described as sharp-tongued, with a grumbling disposition; she was someone who smoked a pipe, rarely bathed, and was suspected of having loose sexual morals. In short, these women were ideal candidates for being accused of practicing witchcraft.
The first suspected witch, a Barbados slave named Tituba, stood out for her dark skin and unfamiliar customs. She had a penchant for storytelling and a vivid imagination. At one point, upon being accused of witchcraft, she described Satan as “a thing all over hairy, all the face hairy, and a long nose.”26 Bridget Bishop, the first to be hanged, was described as fun-loving and fond of wearing flamboyant attire—unpopular traits in conservative Puritan New England. One resident accused her of having threatened to corrupt the morals of young folk as she “did entertain people in her house at unseasonable hours in the night to keep drinking and playing at shuffleboard.”27 She was previously convicted in court for fighting with her husband. On other occasions, she was hauled before a judge for using foul language and was accused of stealing.28 As someone on the margins of society, she was vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft.
Cohen's research has been the basis for many studies on an array of social panics. A notable example was the outrage over plans to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque near the site where the World Trade Center once stood prior to its destruction by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001. Attempts to block construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque included claims that it was in poor taste and insulting to those who died in the attacks. Social commentators even claimed that it was a “sacred site.” This assertion held little weight, since the area was the home to several strip clubs.29 Despite the uproar, the center did eventually open its doors to the public in 2011.30
EVIL EVERYWHERE—HALLOWEEN SADISM
Social panics can persist for decades if the claim is relentlessly promoted in the media and by law enforcement, as with the Halloween candy-tampering scare. For decades, stories have circulated about perverse sadists poisoning candies and inserting needles and razor blades into apples and candy bars. Sociologist Joel Best has reviewed press reports of these incidents dating back to 1958, including the medical literature, and found just five incidents. Not one held up to scrutiny.31 The fear of Halloween sadism is a classic example of a social panic.
In 1970, five-year-old Kevin Totson of Detroit reportedly died after eating heroin-laced Halloween candy. An investigation revealed that the candy was drug-free. He had tragically stumbled upon a cache of heroin at a relative's house. A second case involved Texas boy Timothy O'Bryan, who died suddenly after eating a cyanide-tainted Pixie Stix—a sugary powder sold in colorful straws. Police eventually charged his father with poisoning his son and making it look like the work of a Halloween psychopath so that he could collect several life insurance policies. The 1978 death of two-year-old Patrick Wiederhold of Flint, Michigan, also raised fears of a crazed killer on the loose, when he died after eating Halloween candy. Tests revealed his death was due to natural causes. The fourth incident in 1990 involved seven-year-old Ariel Katz of Santa Monica, California, a little girl who collapsed and died while trick-or-treating. A coroner later ruled that the cause of death was an enlarged heart. A fifth report, from Vancouver, Canada, in 2001, attributed the death of a four-year-old girl to poisoned Halloween candy and prompted police to warn parents to dispose of their treats. An autopsy revealed that she had died of streptococcus infection.32
Several independent studies confirm Best's conclusions. One examined efforts by newspapers to trace all local stories of Halloween sadism in America during 1973. It concluded that “virtually all” were hoaxes.33 Another study for the year 1982 identified 270 claims. After analyzing the suspected treats, the Food and Drug Administration found no evidence of tampering in over 95 percent of the cases. The remaining 5 percent were dubious, such as an innocent nick on an apple or the inadvertent tear of a candy wrapper that was reported as attempted tampering. These findings led an FDA official to describe the wave of reports as an episode of “mass hysteria.”34 Since the early 1970s, Best has located just three cases of people ingesting foreign bodies attributed to Halloween perpetrators; each was suspicious.35 The annual Halloween candy scare has occasionally merged with other panics, such as Islamophobia. Soon after the 9/11 terror attacks, rumors began circulating in e-mails urging caution when trick-or-treating, after it was claimed that two suspicious “Arablooking” men had entered a wholesale store in Hackensack, New Jersey, and bought $15,000 to $20,000 worth of candy. An FBI investigation would later determine that only one man was involved, and the amount purchased was $7,000. He was a wholesaler who had bought the candy to resell it. Such large transactions are common.36
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON A MODERN CRISIS
Recent concerns over Islamic terrorists infiltrating the country in the guise of immigrants taking advantage of American generosity are not new. The fear of foreigners threatening our security, creating social unrest, taking jobs, and corrupting the moral fabric of society has a long and storied history that is vital to understanding the present-day immigration crisis. During the late nineteenth century, Congress began passing a series of laws to keep out the world's downtrodden, fearing that they would contaminate the Anglo-Saxon stock on whom it was believed the nation was founded. American anthropologist Madison Grant warned that unless immigration was curtailed, the country would soon be awash with “the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races” who threatened to fill “jails, insane asylums, and almshouses” with “human flotsam.”37 Within this climate of fear, intolerance, and racism, Congress tightened immigration laws, turning away everyone from paupers and polygamists to the handicapped. Anyone appearing odd or unusual was at risk of deportation, including those deemed physically unattractive. Early federal immigration laws were loosely written, and if an inspector did not like you, he could often find a reason to have you deported.
SORTING THE DEFECTIVE MASSES
The inspection system was particularly harsh toward the poor and disabled. The Immigration Act of 1891 expanded the power of the federal government to deport immigrants who were paupers, that is, people so poverty-stricken as to need state charity to survive. The act included a clause about persons likely to become paupers, giving immigration officers a wide latitude to keep out undesirables. Being poor in America at this time was a sign of defective character and inferior breeding; those with physical defects were thought to be deficient mentally and morally. Labor leader Eugene Debs summed up popular sentiment by describing immigrant paupers as “vagrants, vagabonds, tramps, idlers by choice, and generally criminals by profession.”38 In 1903, the law was expanded to include public begging. It is ironic that this further tightening of immigration law that was intended to keep out the destitute occurred during the same year that Emma Lazarus's poem “The New Colossus,” was placed at the Statue of Liberty, touting America as a refuge for the world's “homeless” and “poor.”
Determining who was acceptable was often a reflection of the inspector's prejudices. This was a concern given the prevalence of racist attitudes, especially toward Asians, Jews, Slavs, and Africans. For instance, an inspector who was anti-Semitic could create an excuse to deport a Jew by citing medical reasons. In 1909, the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of New York City raised concerns that Jews were being singled out for deportation under the diagnosis of “lack of physical development.”39 Near the turn of the century, there was a vigorous scientific debate as to whether Jews suffered disproportionately from an assortment of physical and mental defects. Immigration officers at Ellis Island were familiar with the medical discussion depicting Jews as biologically inferior: undersized, weak-muscled, poorly developed, and mentally unstable.40 As one Ellis Island surgeon wrote in Popular Science Monthly, Jews were “a highly inbred” race with high rates of insanity and mental disorders. He supports this stance by citing statistics for 1907 on the number of new arrivals diagnosed as mentally defective: although Jews composed only 14 percent of the island's immigrant hopefuls, nearly one-third of them were diagnosed as defective mentally.41 Far from proof of the surgeon's claim, these figures were a reflection of the racially biased decisions of immigration officers and doctors.
Many inspectors made no secret of their biases. One remarked that “no one can stand at Ellis Island and see the physical and mental wrecks who are stopped there…without being a firm believer in [immigration] restriction.”42 Another inspector equated migrants to cars: “It is no more difficult to detect poorly built, defective or broken down human beings than to recognize a cheap or defective automobile.” One immigrant was rejected based on his appearance and the size of his genitals: On June 30, 1922, Israel Raskin was refused entry because he was “physically defective and likely to become a public charge.” His medical certificate stated that he had a “lack of sexual development which may affect his ability to earn a living.” The US Surgeon General later justified his and similar exclusions for posing bad economic risks, as it would be “difficult for these unfortunates to get or retain jobs, their facial and bodily appearance, at least in adult life, furnishing a patent advertisement of their condition.”43
Aside from outright discrimination toward certain ethnic groups, those who drew attention to themselves were subject to higher rates of secondary inspection. Once under closer scrutiny, examiners were more likely to discover other health issues, raising the risk of exclusion.44 The process was heavily visual and subjective. Immigrants were made to file through inspection stations like cattle; anyone who stood out by walking with a limp or appearing frail or unusual was separated, and a letter was chalked on the back of their clothes: H for suspected heart problems, L for lameness, and so on.45 Those appearing inattentive or confused were marked with an X for possible mental illness.46 This situation was a recipe for misunderstandings and mistakes. Immigrants arriving from long overseas voyages often endured crowded, unhygienic conditions. It would not be surprising for those fresh off the ship to appear haggard and lethargic from the sheer strain of the journey. First-class passengers typically had their own rooms and ate in separate dining halls, while the poor were crammed into the lower decks, where it was hot and noisy. Sometimes hundreds of passengers had to share a single bathroom. One investigation revealed the barely tolerable conditions: “The ventilation is almost always inadequate, and the air soon becomes foul. The unattended vomit of the seasick, the odors of not too clean bodies, the reek of food and the awful stench of the nearby toilet rooms…”47 Differences in language, customs, and literacy levels could easily result in singling someone out for further inspection.
In 1905, Armenian Turk Donabet Mousekian was selected for deportation after being diagnosed with “feminism,” a code word for poorly developed sex organs. At his hearing, there was no mention of his “condition,” and he was asked only a few questions about his background. The transcript read as follows:
Mr. Rotz: In view of the Doctor's Certificate I move to exclude him as likely to become a public charge.
Mr. Ryan: Second motion.
Mr. Smiley: Excluded.
His appeal was upheld by the Ellis Island immigration commissioner, partly because of his physical appearance: “Appellant is devoid of every external evidence of desirability. He is weak…repulsive in appearance, the doctor's certificate…furnishing sufficient indication of his physical defects.”48 Seven years later, when Nicolaos Xilomenos was rejected for “lack of sexual development,” the commissioner upheld the decision, observing that while appearing “strong and robust,” he likely suffered from “perversions or mental instability.”49
When in March 1902, thirty-five-year-old Domenico Vozzo arrived from Italy, he passed through immigration without difficulty. Three years later, upon returning after a short visit to his home country, he was detained at the port of Boston as a risk to become a public charge. Vozzo was fit and strong, with a successful work history in America. His inspection certificate stated that while appearing “perfectly healthy” below the neck, he had a “curiously shaped head, and his skin looks rather white, almost bleached, and his ears are quite thin.” The Boston immigration commissioner reviewed the case and decided for deportation. He then sent a note to the Immigration Secretary: “I enclose his picture which I think will convince you that he is not a desirable acquisition.”50 Once again, a migrant's appearance was used as the basis for rejection.
America's treatment of the poor and disabled at the turn of the century parallels present-day anxieties. Fears of the impoverished and “defectives” overwhelming social-service agencies resembles present-day concerns that Mexicans and other “free-loading” foreigners will turn America into a welfare state. Where today we fear Islamic terrorists, a century ago the threat was from Jews, Asians, and Africans, who were seen as compromising national security by diluting the Northern European racial stock on which the country was supposedly founded. Recent attempts to ban people in certain Muslim-majority countries are reminiscent of the Asiatic Barred Zone of 1917, which excluded immigrants from India, Siam, Burma, the Malay States, Afghanistan, Arabia, parts of Russia, and most of Polynesia. The ban remained in effect until 1952.51
THE PANIC OVER REDS AND GAYS
While America is often touted as “the land of the free,” this did not extend to expressing even passive support for Communism or promoting alternative lifestyles among consenting adults. One of the more unusual social panics in American history involved the convergence of two fears: Communism and homosexuality. For Americans living in the 1950s, gays were considered sexual deviants with Communist tendencies. While the Immigration Act of 1917 did not mention the word homosexual, it barred the “mentally defective,” under which gays were categorized. At the time, “homophiles” were considered sex perverts akin to pedophiles. Many lied about their orientation, but if a criminal-records check revealed a conviction for homosexuality, they were rejected under federal law from entering the country. Gay immigrants who were not citizens lived under constant fear of being outed and deported. Republican Senator Keith Wherry of Nebraska was one of many politicians who viewed closeted homosexuals as a threat to national security, believing that they were susceptible to blackmail by Communists who could enlist them to act as spies and subversives. He worried that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had obtained a list of closeted homosexuals and would use it to recruit spies in the civil service.52 The fear of homosexuals compromising the nation's security has been dubbed the “Lavender Scare.”53
The man who started the Communist witch-hunt in early February 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, acknowledged the gay “threat,” making references in his speeches to “queers” and Communists. He asserted that both were suffering from mental defects and maladjustment.54 When asked to produce evidence of “Red” infiltration, on February 20, McCarthy stood on the Senate floor for six hours, giving details on eighty-one known cases of Communist spies in the government, including a “nest” of “homos.”55 Eight days later, a congressional hearing was told that as many as ninety-one homosexuals had been dismissed from the State Department over concerns that their sexuality compromised the nation's security. Most were allowed to resign quietly.56 The anti-gay campaign quickly intensified. The New York Times proclaimed, “Perverts Called National Peril,” while the Washington Times-Herald declared “War on Perverts.”57
By 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, giving the federal government the power to dismiss any civil service employee for the “sexual perversion” of homosexuality. At least five thousand workers lost their jobs for being “perverts” who posed security risks.58 Once homosexuals were deemed to be a threat to the nation's welfare, the FBI went to great lengths to infiltrate the subterranean world of homosexuals, even enlisting postal workers to monitor recipients of male physique magazines, who were then placed under surveillance. Postal inspectors were sometimes asked to subscribe to pen pal clubs and initiate suggestive correspondence with suspected homosexuals. If the response was positive, their mail was traced in hopes of identifying other gays.59
Amid growing hysteria over Communists infiltrating the country, in 1952 Congress passed legislation excluding people solely for their ideological beliefs. The new law gave the government power to deport immigrants or citizens born outside the country, if they were known or suspected of being Reds. The criteria for deporting a suspected Communist was conveniently vague. As politicians feared attempts to infiltrate or overthrow the government, the search was on to identify and purge Communists wherever they may be. Those receiving the most suspicion were schoolteachers, union leaders, and anyone associated with Hollywood, which was synonymous with left-wing leanings and homosexuality. The treatment of Claudia Jones is typical of the extreme reaction to all things Communist. At age eight, she immigrated to the United States with her family after living in the British West Indies. In 1953, after thirty-two years in her adopted country, she was deported for the crime of organizing Communist activities. At her trial, she openly admitted to supporting Communist ideas, which she asserted posed no threat to the United States, and contrary to popular belief, stated that she had no interest in overthrowing or destroying the American government. She told the judge: “Quite candidly, Your Honor…I proudly plead guilty…which by your own prior rulings constitutes no crime—that of holding Communist ideas.”60
The search for Reds and “homophiles” were modern-day versions of the Salem witch-hunts in a different cultural guise. While these social panics occurred over two and a half centuries apart, the backdrops are hauntingly similar: outside evildoers were believed to be in their midst, conspiring to destroy the cherished values of democracy and family. Just as suspected witches were asked, “What evil spirit have you familiarity with?” members of the House Un-American Activities Committee impatiently queried, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Government investigators also inquired of civil servants, “Is it true that you're a homosexual?”61 During both eras, suspects were pressured by their interrogators to reveal the names of co-conspirators. In Salem, a special court was convened in which basic rules of evidence were ignored, there were no defense attorneys, and the accused were presumed guilty until they could prove their innocence. During the 1950s, congressional hearings turned into public spectacles in which McCarthy bullied witnesses, asking them leading questions, and treating them as if they were guilty without a trial in a court of law. This failure to follow proper procedure and short-circuiting of the American legal system led Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey to complain that the behavior of McCarthy was “totalitarian” and “undemocratic” and made a mockery of Western law.62 Accusations of homosexuality by government investigators often included high-pressure tactics behind closed doors. One lesbian was told: “We have your friend in the next room. She's already told us that you're gay. You give us the names of others, and we'll go easier on you.”63
Before subsiding, the Communist Scare reached ludicrous levels. At one point, the owners of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team briefly changed the name to the Redlegs to show their patriotism and avoid sending the wrong message to the nation's youth. Some citizens even tried to censor the publication of Robin Hood for being a Communist parable, since the hero robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.64 To underscore the exaggerated response to the threat, historian Angus McLaren observes that despite all of the fuss and whoopla over the security threat from gays, there is not a single documented instance of an American homosexual being blackmailed by a Communist agent.65
In 1965, Congress amended the immigration law to include the term “sexual deviation,” making it explicit that homosexuals were unwelcome. It even sought the opinion of the Public Health Department, which assured them that a sexual deviant included “homosexuals and sex perverts.”66 In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association changed its designation of homosexuality from “sociopathic personality disturbance” to a sexual variation akin to left-handedness. It is not surprising that immigration laws would reflect popular and scientific views on homosexuality. However, what is remarkable is that once the majority of psychiatrists no longer considered homosexuality an abnormality, it took seventeen more years for Congress to change the laws and allow gay immigrants into the country in 1990.67 It would take five more years before the federal government banned the use of sexual orientation to deny employment.68
NEGROPHOBIA
One of the longest-running social panics in US history involves the exaggerated fear of African Americans, especially males. Ever since the country's founding, they have been portrayed as violent, with primitive, animalistic sexual urges, prompting fears of rape and interracial breeding. Medical authorities considered blacks to be mentally inferior, inherently lazy, and morally deficient; it was widely thought that their extended interaction with white youth would lead the latter astray, justifying the later need for segregation. Popular belief masqueraded as scientific fact as one nineteenth-century physician observed that Africans were “defective” and lacking in “cerebral matter,” rendering them “unable to take care of themselves.”69
Immediately after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves on January 1, 1863, his executive order was met with widespread trepidation among Southern whites as a threat to their safety and values, and a strain on government resources and charities. Reaction to their newfound freedom was swift. By the 1870s, signs reading “Colored” and “Whites Only” appeared across the South, mostly in eating and drinking establishments. In 1896, the US Supreme Court upheld the bans. For the next fifty-eight years, segregation was the law of the land and soon expanded to include buses and trains, parks, libraries, restrooms, theaters, and cinemas. For some, there was no escape even in sickness and death, as hospitals and cemeteries were segregated. The view of African Americans as inferior to those of European heritage did not begin to change until the 1920s and 1930s, with the work of anthropologists such as Franz Boas, who viewed culture and environment to be the main influences on behavior. Even today, despite modern science dispelling the myth of race, America has been besieged by a series of moral panics suggesting that blacks are inherently criminal and violent.70
Over the years, blacks have been the subject of numerous scares among whites. One poignant contemporary example occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the media reported on a worrisome new crime perpetuated mostly by impoverished African American women: “crack babies.” Mothers addicted to crack cocaine were reportedly giving birth to babies with permanent brain damage. Not only were the claims unsupported by the scientific evidence, experts now agree that crack is less harmful to unborn babies than alcohol is, and it is comparable to the effects of smoking tobacco.71 A twenty-year study of two hundred “crack babies” found “no differences in the health and life outcomes between babies exposed to crack and those who weren't.”72 More recent scares involving African Americans have included the exaggerated fear of blacks, including Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans, randomly assaulting whites73 and gang-raping white women.74
A poignant example of the lack of regard for black lives and how they have been unfairly targeted and exploited even after their emancipation, took place in Brooke County, Georgia, when nineteen-year-old Sydney Johnson was arrested for the crime of “rolling dice.” He was fined and jailed because he could not afford what was then the considerable sum of thirty dollars. Johnson was freed by a white plantation owner, Hampton Smith, who had an abusive reputation and such difficulty keeping workers that he made a habit of bailing out African American prisoners in return for their services in what was tantamount to indentured slavery. After enduring beatings and being forced to work while sick, Johnson shot Smith dead. A mob of local whites scoured the countryside. Over the next several days, they took their revenge by lynching thirteen blacks, several of whom had no involvement in the murder. Johnson was eventually tracked down and would be the last to die. Mary Turner, the wife of one of the victims, was eight months pregnant at the time and vehemently protested her husband's innocence, threatening to obtain statements from witnesses and have the perpetrators arrested. Turner was captured by the mob. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported what happened next, from an eyewitness, Philip Dray: “There, before a crowd that included women and children, Mary was stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground, gave a cry, and was stomped to death.”75 Even this was not sufficient to satisfy the mob's rage. Historian Christopher Meyers writes that her body was then riddled with so many bullets that “she was barely recognizable as a human being.”76 This shameful episode in American history took place in May 1918. Despite the number of murders committed, their callous and brutal nature and hundreds of witnesses, no one was ever charged in the killings.
A SOCIAL PANIC CHECKLIST
There are five tell-tale signs of a social scare: (1) concern, (2) hostility, (3) consensus, (4) disproportion, and (5) volatility. First, there must be sufficient concern that the perceived threat poses a serious risk to traditional values and must be measurable. Statistics and opinion polls are often used to sound the alarm, but they are not always accurate. Statistics are notoriously easy to manipulate. A 2015 TV ad for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign stated matter-of-factly that the American “epidemic of gun violence” was so out of control that each day about 90 people were killed by guns. While technically true, this figure makes gun violence appear worse than it is. When the ad aired, the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control had recorded 32,888 deaths from guns, yet the more accurate figure is 11,208. The Clinton campaign added the 505 accidental gun deaths and 21,175 firearm-related suicides in order to swell the total. In reality, gun violence was responsible for 5.1 deaths for every 100,000 Americans—roughly 32 per day. The Clinton camp inflated the figures for dramatic effect. The number of Americans who die from accidental falls or poisonings is an even greater problem, claiming over 30,000 lives during the same year, yet these events receive far less attention.77 Moral panics do not occur out of thin air: there must be a “grain of truth” to start with, that becomes distorted and exaggerated.
The second component of a social panic is hostility toward the person or group that is seen as a threat. This often involves sit-ins and marches to draw attention to the perceived menace or lobbying legislators to pass laws to contain it. Social media campaigns may be organized and flyers distributed on street corners or handbills posted to raise awareness. Sometimes law enforcement unwittingly create anger by acting on baseless claims. In August 1983, a worker at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, was suspected of child abuse. Judy Johnson told police that she believed that Ray Buckey had molested her young son after noticing the boy's bottom was red after returning from the school one day. The local police chief soon sent a warning letter to parents. “This Department is conducting a criminal investigation involving child molestation…[by] Ray Buckey.” It continued: “Please question your child to see if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of ‘taking the child's temperature.’” The letter stated that Buckey may have taken nude photos of the children, and it asked if anyone had observed Ray “leave a classroom alone with a child during any nap period, or if they had ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child.”78 Outraged parents began questioning their impressionable children. Over 360 came forward to report that they too had been molested by Buckey or his co-workers. All of those accused were acquitted after it was revealed that the children's interviews were laden with leading questions. One investigator wrote: “There was not one spontaneous ‘disclosure’ on any of these tapes…. On all of the videotapes shown, the children repeatedly denied witnessing any act of sexual abuse of children. The interviewer…continued to coax and pressure the child for accusations.”79 What was then the most expensive civil trial in American history had essentially been triggered by an overprotective mother, an overzealous police chief, and diaper rash. In classic social-panic fashion, the defendants were tried in the media, with stories and commentaries portraying them as guilty even before their case was heard in court. One headline in Time proclaimed: “Brutalized,” while People magazine described the school as “California's Nightmare Nursery.”80
For moral panics to develop there must be a third element: consensus within a significant segment of a population that the threat is both real and serious. There is no set number or percentage of people who must be involved to reach a tipping point. Some researchers cite opinion polls or the sudden rise in the number of protests or news reports on a particular threat. In a 2011 Harris poll of Halloween risks, parents with children placed the fear of tampered or poisoned treats at 24 percent. This was a global survey, suggesting that the myth of Halloween sadism had spread beyond the United States.81 During the nineteenth-century anti-Catholic hysteria, a vast literature of books, newspapers, and magazines appeared that seemed to confirm the danger posed by Catholic immigrants and to vilify followers as depraved cultists. Similarly, a 2015 poll on Syrian refugees entering the United States found that 45 percent of Americans deemed them to be a major threat to the security of the country.82 In reality, you are far more likely to die from chronic constipation (one in 2.2 million) or in a flash flood while visiting the Grand Canyon (one in 14.2 million) than in a terrorist attack by a refugee in America.83
Another indicator of a panic is the threat being out of proportion to reality. Statistics are instrumental in generating the perception of danger as claim makers generate alarm by citing inflated figures about the number of crimes, deaths, injuries, addicts, terrorists, and money amounts. These figures are used as evidence to confirm that there is some degree of objective harm that can be quantified and used to construct charts and graphs to highlight the danger.84 At the height of the Red Scare of the early 1950s, anti-Communist crusaders claimed that Soviet spies had infiltrated all levels of government and were lurking in thousands of communities across the country. Similarly, during March 2000, a panic erupted in Slovenia after three teens were caught killing and torturing cats. Fueled by sensational media reports, it was soon claimed that cat killing and torture were major issues in Slovenian society. Sociologist Gregor Bulc observes that suddenly, the TV news and press were flooded with “images of dead cats and cute kittens” and claims that such events were common. In reality, he found that serial pet killings were “exceedingly rare or even nonexistent.”85
The final characteristic of a moral panic is volatility. They are unpredictable and may subside, only to re-emerge stronger than ever. A panic over the threat from German spies infiltrating the American heartland reached fever pitch during World War I. Yet near the war's end, reports of harassment and discrimination had leveled off dramatically, only to reignite during Hitler's ascension to power in 1930s. In rare instances, social panics can persist for centuries, such as the persecution of “witches” in Europe between 1400 and 1650. Conservative estimates place the death toll from witch-hunts at half a million.86 And in 1285, 180 Jews were burned alive in Munich, after rumors circulated that they had sacrificed a Christian child as part of a religious ritual. Panics involving anti-Semitism have flared up on a regular basis since the Middle Ages, and were often triggered by tales of Jews poisoning wells or spreading the Bubonic Plague. At Guyenne, France, in 1321, upward of 5,000 Jews were burned alive for allegedly poisoning the water supply.87
A classic example of a recurring panic is the White Slavery Scare. Between 1880 and 1917, stories circulated in Europe and North America that gangs controlled by Jews abducted “white” girls and women, plied them with drugs, and forced them into the sex trade.88 In May 1969, a similar scare—equally unfounded—spread across France, when it was reported that women were being drugged inside the fitting rooms of Jewish-run clothing stores and smuggled out of the country to work as prostitutes in North Africa.89 The present-day scare over an “epidemic” of child abductions can be traced back to 1750, when a kidnapping panic swept through the streets of Paris, prompting extraordinary scenes. Suspected abductors ran for their lives as angry mobs chased them through the streets and back alleys. The episode began with the spread of rumors that King Louis XV was suffering from leprosy and was having children kidnapped to cure his condition by bathing in their blood.90
THE POWER TO SHAPE HISTORY
At different times in our history, immigrants have been singled out as scapegoats for a multitude of social problems plaguing the country. During these periods of intolerance and fear, there is a temptation to suspend laws, ignore civil rights, and deport new arrivals back to where they came from. In doing so, we risk redefining a religion as a cult, devoutness as fanaticism, and diversity as perversity. Foreigners with strange customs are susceptible to demonization as “the Other,” while unfamiliar traditions may become perceived as irrational superstitions. Our differences are a testament to human imagination and creativity. Studying these panics allows us to appreciate the rich tapestry of human diversity while underscoring the importance of standing up for basic rights when those differences are under threat.
The United States has accepted tens of millions of immigrants during its relatively short existence, but there is a dark legacy that is often overlooked. At certain times, the American dream has been denied to those who were pregnant, poverty-stricken, skinny, short, handicapped, physically unattractive, dark-skinned, or polygamist. Often these categories were mere excuses for thinly veiled racism and bigotry. At other times, people were rejected solely because they were gay, Communist, anarchist, Native American, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, German, Jewish, or Muslim. The list is far from exhaustive.
We must avoid simplistic labels and sweeping generalizations about entire groups based solely on superficial qualities such as ethnicity, religion, ideology, sexual preference, and skin color. Using such labels places people in boxes and reinforces popular stereotypes: “Blacks are violent”; “Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers”; “Muslims are terrorists.” If we give in to such temptations, we risk dehumanizing those who are different from the mainstream and creating a world of “them” versus “us.” This book is a timely reminder of the historical context for the present-day American immigration debate involving Mexicans, Muslims, and others. These are defining issues of our time. Armed with insights from similar social panics in our history, it is time that America lives up to the promise etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty and fulfills its destiny as a tolerant and just society. This book will help Americans look inward to overcome their fear of the foreign and reach the inevitable realization that the bogeymen we have for so long come to fear are nothing more than shadows of our own creation.