Letters

It’s striking that in the various discussions and debates about and defenses of the phrase “white supremacy,” no mention is made of arguably one of America’s greatest novels, a staple of school curricula: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

Early on, Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan, cites the “fine book” “The Rise of the Colored Empires” by “this man Goddard,” Fitzgerald’s stand-in for Lothrop Stoddard, an advocate of eugenics and so-called scientific racism.

Tom insists that everyone ought to read it, noting that the “dominant” white race will be “utterly submerged if other races get control of things.” Stoddard’s 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy,” came out five years after the blockbuster “Birth of a Nation,” based on Thomas Dixon’s 1905 “The Clansman,” which glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

Tom’s comment causes Daisy to wink at Nick, Fitzgerald’s narrator, and say, “We’ve got to beat them down.” It’s instructive to note that Nick says nothing, but that Fitzgerald, by including this brief exchange as part of Nick’s darkening reflection on the American Dream, says it all.

Joan Baum

Springs