Near the beginning of The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan remarks favorably about a book called The Rise of the Coloured Empires. To Fitzgerald’s contemporaries, this title would have been a clear allusion to T. Lothrop Stoddard’s eugenicist manifesto, The Rising Tide of Color against White World–Supremacy, a popular book in the nativist political climate of the 1920s and amongst present-day white supremacist groups.

Suggested Activity: Have students read the excerpt from The Great Gatsby and the excerpt from T. Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color against White World–Supremacy. (Note: These books were initially published just four years apart by the same publisher.) Discuss: How does Fitzgerald portray this interaction between Tom, Daisy, Miss Baker, and Nick? How do the other characters react to Tom’s comments? Does Fitzgerald seem to be critical of Tom’s attitude or sympathetic to it? What role do you think Tom’s views serve in the book as a whole? Why do you think Fitzgerald includes a character with white supremacist views?

Now have students read the quote from Commentary magazine. With that quote, Tom’s remarks, and the excerpt from Stoddard in mind, have students look through the text of The Great Gatsby for other instances of explicit racism, anti-Semitism, and nativism. Working as a class, compile a list. You may also have students keep their own lists while they read at home and compile them at the end of your unit.