"Race first" was the adage widely used in Garveyism. In Garvey's view, "no race in the world is so just as to give others, for the asking, a square deal in things economic, political and social", but rather each racial group will favor its own interests. Rejecting the "melting pot" notion of much 20th century American nationalism, he thought that European Americans would never willingly grant equality to African Americans, and thus it was inefficient for the latter to ask for it. He was hostile to the efforts of the progressive movement to agitate for social and political rights for African Americans, arguing that this was ineffective and that laws would never change the underlying racial prejudice of European Americans.