How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial ScriptsHow Race Is Made in America examines Mexican Americans—from 1924, when American law drastically reduced immigration into the United States, to 1965, when many quotas were abolished—to understand how broad themes of race and citizenship are constructed. These years shaped the emergence of what Natalia Molina describes as an immigration regime, which defined the racial categories that continue to influence perceptions in the United States about Mexican Americans, race, and ethnicity. Molina demonstrates that despite the multiplicity of influences that help shape our concept of race, common themes prevail. Examining legal, political, social, and cultural sources related to immigration, she advances the theory that our understanding of race is socially constructed in relational ways—that is, in correspondence to other groups. Molina introduces and explains her central theory, racial scripts, which highlights the ways in which the lives of racialized groups are linked across time and space and thereby affect one another. How Race Is Made in America also shows that these racial scripts are easily adopted and adapted to apply to different racial groups. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 | 21 |
The Quest to Make Mexicans | 43 |
Birthright Citizenship beyond Black and White | 68 |
Making Race in the Twenty first Century | 139 |
Notes | 153 |
Bibliography | 161 |
153 | 183 |
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1924 Immigration Act African Americans aliens Archives argued arrested Asians Associated Farmers Berkeley Bhagat Singh Thind bills birthright citizenship blacks Border Patrol Bureau California Press chapter Chinese civil rights CJIC color Committee on Immigration counterscripts cultural debates demonstrate deportation disease eligible for citizenship Elysian Park Ethnic Eugenics federal Frances Perkins Gutiérrez historian House Committee immi Immigration and Naturalization immigration laws immigration regime Imperial Valley Indian ineligible Japanese Americans LACPFB Latino legislation Lipsitz Lytle Hernandez Mexi Mexican Americans Mexican immigration Mexican laborers Mexican workers Mexicans and Mexican Mexico migration Nation nonwhite numbers officers Operation Round-up Operation Wetback organization Ozawa People's Daily World political population Protection quotas racial hierarchy racial projects racial scripts racialized groups racism raids restrict Sánchez social Supreme Court syphilis tion U.S. citizen U.S. citizenship U.S. Congress U.S. Government undocumented unions United University of California University Press Wong Kim Ark York