How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts

by Natalia Molina

How 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Theory, School, American History

213 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Dr. Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Professor Molina is a 2020 MacArthur fellow, and her work sits at the intersections of race, culture, immigration, and citizenship with the goal of helping us understand everyday issues in the world today.

Reviews

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read. It's an academic text, so there's some repetitive explanation of the thesis, but the history and research is excellent and easy to read and follow. I learned a ton and I'm not new to this history. Highly, highly recommend

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Natalia Molina’s How Race Is Made in America examines the development of racial categories in the United States from the 1924 Immigration Act to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, focusing on the development of racial perceptions of Mexicans. Molina argues that racialized groups were acted upon in accordance in “racial scripts,” which collated norms, expected behaviors, and stereotypes regarding racialized groups and legislated them accordingly—these racial scripts were countered by “counterscripts” utilized by the racialized groups in question, which often sought either to prove their fitness to the “whiteness” label or resist categorization altogether. Although focusing on Mexicans and their racialization, Molina emphasizes that racial projects were simultaneous in American historical development: while Mexicans were “falling” from whiteness, others were becoming white, etc. (6-11).

The 1924 Immigration Act, which introduced immigration quotas for those entering the United States from the Eastern Hemisphere, did not affect Mexican immigration in terms of legislation. This led to a questioning of the application of act, and a discursive shift in the American political landscape in the demographic shift in a greater proportion of Mexican (because of reduced immigration from everywhere else), the “spread” of Mexican immigrants throughout the country rather than just southwestern agricultural regions, and accompanied the intensification of stereotypes regarding Mexican immigrants into the United States (21). In the 19th century, the racialization of Mexicans was split between a recognition of their “white” Spaniard heritage and determining to what extent indigeneity had affected them, pursuant to 19th century understandings of hierarchical whiteness rather than the blanket whiteness seen from the mid-20th century onwards (24-28). National dialogue around Mexican immigration, notably lacking the participation of Mexicans themselves, centered around benevolent but exploitative depictions of them as “bird of passage,” cheap laborers for southwestern agriculture, and aggressive “invaders” rhetoric bolstered by eugenics and “racialization biological reasoning.” Mexicans were a racial danger, possible sources of miscegenation, and discourse framed the solutions as deportation or violent removal. Facing these challenges, middle-class Mexicans and their children deployed racial scripts in an attempt to assert and maintain the whiteness that was recognized in the 19th century (28-41).

The judicial nullification of Asian citizenship in the late 19th and early 20th century provided an opening for opponents of Mexican immigration to try and make them ineligible for citizenship (43-44). The 1922 Ozama and 1923 Thind court cases, which invalidated Asian-American citizenship, was used by anti-immigrationists to attack Mexicans, demonstrating the relational perception of Mexicans to Asians (49). Always a center for anti-Asian agitation, California groups like the California Joint Immigration Committee, the Native Sons of the Golden Way, and the American Legion made significant lobbying efforts to attack Mexican immigration (53-58). Attempts to create a Mexican immigration quota failed, despite a brief victory with the case of Timoteo Andrade declaring Mexicans ineligible for U.S. citizenship because of “Indian” blood (58-63). Post-1930, the Immigration and Naturalization Service pursued a policy of treating Mexicans as white and continued immigration (64-66). These efforts to restrict immigration also extended to efforts to restrict birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, as stereotypes about the fertility of Asian-Americans and Mexican women proliferated concerns about demographic “explosion.” Although these efforts failed, it succeeded in attaching Asians and Mexicans further to non-whiteness and created a national system of segregation beyond Jim Crow, particularly in the West (70-88).

During the 1940s, “medical racialization” was pursued as a method of Mexican exclusion, particularly used by generally pro-immigration agricultural organizations like the Associated Farmers of California’s Imperial Valley to restrict, punish, and prevent labor radicalism (93-108). Beyond destroying the basis for Mexican-American labor organization for decades, these efforts contributed to the “development of a medicalized racial profile that served to make Mexicans deportable,” particularly tarring them with allegation of syphilis and other transmittable disease (109). The 1950s, particularly in the execution of Operations Round-Up and Wetback, saw a groundswell of support for Mexican immigrants from left-liberal and holdover Popular Front organizations which sought to connect the shared histories of Black and Jewish Americans with the treatment of Mexican immigrants and their oftentimes citizen families. Although opposition did not stop the mass deportation, it reveals the interconnected nature of racialization by the American state in one of its most repressive actions of the 1950s (113-132).

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natalia Molina’s How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and Historical Power of Racial Scripts focuses on the development and evolution of concepts of race in the United States from 1924 to the twenty-first century. Molina’s main contribution surrounds the creation of racial scripts. Legal systems reinforced racial stereotypes that serve as the foundation of racial categories in America. Mass-migration from Mexico to the United States to meet labor demands challenged the existing black-white binaries of race and led to the development of new racial categories. Arguing that legal precedent and legislation serves as the foundation of American racialization, Molina relies on legal documents in crafting her argument. How Race is Made in America contends that while the 1924 Immigration Act’s exclusion of Mexicans on immigration limits was inspired by Anglo-American desires for continued cheap labor led to the development of racial scripts to separate Mexican Americans from concepts of whiteness, associating Mexican Americans with undesirable traits including crime and disease.

[jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

highly informative and a theoretical break from how most scholars approach ethnic studies in a siloed or strictly comparative way. molina argues that racialization of one group is heavily informed and shaped by the racialization of other groups and that the attitudes/policies/practices targeted at one is easily transferred to others. the info about immigration policies itself wasn’t new to me and probably won’t be new to others who are familiar w the key legislation, but molina casts this information in a new light. for example, i was really familiar w wong kim ark because of asian american studies but knew so little about the cable act and was surprised that both are separately known within asian american studies and women studies respectively but molina ties them together to create a broader narrative around immigration. super clearly written and not that long! i’ll be thinking abt relational racialization for a while.

[Nathan Willard · Rating 3 out of 5]

How Race is Made in America tells the story of how the United States's complicated relationship with Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants developed between the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo and the modern era. The early historical chapters tell the fascinating story of Mexican de jure whiteness (which eventually led to the "white, non-hispanic" category on so many forms) with American perceptions of race as they evolved from black/non-black. As the book goes on, the chapters get less information-dense, which is the reason for the 3-star review. But the first few chapters explain a lot and the illustrations really give you a feel for the legal, illegal, and extra-legal contortions we had to go through to keep Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans in a contingent space.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book on how race is relational. And how through the creation racial scripts we adhere to rules. We perceive certain races through scopes of which have been created in most times in vitriolic ways.

This book focuses on race through the lens in which Mexicans have been perceived within this country. From the creation of the term “illegal immigration.” How long held beliefs of one group of people is in turn applied to others. How race is created and changing in order to fulfill a script/narrative that is most beneficial to the nation state.

How once we abandon such unscrupulous ideologies we will never know true liberation. True workers unity/solidarity will come when we free ourselves of the chain (harmful and racist ideologies) of the man!

[Douglas Biggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give it a 3.5 but I can’t. All the research is good and I don’t disagree with anything written, but it was all very dry. I also would have liked more details on some of the court cases and anecdotes that the author brought up. It was 150 pages that could have been 250 and it would have been better

[Mike Mena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent contribution to Race Formation Theory. Molina masterfully focuses on the relational aspect of racial formation.

[Maddie Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for an immigration history class—- so well written so easy to follow so important and fascinating could not recommend enough

[Zach]

Read for class

[SandersonLover · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a hard subject no matter who writes it. She brings in a lot of good points about how race is a social construct, how immigration worked with Mexicans and such.

[Sofia Best · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it for a history/legal studies class

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Brief review forthcoming.