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Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control
A revolutionary new history that exposes the “whites-only” roots of the American immigration regime.
MacArthur–winning historian Kelly Lytle Hernández argues that white supremacy has shaped every aspect of the American immigration regime in this nuanced and powerful new book. She explains how southern states passed some of the nation’s first immigration bans to restrict Black arrival in response to the 1791 Haitian revolution. She shows how the Supreme Court used a quartet of cases about Chinese exclusion to declare immigration law outside the guardrails of the Constitution. She reveals how eugenicists and segregationists of the early twentieth century built much of our modern immigration system, which was explicitly designed to be “whites-only.” And she details how much of the system's racist provisions survived civil rights movement reforms and remain in force today. Just as The Color of Law explained the structural damage of redlining and Stamped from the Beginning examined the deep roots of white supremacy, Racist by Design demonstrates how a complex legal machine, built by generations of lawmakers, continues to target nonwhite migrants for exclusion, punishment, and removal while creating a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalized workers to provide cheap labor for the American economy.
MacArthur–winning historian Kelly Lytle Hernández argues that white supremacy has shaped every aspect of the American immigration regime in this nuanced and powerful new book. She explains how southern states passed some of the nation’s first immigration bans to restrict Black arrival in response to the 1791 Haitian revolution. She shows how the Supreme Court used a quartet of cases about Chinese exclusion to declare immigration law outside the guardrails of the Constitution. She reveals how eugenicists and segregationists of the early twentieth century built much of our modern immigration system, which was explicitly designed to be “whites-only.” And she details how much of the system's racist provisions survived civil rights movement reforms and remain in force today. Just as The Color of Law explained the structural damage of redlining and Stamped from the Beginning examined the deep roots of white supremacy, Racist by Design demonstrates how a complex legal machine, built by generations of lawmakers, continues to target nonwhite migrants for exclusion, punishment, and removal while creating a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalized workers to provide cheap labor for the American economy.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published September 22, 2026
About the author
Kelly Lytle Hernández
8 books118 followersKelly Lytle Hernández holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! and City of Inmates. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
While it's not particularly surprising that U.S. immigration policy grew out of racism, white supremacy, and eugenics, Kelly Lytle Hernández does a phenomenal job of tracing its racist roots and illustrating how they still shape every element of the immigration system today. Even better, she always keeps one eye on how we dismantle the racist elements of the immigration system and provides hope that it can change. She's a MacArthur "Genius" for a reason, folks!
September 24, 2026
Like her other books, this is worth reading. A lot of it focuses on anti-Asian policies in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the need for American immigration policies to "contain" revolutions like those in Haiti, Mexico, and Cuba. There is no doubt that our immigration system is labyrinthine and difficult to understand, even for experts, and contradictory in many ways. Hernández also shows how eugenics and lobbying by extremist nativists like the KKK shaped American immigration policy, especially the 1924 Johnson-Reed act.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This is such a fascinating book that’s coming at such an important time. As Hernández says, this isn’t a book about Trump, but it’s still incredibly timely because it explores the racist foundations of the US immigration racket that Trump has been weaponizing and exploiting in new ways. This should be required reading for the politicians that insist American history should be white-washed because it proves just how pervasive and intense racism was (and still is) in US and state legislation and institutions.
One thing I wish the author explored more deeply is the assertion that for Black people, the Americas and early US were never truly a borderland in the same way. I thought the section on the immigration limitations for free Black people and fear that migration of any Black people from Europe/Caribbean (free or enslaved) would lead to slave revolts was very fascinating, especially the way that served as a socio-economic limitation for free Black people. Connecting these regional migration matters and the limits on them to the conceptualization of America as a borderland would have been really cool to read more about.
But discovering how much of our current immigration system, from its extra-constitutionality to immigration detainment centers, has its legal foundations in the late 19th century and anti-Asian/Chinese sentiment was really enlightening and demonstrated just how deep the rot goes in the U.S. immigration system. Overall, the book proves that immigration law in the US has never been universal and has always unfairly m targeted marginalized groups in intensely political ways.
The book is structured well and does a good job of inputting fun anecdotes and deep analysis to avoid falling into a more rote recitation of facts. While much of the book is about law, you definitely don’t have to have any previous knowledge, and the ways in which it connects law to history and today’s political environment makes it a book that should be interesting to lots of different readers.
This e-ARC was gifted by the publisher via NetGalley
One thing I wish the author explored more deeply is the assertion that for Black people, the Americas and early US were never truly a borderland in the same way. I thought the section on the immigration limitations for free Black people and fear that migration of any Black people from Europe/Caribbean (free or enslaved) would lead to slave revolts was very fascinating, especially the way that served as a socio-economic limitation for free Black people. Connecting these regional migration matters and the limits on them to the conceptualization of America as a borderland would have been really cool to read more about.
But discovering how much of our current immigration system, from its extra-constitutionality to immigration detainment centers, has its legal foundations in the late 19th century and anti-Asian/Chinese sentiment was really enlightening and demonstrated just how deep the rot goes in the U.S. immigration system. Overall, the book proves that immigration law in the US has never been universal and has always unfairly m targeted marginalized groups in intensely political ways.
The book is structured well and does a good job of inputting fun anecdotes and deep analysis to avoid falling into a more rote recitation of facts. While much of the book is about law, you definitely don’t have to have any previous knowledge, and the ways in which it connects law to history and today’s political environment makes it a book that should be interesting to lots of different readers.
This e-ARC was gifted by the publisher via NetGalley
October 3, 2026
The receipts in this 🙌 - just designers and writers of all our immigration laws explicitly saying over and over again how the goal is to keep nonwhite people out of the country and remove as many nonwhite people as possible from within the country. The goal of the writers of these laws has always been - and is to this day - to make America white. All of these policies are designed for that explicit purpose. They did not hide it, spoke about it openly, used it to shape the entire immigration apparatus. Fabulous read. It's just astounding to me that people act like we have overcome the worst tendencies of this country, meanwhile the stuff these people were saying when designing this racist system is exactly the stuff being said today.
We do not have to be our worst selves. The system can be dismantled. It doesn't have to be this way .
We do not have to be our worst selves. The system can be dismantled. It doesn't have to be this way .
September 28, 2026
“Racist by Design” is my second book by Kelly Lytle Hernández.
The author breaks down the history of U.S. immigration policy, showing from the very start it was rooted in racism, whether against black migrants or Chinese. At the same time, the first acceptance of refugees was white refugees fleeing a majority black nation. We explore the legal shifts and turns, and we see the openly stated motivations of the people who wrote the laws and court decisions that got us where we are today. We see the way the U.S. pioneered a new vision of what it meant to be a citizen.
This is an excellent and detailed overview of immigration policy. Although I’ve read more than a few books on the topic, there was still more to learn. And, I came away with an even stronger conviction that we should do away with all borders, there is no redeeming a system flawed at its core.
The author breaks down the history of U.S. immigration policy, showing from the very start it was rooted in racism, whether against black migrants or Chinese. At the same time, the first acceptance of refugees was white refugees fleeing a majority black nation. We explore the legal shifts and turns, and we see the openly stated motivations of the people who wrote the laws and court decisions that got us where we are today. We see the way the U.S. pioneered a new vision of what it meant to be a citizen.
This is an excellent and detailed overview of immigration policy. Although I’ve read more than a few books on the topic, there was still more to learn. And, I came away with an even stronger conviction that we should do away with all borders, there is no redeeming a system flawed at its core.
October 7, 2026
Examines how the US immigration machine targets nonwhite migrants for exclusion and removal.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews