The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Volume 2)

by Neil Foley

In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other. The White Scourge describes a unique borderlands region, where the cultures of the South, West, and Mexico overlap, to provide a deeper understanding of the process of identity formation and to challenge the binary opposition between "black" and "white" that often dominates discussions of American race relations.

In Texas, which by 1890 had become the nation's leading cotton-producing state, the presence of Mexican sharecroppers and farm workers complicated the black-white dyad that shaped rural labor relations in the South. With the transformation of agrarian society into corporate agribusiness, white racial identity began to fracture along class lines, further complicating categories of identity. Foley explores the "fringe of whiteness," an ethno-racial borderlands comprising Mexicans, African Americans, and poor whites, to trace shifting ideologies and power relations. By showing how many different ethnic groups are defined in relation to "whiteness," Foley redefines white racial identity as not simply a pinnacle of status but the complex racial, social, and economic matrix in which power and privilege are shared.

Foley skillfully weaves archival material with oral history interviews, providing a richly detailed view of everyday life in the Texas cotton culture. Addressing the ways in which historical categories affect the lives of ordinary people, The White Scourge tells the broader story of racial identity in America; at the same time it paints an evocative picture of a unique American region. This truly multiracial narrative touches on many issues central to our understanding of American history: labor and the role of unions, gender roles and their relation to ethnicity, the demise of agrarian whiteness, and the Mexican-American experience.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Labor, Race, Sociology, Politics, American History

341 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 1997

Reviews

[Sarah]

This book is a mixed bag of academic history. The beginning starts strong and cohesive, but the middle and end overwhelm the reader with a LOT of details, names, acronyms, and too many different concepts showed into every chapter. Chapters 6 and 7 were the worst, trying to cover too much ground to keep the chapter readable and on task. It is not a history text that engages the reader in a cohesive story (unlike an excellent historical text I read recently about race titled Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus). While the message of this historical text is very real, very useful, and very important, I think only the most dedicated history students and professors will see it through to the end. I think that the whole book could have benefited from a narrowing of place or time frame rather then trying shove it all in together.



That said, the first three chapters were very well written because they avoided these pitfalls, so if you are interested in this kind of history, you might only want to read the first half of this long tome.

[Esteban Stipnieks · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mother is a Latina my dad a Latvian refugee. This book 1st and foremost is interesting as it describes life on the western and southwestern fringe of Dixie. The Blackland Paririe lies at its southern most point lies perched at the base of the Edwards Plateau and right at the peak of Spanish settlement in Texas. He gets its border wrong it is not NORTH of San Antonio but NORTHEAST.... precise borders matter San Antonio itself is the intersection of the 3 internal states of Texas: Dixie, New Spain, and WEST. Foley gets accurately the complexities on the issue of preceptions of race and ethnicity..... even within the HIspanic community! Foley touches on how seemingly similiar family names may have different origins, from colonial Spanish to those who immigrated during the Mexican revolution at the turn of 20th century and later. I reading this book understood my mom's and maternal grandmothers obsession with being CLEAN as opposed to being a GREASER. If you want to start going in depth about Hispanics in Texas and the Borderlands this a good place to start.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this book more for the sociology aspects, but it was really more about economics, at least until the conclusion.

Race relations were a factor all along, and the perennial message is probably that we need to get over racism because that division causes all other efforts for something better to fail.

It is impressive, but familiar, exactly how shameless the greed of the landowners can be.

[Megan Darby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and great read. He doesn't always define his terms. Perspective on history that I don't see frequently.

[sdw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neil Foley examines the production of racial identities through the multi-racial cotton culture of Texas. Foley asserts that in the Anglo-Mexican clashes of the Southwest collide with Black-White relations in the South, allowing a unique window into racial formation. As Foley points out, if one counts Texas as Southern (as the census did until 1930), the South, not the west, was home to more Mexicans than any other part of the country. Thus, Foley’s book engages with two questions close to my heart: critiquing/examining/understanding racial ideologies (especially outside a black-white binary), and the production of regional identities (including how the existence of regional identities shapes the production of knowledge). Additionally, Foley is aware of class, and the ways in which class complicates race. Thus poor whites are racialized by rich whites (the discussion of the eugenics movement in the introduction offers a sophisticated way of explaining this). To give you an example of Foley’s work: “Since not all European groups became white at the same time or came to enjoy the ‘property right” in whiteness equally, the fissuring of whiteness in the region into Nordic white businessmen farmers and poor white tenants is a central concern of this study, for ‘white trash’ ruptured the convention that maintained whiteness as an unmarked and normative racial identity.” So to literally rearrange Foley’s own words, the processes of racialization and white racial construction structured systems of domination and subordination through the overlap of economic systems and racial hierarchies (9). While I have obligingly added footnotes to Foley (who clearly influenced my own thinking, whether I realized it at the time or not), a more conscious engagement with Foley on my part will clearly help me rethink my discussion of race and the dustbowl migration.
Chapter one examines the way the Texas Revolution and war with Mexico was formative in the racializing of Mexicans as non-white. Chapter 2 looks at post 1910 Mexican immigration to Texas as a “second color menace”. Chapter 3 looks at issues of land-tenure with regards to race, class and gender identities of various positions in the multiple hierarchies of domination at work. Chapter 4 moves to an examination of the Socialist Party in Texas, which organized both Anglo and Mexican tenant farmers between 1911 and 1917, the Renters Union, and the Land League, who attempted to use the model of the Brotherhood of Timberworkers (BTW) in east Texas and Louisiana. Chapter 5 engages the intersection of race and technology, especially the influence of “scientific management.” Chapter 6 looks at “the ideology of yeoman manhood served as the linchpin of gendered whiteness.” Chapters7 and 8 examine the influence of the New Deal, specifically in regards to the “racialization of the rural workforce” and the resistance of the workers to class exploitation. The Southern Tenant Union is the force of resistance in this story. It was composed of segregated locals but included Mexican, black, and white sharecroppers.
The book is very well written. The language is very clear. The context given is enough to be understood and not enough to confuse. Even more amazingly, I believe this is Foley’s first book. Its quite a feat to accomplish so much in form and content in a first book-length publication.

[Andy Villanueva III · Rating 3 out of 5]

Foley's most accomplished work to date, gives a great argument on the class-struggle not only through race but through financial earnings.