Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California

by Tomás Almaguer

This book unravels the ethnic history of California since the late nineteenth-century Anglo-American conquest and institutionalization of "white supremacy" in the state. Almaguer comparatively assesses the struggles for control of resources, status, and political legitimacy between the European American and the Native American, Mexican, African-American, Chinese, and Japanese populations. Drawing from an array of primary and secondary sources, he weaves a detailed, disturbing portrait of ethnic, racial, and class relationships during this tumultuous time.

The U.S. annexation of California in 1848 and the simultaneous discovery of gold sparked rapid and diverse waves of immigration westward, displacing the already established pastoral Mexican society. Almaguer shows how the confrontation between white immigrants and the Mexican ranchero and working class populations was also a contestation over racial status in which racialization influenced and was in turn influenced by class position in the changing economic order. Partly because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which granted U.S. citizenship and other rights, parts of the Mexican population were integrated into the emerging Anglo society more easily than other racialized groups. A case study of Ventura County highlights declining political and economic fortunes of the Mexican elite while showing how Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian populations were permanently relegated to the bottom of the class structure as unskilled manual workers.

The fate of the Native American population provides perhaps the most extreme example of white supremacy during the period. Popular conceptions of Native Americans as "uncivilized and "heathen," justified the killing of more than 8,000 men, women, and children between 1848 and 1870. Many survivors were incorporated at the periphery of Anglo society, often as indentured laborers and virtual slaves.

Underpinning the institutional structuring of white supremacy were notions such as "manifest destiny," the inherent good of the capitalist wage-system, and the superiority of Christianity and Euro-American culture, all of which helped to marginalize non white groups in California and justify Anglo-American class dominance. As other racialized groups assumed new roles, Almaguer assesses the complex interplay between economic forces and racial attitudes that simultaneously structured and allocated "group position" in the new social hierarchy.

California remains a contested racial frontier, as political struggles over the rights and opportunities of different groups continue to reverberate along racial lines. Racial Fault Lines is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of ethnicity and class in America, and the social construction of "race" in the Far West.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction, Ethnic Studies, Anti Racist, Grad School, Cultural Studies

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 1994

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

What stands out most clearly from this comparative history is that European Americans at every class level sought to create, maintain, or extend their privileged access to racial entitlements in California. California was, in the final analysis, initially envisioned as a white masculinist preserve. It bears recalling that the European American editors of one of the territory's first English-language newspapers, the Californian, proclaimed in 1848, "We desire only a white population in California." The ominous consequences of this bald proclamation are painfully captured in the essays that document the treatment of the Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native American population in white supremacist California.

Before I really started digging into critical race theory, terms like white supremacy would get my back up a little, it made me think of Nazis and fascists not 'regular' white Americans. And in my head the problem has been not so much with the far right (though I won't deny they're a problem) but rather with how "regular" Americans have come to hold and enforce racist ideologies and structures. You go back to the not so distant past though, and you realise that in terms of racism, most of white America has in fact been sided the far right. Almaguer makes the very early history come alive, and the number of people who casually talk about the extermination of the indians, the rape and slavery that occurred, the treatment of the Japanese and Chinese immigrants and the public discourse around it all is shocking, even when you thought you knew most of it and were protected by cynicism.

This book does a great job of exploding the black/white binary, noting its impact, but studying in depth the historical and social formation of race, arguing that in California in its early formation race was primary (though never ignoring class and gender, indeed he argues that these are required for any understanding of California's history)

In the final analysis, group access to jobs, land, legal rights, housing, and other basic structures of opportunity was initially institutionalized in the nineteenth century as an enactment of group interests, to retain privileged access to social rewards for European Americans. It was one that was socially crafted and reproduced along often ambiguously delineated but socially conferred racial lines.

That is the beauty of this book, the way it looks at how race stratified, the ways in which different groups were accorded different statuses and how this fit within the larger historical context and capitalist economy.

That said, my favourite section was on the Japanese Mexican Labor Association who won the first agricultural strike in 1903. There are some awesome original documents reproduced, and it's the most inspiring thing I've read in a while! Even if the AFL proved as nasty and racist as usual.

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this important book today. California has a much darker history than most people think, not just of one of the worst genocides in history in relation to the indigenous peoples, with the declaration of statehood and the "extermination" campaigns that ended up with bounties for the heads of indigenous men, women, and children, including here in the Central Valley (which had 277 "sundown towns") and the systematic reduction of the indigenous population in California from 150,000 in 1848 to 13,000 by around the 1880's, but it was founded upon the vision articulated by the first California English-language newspaper, "The Californian" in 1848 that, "We desire only a white population in California." This book traces the origins of white supremacist ideas in California history and how these ideas oppressed all "other" groups in California through legal and extra-legal means. It is important history and too few know it or teach it. As Malcolm said, "they don't want to even admit the knife is there." Much respect to the true scholar and people's historian Dr. Paul Gilmore for the recommendation of the book when I was taking his class on California history. There's a good reason Mark Arax uses him as a reference for his books.

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful collection of essays on the experiences of Native American, Mexican, African-American, Chinese, and Japanese populations and the unique challenges they faced throughout California's history.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I found this book

[Kari B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually had this professor and his book is marvelous. It has a very gruesome retelling of Native American genocide and recollected memories that their ancestors were able to tell--but the book discusses how European settlers created white supremacy by continuing land theft, mass genocide, and continuing racial divides between the Chinese, Mexican, Native, and Japanese all in relation to the Anglo. I would definitely recommend this read--although I feel like sometimes he would repeat himself with over-summarizations, that may be helpful if you're not looking for an incredibly dense book, but one that tells you the historical perspective of the history of California--WITHOUT being too academic about it.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Key background piece for the early development of race in CA before 1900. Classic in ethnic studies. Great material on Californios and native americans, though material on chinese relies almost exclusivly on secondary sources. Maybe b/c author comes out of sociology and I'm more of a history person, but I wasn't totally satisfied and felt sometimes analysis was reduced to summerizations of historical works.

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth is for the letters from The Japanese-Mexican Labor Association alone. Lovely anomoly (?) of history the JMLA.

[Mills College Library]

305.80097 A444 2009