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


How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts
Title : How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0520957199
ISBN-10 : 9780520957190
Format Type : ebook
Number of Pages : 213
Publication : First published January 1, 2013

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: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts Reviews

  • Hope

    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

  • jo

    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.

  • Mike Mena

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

  • Maddie Brown

    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

  • Sandra

    Excellent! Brief review forthcoming.