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This chapter deals with the impact of American racism on the Issei, which contributed to the development of a distinct racial identity among them in relation to other borderland residents. This process occurred at the level of their daily struggle as a racial(ized) minority — self-consciously identified as “the Japanese in America [zaibei doho]” — on the basis of shared interests in and concerns with power relations in the American West. Examining the critical linkages between white exclusionist politics and immigrant counterstruggles, the chapter explores the grassroots level of community formation, which coincided with the partial consolidation of immigrant leadership during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Bigger Thomas, one of Richard Wright’s most memorable and distinctive fictional creations, has been interpreted in vastly different ways. This is partly because readers bring to Native Son different sets of beliefs about US capitalism, about the psychology of US racism, about the spiritual resources of black communities, and about the commitments and priorities of the United States government. This chapter, by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, compares how Irving Howe, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright interpreted Bigger’s story. The comparison reminds us of the variety of political projects to which the story can be put to use, and the possible futures for the United States—from working-class fascism, to state-led progressivism, to black communalism, to interracial fantasies and nightmares—that Bigger’s tale can illuminate.

This chapter reports on observations of racism and racial framing in interaction made by college students at several universities on the east coast and in the midwest. The students represent many backgrounds and racial identities. But in the US they are all forced to identify in terms of the Black/White racial binary. Asian American students, who are identified as neither, face a constant perception that they are not American, while West Indian and African students are forced into a Black American category unfamiliar to them. This is not only a problem for minorities. White students are virtually surrounded by racism they cannot escape. It happens in their dorm rooms, in the cafeteria, classrooms, the library and walking across campus. We refer to this as “Race Pollution.” In addition to observations of Black/White racism in the US, we present observations of racism against Asians and Asian Americans that illustrate the tacit assumptions about being “foreign” that are at work. We also explore some of the complications of Latinx/Hispanic and West Indian/African identities, and consider how racism toward Latinx /Hispanic Americans, refugees, and immigrants is positioned not only against the Black/ White binary, but also against an old seventeenth-century Anglo/Spanish antagonism.

This chapter applies a person-centered ethnographic approach to examine how African cultural change and racial mixture within Native American communities contributed to new definitions of being and belonging and the relationship these definitions share with historical and contemporary race-making practices in the United States. Drawing on life histories obtained during the creation of the Smithsonian’s traveling banner exhibit IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas and evidence from the anthropological and historical records, the author, Robert Keith Collins, traces changing racial attitudes among Native Americans toward African populations living among them as citizens and slaves, the relationship between African cultural change and sense of being and belonging, and manifestations of Native American racism. Collins concludes by highlighting how all of these areas influence historical and future understandings of the dynamics of African and Native American racial mixture and African-Native American self-understanding and experiences of belonging within Native America.

This chapter discusses the growth of power of Negroes and racial violence that occurred sometime during World War II. This may be because the government depended a lot on the cooperation of the Negroes during World War II. It is noted however, that discrimination in the army and the lack of black combat units was still present, and these became the two most bitterly resented aspects of American racism during the war. By the mid-1940s the number of racial incidents slowly decreased, which convinced many people of the value of moderation. The growth of Negro political power also stimulated hope for change.

This chapter focuses on Heschel's abhorrence of American racism, which he witnessed as soon as he stepped off the boat in 1940. This feeling deepened with his friendships with Larry Harris and Abraham Cronbach in Cincinnati, through which he learned more about the prejudices African Americans endured. Having experienced the ravages of European anti-Semitism, American racism was nothing new to Heschel. In 1958, he began to speak out publicly, making a sharp pronouncement to the Rabbinical Assembly deploring “our timidity and hesitance to take a stand on behalf of the Negroes.” In 1963, as the civil rights movement increasingly dominated national attention, he realized that his time to act had arrived.

This chapter examines 19th- and 20th-century cultural representations of Asians, American Indians, and mestizos in southern culture. Situating the “partly colored” as interpretive occasions, it witnesses segregation-era attempts to force subjects into recognizable roles, focusing on the ways in which “Asianness” in particular became articulated in terms of its proximity to the “Negro.” Moreover, the chapter looks at one arena in which the administration of segregation simultaneously acknowledged and erased gradations of color: anti-miscegenation law. In recalling the ways in which state laws prohibiting marriage between “Negroes” and whites implicated and created other “colored” subjects, it argues that such erasures have specific consequences for conceiving African Americans as the proper subjects of grievance in the post–Brown v. Board of Education moment. At stake is not so much a new conception of white supremacy, but an understanding of the ways in which American racism becomes narrated.

This chapter studies the dehumanizing discourses of American-style racism that compared black and yellow people to gorillas, apes, and orangutans. This act and signification is seen as a means to justify the array of legal, political, social, and religious ideologies that upheld the lethal system of racial discrimination and segregation. Some examples of such discrimination can be seen, from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia to the mocking Civil War and Reconstruction-era cartoons of Thomas Nast’s Harper’s Bazaar. Against the Asians, there was the Yellow Peril propaganda of World War II and anti-Chinese rhetoric. The chapter then talks about the connection between the guerilla subjectivity that African Americans and Asian Americans adopted and the term “gorilla,” suggesting that there remains an echo which only adds another layer of meaning to the concepts expounded upon in this chapter.

This chapter details the events of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held at the American Museum of Natural History. To Henry Fairfield Osborn, museum director and paleontologist, eugenics is a social movement that has a serious impact upon human populations through the improvement of genetic stock. The exhibit mainly comprised racial models, photographs, pedigree charts, collective biographies, analytical tables illustrating racial changes, and scientific reprints on eugenical and genetical subjects. It displayed how the language of science and heredity were incorporated into the American zeitgeist to represent the intellectual justification behind the harmful ideology of American racism. Generally, the 1920s witnessed a comprehensive response to racial science by biologists, anthropologists, geneticists, and social scientists in terms of developing research in support or in challenging the assumptions of racial science.

This final chapter explores the ways in which shipping companies both attempted to prevent and successfully blocked the implementation of numerous American laws restricting the passage of migrants. It examines immigration policies implemented at Ellis Island - including analysis of the various reasons for denial of entry and the actions of unsympathetic Ellis Island leaders; migration as an issue of race politics; the impact of the Immigration Acts of 1903, 1907, and the Dillingham-Burnett Bill; gate issues surrounding immigration; and the interference of shipping companies in racist immigrant selection processes. It concludes that shipping companies were vigorous in their efforts to guarantee their right to land their passengers, and would circulate information through agent networks detailing how migrants could pass through tightened border controls.

The Introduction explores the author’s major personality characteristic of rebelliousness that serves as the platform for the rest of the book. It defines “black dance” and the debate about whether there is even such a thing. The chapter also investigates the problem with American racism as it has been reflected in the world of dance.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, La Guardia and Eleanor Roosevelt visited the West Coast. Part fact-finding mission, part-morale raising tour, their visit failed to quell the rising fears that more attacks were coming and that the nation was virtually defenseless. As the face of home defense, La Guardia came under fire for his hysterical oratory, his confused messages, and his inflammatory admonishments that civilians had better follow his prescriptions—or else risk death. La Guardia—even though he was not explicitly faulted for letting down the Navy’s guard—became swept up in the sense that home defense had failed to meet its acid test and that Americans had died in an attack the government had failed to anticipate. His tour of the West Coast, as his city experienced chaos, revived the charge that nobody could serve as mayor and home defense chief simultaneously.