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Introduction Finding Mexico’s Chinese, Encountering the Mestizo State

Jason Oliver Chang

in Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940

This chapter introduces the subject of the Chinese presence in Mexico through their distorted representation in a state museum. The history of Chinese Mexicans provides new ways to analyze the ... More

This chapter introduces the subject of the Chinese presence in Mexico through their distorted representation in a state museum. The history of Chinese Mexicans provides new ways to analyze the formation of mestizo national identity in Revolutionary Mexico. This chapter introduces the significance of the 1917 constitution by linking its legal definition of the government’s obligation to protect the population with the historical development of racial domination. The methodological approach of an Asian Americanist critique is explored to show why attention to the discursive and ideological construction of racialized Asian difference is important to conceptions of the Mexican national state. In showing the centrality of race in the Mexican governance, the chapter lays out a comparative racial formation approach that examines the role of anti-Chinese politics in the reformulation of citizenship, state power, and national identity after the 1910 revolution.Less

The Politics of Chinese Immigration in the Era of Mexican National Colonization

Jason Oliver Chang

in Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940

This chapter tells the history of Mexican colonization policy through the nineteenth century to provide a detailed context to understand the integration of Chinese immigration. Attention to national ... More

This chapter tells the history of Mexican colonization policy through the nineteenth century to provide a detailed context to understand the integration of Chinese immigration. Attention to national colonization reforms shows how racial ideology governed the relationship between land, indigenous people, and the state. With a large population and rich resources government officials blamed the lack of economic success on the racial inferiority of the majority indigenous population. When the political elites of Porfirio Diaz’s regime turned to Chinese immigration to address what they perceived as the republic’s racial deficiency they initiated a political drama that would shape the coming revolution in 1910 and deeply influence the reconstruction of the Mexican racial state. Because recruited Chinese labor was designed to alter the relationship between territory, Indians, and the government, racialized discourse about the Chinese reached right into the heart of Mexican politics.Less

Conclusion

Jason Oliver Chang

in Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940

This chapter concludes the book by first reflecting on the legacy of antichinismo in Mexican culture by reflecting on the 1970s exhumation and relocation of hundreds of Chinese peoples’ graves in ... More

This chapter concludes the book by first reflecting on the legacy of antichinismo in Mexican culture by reflecting on the 1970s exhumation and relocation of hundreds of Chinese peoples’ graves in Mexicali, Baja California. The pervasive character of antichinismo in Mexican culture in the 1930s is traced through the substitute presidency of Ábelardo Rodríguez. Rodriguez gained national notoriety as a leading antichinista in his role as governor of Baja California. His presidency represents the ascendancy of antichinismo to an ideology of the mestizo racial state. This ideology is traced through the legal discourse and juridical formulations in Rodríguez’s policy platform. Antichinismo became a popular way to expand state power by appealing to the 1917 constitution’s social-rights mandate to protect the Mexican people. From bureaucratic reforms to a whole slate of policy areas including health, land, sex education, and nationality, antichinismo helped people define the public good. A lynching of three Chinese men in Villa Aldama is examined as an example of the racial violence inspired by state led Mexicanization. Antichinismo was strongest not when it expelled Chinese people from Mexican territory, but when it built consent for incorporation into the revolutionary government’s regimentation of economic, social, and sexual life. Antichinistas at various levels of government made mestizo nationalism a popular identity of state incorporation, one that traded social rights and state dependency for indigeneity and sovereignty. The chapter concludes by examining this process of race and state formation in Baja California during a period of agrarian unrest known as El Asalto a las Tierras in 1937 in which hundreds of Mexican people evicted thousands of Chinese farmers from lands in the Colorado River basin.Less

Introduction

Marion A. Kaplan

in Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

The book recounts the lives of Jews in Nazi Germany and delves into their day-to-day lives within their homes, amongst their families, and within their communities. The author traces the beginnings ... More

The book recounts the lives of Jews in Nazi Germany and delves into their day-to-day lives within their homes, amongst their families, and within their communities. The author traces the beginnings of Nazi oppression and examines the reasons why the Jews reacted in the manner that they did. Throughout the book, anecdotes and accounts gleaned from survivors and their personal correspondences are presented and analyzed. Part of the account deals with the daily lives of Jewish women and their history in Germany. The insights gleaned from this study reveal part of the reason why the Jews were perceived to be ambivalent or slow in realizing the dangers of Nazi oppression. The book balances the discussion with the inclusion of the experiences and consciousness of average Germans in the same period. The section ends with an overview of the Jewish community before 1933 and after the establishment of a racial state.Less

The Politics of Professional Talk

in The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich

This chapter examines the political aspects of the participation of German geneticists in national and international conferences, explaining that Nazi officials provided these geneticists with the ... More

This chapter examines the political aspects of the participation of German geneticists in national and international conferences, explaining that Nazi officials provided these geneticists with the means to host and participate in conferences where they could publicly bestow their professional blessings on the “racial state.” It describes how prominent scientists such as Ernst Rüdin,, Eugen Fischer, and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer bore the Nazi racial banner in these events and enhanced the prestige of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science.Less

The Racial State and Totalitarian Society: Plato as Philosopher-King, or The Third Reich as Second Sparta

Johann Chapoutot

in Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe's Classical Past

This chapter discusses the reading of Plato offered by Nazism and consequently by a large part of the German academy in the 1930s and 1940s, which understood Plato as the philosopher of dictatorship ... More

This chapter discusses the reading of Plato offered by Nazism and consequently by a large part of the German academy in the 1930s and 1940s, which understood Plato as the philosopher of dictatorship and the racial state. Here, Plato and his theory of the three races, the tripartite state of philosopher-kings, soldiers, and producers, had become the Helleno-Nordic precursor to National Socialist racism and its conception of society. Moreover, between 1933 and 1945, Plato remained strongly linked to Sparta. A racist, eugenicist, military state, Sparta received Hitler's seal of approval for its biological selectionism as the first truly racist and Nordic state, a legitimate precursor to the Third Reich.Less

Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy

Andrea Smith

in Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter examines the interrelationships among indigeneity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy within the context of Michael Omi and Howard Winant's concept of the racial state. It argues ... More

This chapter examines the interrelationships among indigeneity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy within the context of Michael Omi and Howard Winant's concept of the racial state. It argues that insufficient exchange between ethnic studies and Native studies prevents us from imagining an alternative to the racial state, and especially the development of a decolonization framework. It explains how the lack of attention to settler colonialism hinders the analysis of race and white supremacy developed by scholars who focus on race and racial formation. It also challenges the manner in which ethnic studies has formulated the study of race relations and how people-of-color organizing within the United States has formulated models for racial solidarity. Finally, it considers emerging intellectual and political projects that point to new directions in addressing the intersecting logics of white supremacy and settler colonialism.Less

“South Africa Is Experiencing an All-Out Attack by Permissiveness”: Communism, Immorality, and the Disintegration of Apartheid Culture

Susanne M. Klausen

in Abortion Under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women's Reproductive Rights in South Africa

This chapter explains that by the 1960s, Afrikaner nationalists were convinced white South Africa—supposedly a moral bastion on the so-called Dark Continent—was the target of a conspiracy. The enemy ... More

This chapter explains that by the 1960s, Afrikaner nationalists were convinced white South Africa—supposedly a moral bastion on the so-called Dark Continent—was the target of a conspiracy. The enemy was international communism that aimed to take over the country to secure its lucrative natural resources, a conviction that arose at a time when the cold war was raging and African anti-colonial movements across the continent were gaining ground. To Afrikaner nationalists, communists fomented immorality and “permissiveness” in order to weaken whites’ fortitude, paving the way for a communist takeover. Promiscuity, and abortion’s role in promoting it, was perceived as a serious threat to white survival because the traditional (patriarchal) family was a cornerstone of the racial state. During apartheid, the law dictated that sex could take place only between men and women of the same race, joined in marriage.Less