Invention of the white race

[Rakesh Bhandari]

I am not sure what I say here is correct, but it does seem that  The 1924
Anti-Immigration Act was not justified by a racial eugenic
ideology. Richard Herrnstein actually studied the Congressional Record and
found no use of eugenic ideology to justify the closing of  the borders.
Rather, he argues, the overriding concern was the threat to a unified
national culture. I agree with James H that conflict was thus understood
in cultural/ethnic terms in the case  of European immigrants. They were
never racialized in the same way blacks were (subject to eugenic
regulation for the genetic health of the nation and subject to
miscegenation taboos and laws--limpiazar de sangre) or, for that matter,
the way homosexuals and the insane were in Germany (see Michael Burleigh
and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State, Germany, 1933-1945. Cambridge
Universit Press; Stefan Kuehl, The Nazi-American connection; Michel
Foucault's lectures on state racism). These immigrants may have become
white but they hadn't been racialized in the first place. The
deracialization of Blacks and Chicanos has yet to be realized in my
opinion (see e.g., Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body. Pantheon,
1997; Rickie Lee Solinger Wake Up Little Susie: Race and Pregnancy since
Roe)
best, rakesh