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We Know We're Not White: Author Interview on San Diego Weekly
Reader
aGomez sets out to write aan antidote to historical amnesia
about the key nineteenth-century events that produced the first
Mexican Americans.a A law professor at the University of New
Mexico, Gomez takes a three-pronged approach: she looks at Chicano
history via sociology, history, and law, using New Mexico as a case
study. At the heart of the book is the idea that Manifest Destiny
was not, according to Gomez, a neutral political theory. Rather, it
was a potent ideology that endowed white Americans with a sense of
entitlement to the land and racial superiority over its
inhabitants.a
--"La Bloga"
aShows the impacts (then, as now) of the dominant white racist
frame coming in from outside what was once northern
Mexico.a--"Racism Review"
"[A]n interesting and comprehensive look at what New Mexicans
really lost after being conquered by the United States."
--"The Albuquerque Journal"
aGomezas insights into the struggles at play in the
nineteenth-century Southwest are extremely relevant for today--a
time in which identity politics are still predominant in
discussions about culture. . . . With Chicanos making up the
youngest racial group in America (34 percent are under the age of
18), the complicated relationship between the U.S. and its Mexican
citizens is clearly something that is going to be on the table for
a long time to come. Manifest Destinies presents a portrait of the
forces that were present when this group was still in its
infancy.a
--"Pop Matters"
aAre Mexican Americans a racial or ethnic group? This is the
important question ManifestDestinies asks and answers. . . .
Marvelous, dense, and richly researched.a
--Ramon A. Gutierrez, University of Chicago
aHighlights the largely neglected history of multiracial
populations that, throughout our nationas history, have come
together along the frontier. With her analysis of racial ideologies
. . . Gomez promises to make a valuable contribution to this
literature.a
--Rachel Moran, author of "Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of
Race and Romance"
aAnyone interested in understanding the historical experience of
the largest ethnic group in the country will find Manifest
Destinies both timely and of great interest. . . . Simply put, her
work is first rate in every way.a
--Tomas Almaguer, author of "Racial Fault Lines: The Historical
Origins of White Supremacy in California"
In both the historic record and the popular imagination, the
story of nineteenth-century westward expansion in America has been
characterized by notions of annexation rather than colonialism, of
opening rather than conquering, and of settling unpopulated lands
rather than displacing existing populations.
Using the territory that is now New Mexico as a case study,
Manifest Destinies traces the origins of Mexican Americans as a
racial group in the United States, paying particular attention to
shifting meanings of race and law in the nineteenth century.
Laura E. Gomez explores the central paradox of Mexican American
racial status as entailing the law's designation of Mexican
Americans as "white" and their simultaneous social position as
non-white in American society. She tells a neglected story of
conflict, conquest, cooperation, and competition among Mexicans,
Indians, andEuro-Americans, the regionas three main populations who
were the key architects and victims of the laws that dictated what
oneas race was and how people would be treated by the law according
to oneas race.
Gomezas pathbreaking work--spanning the disciplines of law,
history, and sociology--reveals how the construction of Mexicans as
an American racial group proved central to the larger process of
restructuring the American racial order from the Mexican War
(1846-48) to the early twentieth century. The emphasis on
white-over-black relations during this period has obscured the
significant role played by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the
colonization of northern Mexico in the racial subordination of
black Americans.
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