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Book Review Of The Borderlands Of Race By Jennifer Nájera

1427 Words6 Pages

Book Review of The Borderlands of Race Tough in the legal level Mexican-origin people was regarded as white people, who had the full citizen rights back to the 20th century, Mexican-origin people was actually treated as the second class citizen in America who didn’t have the full access to the citizenship. The author, Jennifer R. Nájera delivers an entertaining and thoughtful account of the evolvement of racial problems among Mexican-origin people in the South Texas. The book, The Borderlands of Race, is a historical ethnography that demonstrates the suffering and resistance of Mexican-origin people following a chronical order and analyzes the Mexican segregation in the South Texas. Using interviews and local archives together with arguments …show more content…

There are two main parts in this book—the first part is about the racial segregation and the other focuses on racial integration. In the first part of the book, it explained how the segregation formed after the Mexican-American War and how the Mexican segregation accommodated social changed and individual exceptions to remain the society as an Anglo-dominated one. One interesting point proposed by Professor Nájera is that though some exceptional Mexican individuals were accepted in the Anglo society, such examples of acceptance is not de facto racial integration; instead, they show the flexibility of segregation, which indicates how ingrained and durable the segregation was. For the second part, just like the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin “Little strokes fell great oaks”, the everyday practice and effort from Mexican-origin people finally broke racial boundaries part by part and resulted in racial …show more content…

From the post Mexican-American war to late 1970s, ushers in the church always separated the seats of Mexican-origin people and the Anglos— they policed the racial boundaries among people (Nájera 2015: 135). Even more annoyingly, Mexican-origin people’s customs were not respected by the Anglos in the church. Mexican people used to have some popular religious practices, such as celebration of El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) (Nájera 2015: 45). Nevertheless, the Anglos didn’t allow their practices and criticized the Mexican-origin people for engaging in “ridiculous” activities (Nájera 2015: 46). Instead of applying the principle of culture relativism, the Anglos at that time judged Mexican people’s culture using their standards and misread the significance of Mexican people’s

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