The purpose of this essay is to analyze the roles of race and class played in the history of the area that’s depicted in the book “Dying to Live: A Story of US Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid”. The book examines, at great length, the history of Imperial Valley that’s associated with race and class types.
The Imperial Valley truly represents the separation of race and class that embarked the nature’s course of enjoying the virtues of life, but banned others from doing so. The division between whites and nonwhites, “Americans” and “Mexicans”, and other groups, was the cause of making the Imperial Valley the way it is since it was established as a political economic society. The basis of race and class determined the relationship between
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Even though the Anglos were the largest group in the society, the ethnic and racial structure was very diverse towards the 20th century. The immigrants that resided in the Imperial Valley had to compete for jobs such as-Japanese laborers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, melon fields and more- against the Asian Indians, Muslims, and among each other. The workforce was very diverse when it came to who could work in certain areas and based on skilled laborers. During 1910, Mexicans and blacks were highly recruited from the southern parts of the U.S. because they had experience with crops such as cotton. Anglos did whatever they could for however much they could get. The Japanese demanded higher wages, and if they didn’t, they resulted in organizing ways to defend their interests. The blacks and some whites were steadily moving into the area, to harvest crops. This primarily caused the Anglos to be calamitous towards the Mexicans as they were settling into the residential areas. The hierarchy inside the Imperial Valley was sought to be complicated because certain minorities were given more than others, and it allowed for a certain degree of mobility and mixing among each other. The Sikh’s were able to marry and have business relationships with whites, most grocery stores were owned by Syrian, Jewish, and Chinese individuals, whites owned most of the agricultural establishments despite the Anglos being the primary group in the establishment. Although the Imperial Valley economy benefited from the vast amount of availability of unauthorized labors, it didn’t stop many from opposing that illegal migrants were impairment to the U.S. socioeconomic fabric and were a security