Racial Fault Lines

The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California

Tomas Almaguer

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520257863
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520942905
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This book unravels the ethnic history of California since the late nineteenth-century Anglo-American conquest and the institutionalization of "white supremacy" in the state. Drawing from an array of primary and secondary sources, Tomás Almaguer weaves a detailed, disturbing portrait of ethnic, racial, and class relationships during this tumultuous time. A new preface looks at the invaluable contribution the book has made to our understanding of ethnicity and class in America and of the social construction of "race" in the Far West.


This book unravels the ethnic history of California since the late nineteenth-century Anglo-American conquest and the institutionalization of "white supremacy" in the state. Drawing from an array of primary and secondary sources, Tomás Almaguer weaves a d

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the 2009 Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE “We Desire Only a White Population in California” The Transformation of Mexican California in Historical-Sociological Perspective
• CHAPTER TWO “The True Significance of the Word ‘White’ ”
• CHAPTER THREE “The Ravages of Time and the Intrusion of Modern American Civilization”
• CHAPTER FOUR “Before the March of Civilization He Must Give Way”
• CHAPTER FIVE “Unfit and Incapable of Being Associated with Whites on Any Terms of Equality”
• CHAPTER SIX “They Can Be Hired in Masses; They Can Be Managed and Controlled like Unthinking Slaves”
• CHAPTER SEVEN “In the Hands of People Whose Experience Has Been Only to Obey a Master Rather than Think and Manage for Themselves”
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index