Almaguer, T. (1994). Racial Fault Lines: The historical origins of white supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tomàs Almaguer is currently a professor of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. He teaches courses for the Raza Studies, Sociology, and History Departments as well as for the Ethnic Studies Program and Women’s Studies Department. Almaguer received his Ph. D from the Sociology Department at University of California, Berkeley in 1979. In 2000-01, Almaguer received The Circle Award in recognition of his contributions to the Latino community and the University of Michigan, where he had previously served as Director of the Center for Research on Social Organization and Chair of the Latino/a Studies Program.

In his book, Racial Fault Lines: The historical origins of white supremacy in California, Almaguer unravels the ethnic conflicts that took place in California since the conquest of the land from Mexico in 1846. He illustrates the struggles taking place through the different racial experiences the ethnic groups overcame, many of which translated to racial hierarchy’s we find in America today. As Almaguer states in the book, “race and the racialization process in California became the central organizing principle of group life during the state’s formative period of development,” (7) and the European American population took it upon themselves to create this new society in California.

One of the first arguments Almaguer makes is the fact that European Americans created racial stigmatization and structural subordination of California’s populations. They did this by coming together as one and embracing white supremacist ideology. It didn’t matter if they came from Ireland, France, England or Germany; they identified themselves as European American. As European Americans, they considered themselves as white and therefore superior to anyone who was non-white. As the dominant group, European Americans felt a sense of entitlement from prior rights or exclusions that affected racial relationships and hierarchies around the world. Using white supremacist ideas such as the Manifest Destiny and the free labor society, European Americans were determined to make California a white only state.

Through the notion of manifest destiny, European Americans felt it was their duty to create a society filled with civilized, Christian people. As stated in the book, “manifest destiny implied the domination of civilization over nature, Christianity over heathenism, progress over backwardness, and, most importantly, of white Americans over the Mexican and Indian populations that stood in their path” (Almaguer 33). Almaguer argued, Indians were seen as “heathens” and uncivilized while Mexicans were considered half civilized and more able to assimilate into the white society Anglo Americans were trying to create.

More importantly, European Americans were trying to build a society based on free white labor. They wanted to get rid of all slavery or indentured servant systems that were around during the Mexican period because they felt it would threaten their new society. White Americans of all classes accepted the ideology that “an expanding capitalist society based on free labor, individualism, market relations and private property,” (Almaguer 33) would create the ideal society. The Republican Party’s version of the free labor system believed competitive capitalism was a good thing because it opened the door for today’s laborer to become tomorrow’s capitalist. They wanted their new society to be based on this ideology.

Almaguer argued that this would only be true if there was an equality of opportunity among all ethnic groups in California. European Americans in California experienced rapid social and economic mobility while other ethnic groups did not. This was because access was based on class structure which was determined in racial terms. Due to these terms, “life chances” were low for non-white immigrants trying to survive in this free labor society. Laws such as the Naturalization Act of 1790, which made sure only those considered “white” were granted citizenship, or the Vagrancy Act of 1855, which “sanctioned the arrest and imprisonment of individuals guilty of vagrancy or levied fines against them,” (Almaguer 57) were placed to keep the racial hierarchy intact. These laws against the minority ethnic groups, helped keep those considered “white” American politically and economically in control.

One ethnic group with a unique experience with the European Americans were the Mexicans who were here before the U.S. annexation of California. Mexicans were given land grants and were to be offered citizenship as well as other rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. Upper class Mexicans, known as the ranchero elite, were more accepted because they had mixed European ancestry, were religiously very similar and as mentioned before, considered “half-civilized”. They were also lighter skinned. With the ability to gain citizenship, the ranchero elite were able to politically challenge Anglo control in California. Class divisions were apparent in the way the ranchero elite were accepted as whites and given all the advantages while working class Mexicans were considered “greasers” and not suitable for the new Anglo society.

Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, Anglo Americans had no choice other than to accept the ranchero elite as citizens of California, but they still had negative perceptions of them. Anglo Americans viewed the ranchero elite as “lazy” and with poor personal habits. Nevertheless, intermarriage between Anglo Saxons and Californio’s were not prohibited; in fact they happened regularly. Most common would be the marriage between the daughter of a ranchero elite man and a European American. This arrangement was beneficial for both the European American marrying into a family that owned thousands of acres of land and for the ranchero elite who wanted to gain social mobility and influence in the Anglo world.

These intermarriages were the beginning of the passage of land from the old elite into the hands of Anglo men as “part of the inheritances some Californio women brought to marriage” (Almaguer 59). Another technique used by European Americans to take away the land of the ranchero elite, was doing it using the courtroom. Almaguer showed the reader, that although the ranchero elite would win the fight in the courtroom, they would still lose the battle at hand and end up giving up their land to their lawyers or others who helped them pay off their legal fees. The ranchero elite were also prone to spend a lot of money that they did not have because they were not used to this new Capitalist system. A good example of this took place in Ventura County where Almaguer argued, “Rancho land was lost through indebtedness to local merchants, who often preyed on the rancheros’ extravagance and fiscal ineptitude” (81). As more and more rancheros lost their land, more Anglo landowners emerged. Two main men were Thomas A. Scott and Thomas R. Bard who would stop at nothing from seizing the land from these ranchero elite in order to sub-divide and sell or lease them to others.

European Americans felt it was because the Mexicans could not handle the business end of the agriculture business and not because they were “tricked” by anyone that the ranchero elite lost their land. Mexican Americans were unable to keep up with the fast paced free labor society for which European Americans strived for. Capitalism and this new American economy were the downfall of the Californios. One main theme Almaguer introduced and constantly pointed to throughout the first half of his book was the idea that race became the key organizing principle in everything from politics, economical mobility as well as survival for different ethnic groups in California.

After Almaguer examined the relationship between European Americans and Mexicans, particularly the ranchero elite, before the U.S. annexation of California, the author then traces the racial formation process between European Americans and Native Americans.

During the nineteenth century, race relationships in California were not binary. They involve several different races.  Almaguer argues that this mix of races gives California a unique and unprecedented experience of ethnic conflict and racial formation. 

How did European American immigrants view the Indians they found living in California? Where did they put them on the racial hierarchy?  Were they below or above Mexicans?  According to Almaguer, “While Mexicans were viewed as ‘half-civilized’ at best, Indians were seen as the complete embodiment of both heathenism and savagery” (107). Many Anglos went as far as to deny that Native Americans were human beings. Some treated the Indians as sub-human because the Indians were dirty, ugly, and very dark skinned. Other whites belittled the Native Americans because of the “animal-like nature of the native peoples’ existence” (Almaguer 111).

Whites had an incredibly low view of Native Americans.  Indians were the race most unlike European Americans.  Anglos assumed their race, their culture, their economic system, and their values were the best in the world.  And since Native Americans were completely the opposite of European Americans in every way, they were given the lowest status in California’s new racial hierarchy. European Americans thought Native American’s were a lost cause. This led the whites to adopt a policy of “sanctioned decimation” (Almaguer 129) to remove Native Americans from the social order.  .

Almaguer traces the consequences of this policy for both the individual white man and the government of California. There were many violent encounters between rural European-Americans and Indians. Settlers would attack Native Americans, murder men and rape women.  They did this to protect their economic well-being.  As Almaguer notes on page 118, “the Indian’s traditional subsistence way of life and potential Indian vandalization of their property all posed immediate obstacles to their economic well-being.” The government of California not only didn’t prevent this racial superiority, they willingly participated in it.  When white men raped women, the government would say the Indian was the source of the problem.  And when California officially became a state in 1850 the new government actually sent the state military to kill Indians. Almaguer says the government’s actions reinforced the feelings of white superiority: made the subjection of other races by whites a legitimate endeavor.  

Of course, not every Indian was killed in the sanctioned decimation campaign.  Some became members of the new Euro-centric society; albeit at the margins. Almaguer shows how the law was used to marginalize Indians. Native Americans were denied citizenship because they were nonwhite. And since Native Americans were not worthy of citizenship, they were subject to several different laws that had a major impact on their culture during the second half of the 19^th century. As Almaguer says on page 131, “The Indian’s degraded “group position” was structurally reinforced through legislative pronouncements—bills sanctioning their use as unfree laborers and calling for their segregation onto federal reservations.” 

The Ignominious Vagrancy Law and Indenture Act of 1850 allowed whites to use Native Americans as bond slaves. This bill let whites buy Indians arrested for vagrancy and put those Indians to work for them. The federal reservation system removed the remaining tribes of Native Americans away from mainstream Californian society and placed them on plots of land far removed from European American settlements. But as Almaguer notes, even the federal reservation system didn’t work because Anglos were furious that Indian were getting land they thought they deserved.  Once again, the proud, Euro-centric view of the world appears and leads to the oppression of a nonwhite people group.

Thus Almaguer argues that the decimation of the Native American population and the marginalization of the remaining Indians on federal reservations was a unique racial experience to California. The racial formation in California between whites and Indians “was fundamentally rooted in the European-American vision of Indians as culturally unassimable and unambiguously non-white.  Being regarded as uncivilized and heathen placed the California Indians at total odds with European Americans in racial, religious, and cultural terms” (Almaguer 150).

After tracing the racial formation process in California between whites and Native Americans, Almaguer moves to the racial formation process between Anglos and Chinese immigrants. Just as Mexicans and Native Americans, Chinese and Japanese Americans were not seen as equal to whites. Almaguer says two factors contributed to anti-Chinese sentiment. First, whites viewed the incoming Chinese immigrants as “heathen” and “savage.” Like the rest of the races, the Chinese looked different, wore different clothes, and worshipped differently so that was enough to assume they were inferior to the whites. Second, economic factors contributed heavily to anti-Chinese sentiment. White working class workers were afraid Chinese immigrants were akin to the African slave trade. If that were the case, these new immigrants would be a threat to free white labor. They would do the same work whites could do for much less pay: sometimes for no pay.

Laws played a significant role in suppressing Chinese immigrants.  People v. Hall in 1854 declared Chinese as non-whites and therefore ineligible for citizenship. This law led to widespread discrimination. When white men would commit a crime against them, the Chinese had no way of seeking justice since they were denied basic rights of citizenship.  For 18 long years the Chinese were given second class status until the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1872 rescinded People v. Hall.

The fourth and final race Almaguer discusses is the Japanese immigrants.  Almaguer says the final “challenge to the class opportunities that white Californians sought to retain for themselves” (183) were Japanese immigrants. To backtrack a bit, the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 had officially ended the Chinese threat to European American capitalist interests in California. The new law meant farms needed to replace the Chinese labor force. To do that, they recruited thousands of Japanese immigrants. But once this new workforce was in place, it received the same backlash from the European-American working class. As Almaguer notes on page 184, “Japanese immigrants faced the same rigid racial and ethnic stratification of the labor market as did the Chinese, and their employment experience was similar.” But there was one critical difference between the Chinese and the Japanese. The Japanese fought against the system. First, they demanded higher wages. Then they combined with the Mexican workforce to form a union.  This union was called the JMLA, which stands for Japanese-Mexican Labor Association.

The author makes a key point about this union, and what it says about racial formation, on page 204. “The experience of the JMLA with organized labor also clearly reveals differences in the racial attitudes of Europeans Americans at the time.  Mexicans and Japanese workers were not perceived as posing identical threats to the white working class.” The Oxnard union shows is a key part of Almaguer’s argument in Racial Fault Lines. The union shows that economic and social factors play role, but they weren’t the primary factors in the white’s view of other races.  Sometimes the white’s just chose to view another race a certain way and it didn’t matter what that race did, the perception would not change.

Racial Fault Lines does a great job tracing the unique experience with race in California.  The Golden State featured four distinct racial minorities, and the author did a nice job explaining how each minority group fit into the racial hierarchy.  This book is a great application of Omi and Winant’s Racial Format Theory. That theory says that “social, economic, and political factors determine the content and importance of racial categories” (Almaguer 2). Almaguer shows you what social, economic, and political factors combined to create a situation in California where the European American ethnicity dominated Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and Native Americans.  

Racial Fault Lines did not include any lengthy discussion on the racial formation process between whites and blacks.  Almaguer does mention the Anglos distaste for African-Americans, especially the slavery they represented, but the author doesn’t mention the specific steps European-Americans took to place themselves above blacks in the racial hierarchy.  This seems important in light of the significant role blacks played in our nation’s history and the fact that California is the most populous state in the country.

That said, Racial Fault Lines was an eye-opening read.  It delves into a lot of unknown, and dark, portion of California’s history.  It shows the racial formation theory worked out in real life, and it explains the many factors that led whites to assume they had the right to establish themselves at the top of the social hierarchy. Tomas Almaguer accomplishes his goal when he set out to “trace the historical origins of white supremacy in California during the last half of the nineteenth century.”(2)

Written by Corey Williams and Anet Hovhanesian