Analysis Of The Book 'Racial Fault Lines'

Any notable person with medical expertise will testify that racial identities bear no scientific weight and one’s race is only as significant as the person--or culture the said person is submerged in--makes it out to be. When dissected sociologically, “race prejudice [is] an irrational manifestation of individual pathologies” (Racial Fault Lines, 17)... “[that] represent attempts by one group of people to secure for themselves a privileged position in the social structure at the expense of stigmatized and subordinated social groups,” (Racial Fault Lines, 18). And, while the privileged groups’ “superiority” and other groups’ “inferiority” is arbitrary and holds no ethical legitimacy, the damage caused to the “inferior” groups is undeniable and enormously detrimental. Tomás Almaguer, in his insightful book, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California, explores the various ways in which the Mexican, Native American, and Asian populations in the late nineteenth century

The justification behind Mexican and Native American oppression was “the notion of manifest destiny [which] implied the domination of civilization over nature, Christianity over heathenism, [and] progress over backwardness,” (Racial Fault Lines, 33). These beliefs were deeply rooted in the, “traditional Protestant value system,” (Racial Fault Lines, 53) and the opinion that any person with a dark complexion was considered a lesser human being. Therefore, because Native Americans and Mexicans are born with a darker hue in their skin tone, they were met with hostility. However, the ways in which Mexicans and Native Americans were evaluated were very