Fair Use Blog

quotable free culture for a webbed world

“not definitely white, Negro” and racial intermediacy and ambiguity (1930 Census, qtd. in Cohn) posted by Charles Johnson at How the Tejanxs Became People of Color 23 Apr 2017 12:00 pm

The 1930 Census race or color instructions for “Mexican” show a clear connection with the theme of racial intermediacy and ambiguity:

all persons born in Mexico, or having parents born in Mexico, who were not definitely White, Negro, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese.

(Instructional language quoted fromÂ D’vera Cohn.)

posted 12:00 pm at How the Tejanxs Became People of Color | no comments

Law as coercion creates racial categories in three chief ways (Haney López) posted by Charles Johnson at How the Tejanos Became Non-White 21 Jan 2017 1:06 pm

According to Haney LÃ³pez, pp. 116-123, “Law as Coercion,” in itsÂ coercive aspect law serves to create racial categories in three chief ways:

Legal rules have shaped physical appearances
Positive law has created the racial meanings that attach to physical features
Positive law establishes the material conditions which often code for race.

[WBL p. 119]

posted 1:06 pm at How the Tejanos Became Non-White | no comments

The Fair Use Blog is a project of the Fair Use Repository. The Fair Use Repository is an ongoing effort to make printed documents of cultural and intellectual importance accessible and easy for human researchers and readers to use. Copyright for all works not yet in the public domain is retained by the authors of those works; portions of those works are cited here under principles of fair use for educational purposes.