Whiteness on the Border Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown and White [Paperback]

The many lenses of racism through which the white imagination sees Mexicans and Chicanos

Historically, ideas of whiteness and Americanness have been built on the backs of racialized communities. The legacy of anti-Mexican stereotypes stretches back to the early nineteenth century when Anglo-American settlers first came into regular contact with Mexico and Mexicans. The images of the Mexican Other as lawless, exotic, or non-industrious continue to circulate today within US popular and political culture. Through keen analysis of music, film, literature, and US politics, Whiteness on the Border demonstrates how contemporary representations of Mexicans and Chicano/as are pushed further to foster the idea of whiteness as Americanness.

Illustrating how the ideologies, stories, and images of racial hierarchy align with and support those of fervent US nationalism, Lee Bebout maps the relationship between whiteness and American exceptionalism. He examines how renderings of the Mexican Other have expressed white fear, and formed a besieged solidarity in anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Moreover, Whiteness on the Border elucidates how seemingly positive representations of Mexico and Chicano/as are actually used to reinforce investments in white American goodness and obscure systems of racial inequality. Whiteness on the Border pushes readers to consider how the racial logic of the past continues to thrive in the present.

With wit, passion, rigor,Whiteness on the Borderbreaks down the logic of white supremacy. Innovative and dynamic, Lee Bebouts critical study drops onto the world at a key moment. We are living through a backlash against multiculturalism and against the civil rights movement. Something has changed; something has turned, and Bebouts timely study helps us to chart the depth of this bracing cultural metastasis. Whiteness on the Borderexplores the vexed ways in which white identity in the U.S. has historically been forged in oppol£&