An essential resource for understanding the complex history of Mexican Americans and racial classification in the United States
Manifest Destinies tells the story of the original Mexican Americans-the people living in northern Mexico in 1846 during the onset of the Mexican American War. The war abruptly came to an end two years later, and 115,000 Mexicans became American citizens overnight. Yet their status as full-fledged Americans was tenuous at best. Due to a variety of legal and political maneuvers, Mexican Americans were largely confined to a second class status. How did this categorization occur, and what are the implications for modern Mexican Americans?
Manifest Destinies fills a gap in American racial history by linking westward expansion to slavery and the Civil War. In so doing, Laura E Gomez demonstrates how white supremacy structured a racial hierarchy in which Mexican Americans were situated relative to Native Americans and African Americans alike. Steeped in conversations and debates surrounding the social construction of race, this book reveals how certain groups become racialized, and how racial categories can not only change instantly, but also the ways in which they change over time.
This new edition is updated to reflect the most recent evidence regarding the ways in which Mexican Americans and other Latinos were racialized in both the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book ultimately concludes that it is problematic to continue to speak in terms Hispanic "ethnicity" rather than consider Latinos qua Latinos alongside the United States' other major racial groupings. A must read for anyone concerned with racial injustice and classification today.

A path-breaking history of the construction of race in the American Southwest

About the Author
Laura E.Gomez is Professor of Law, Sociology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Misconceiving Mothers: Legislators, Prosecutors and the Politics of Prenatal Drug Exposure and the editor of Mapping "Race": Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research (with Nancy Lopez).

Reviews
"Shows the impacts (then, as now) of the dominant white racist frame coming in from outside what was once northern Mexico." * Racism Review *
"In her discussion of the role of law in the creation of Mexican Americans as a racial group Gomez tells a convincing story of conquerors manipulating the conquered." * The Santa Fe New Mexican *
"In this provocative analysis, the sociologist and legal scholar Laura E. Gomez offers a compelling argument for the unique racial status of Mexican Americans, significant (and increasing) proportions of whom identify as nonwhite... her steady focus and original approach make Manifest Destinies essential reading for scholars of race in America." * Journal of American History *
"Laura E. Gomezs Manifest Destinies offers a new interpretation of the ideology of Manifest Destiny and how that ideology worked to create a Mexican American race in New Mexico." * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"Gomez has made a fine and distinctive contribution to our understanding of how conquest and law shaped the ambiguous racial position still occupied by Mexican Americans" * American Historical Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780814732052
Author Laura E. Gomez
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press