An Aristocracy of Color (Race and Culture in the American West Series) (Volume 5) - Softcover

Bottoms

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806146494 ISBN 13: 9780806146492

Publisher: OU Press, 2014

Synopsis

In the South after the Civil War, the reassertion of white supremacy tended to pit white against black. In the West, by contrast, a radically different drama emerged, particularly in multiracial, multiethnic California. State elections in California to ratify Reconstruction-era amendments to the U.S. Constitution raised the question of whether extending suffrage to black Californians might also lead to the political participation of thousands of Chinese immigrants.

As historian D. Michael Bottoms shows in An Aristocracy of Color, many white Californians saw in this and other Reconstruction legislation a threat to the fragile racial hierarchy they had imposed on the state’s legal system during the 1850s. But nonwhite Californians—blacks and Chinese in particular—recognized an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the state’s race relations. Drawing on court records, political debates, and eyewitness accounts, Bottoms brings to life the monumental battle that followed.

Bottoms begins by analyzing white Californians’ mid-century efforts to prohibit nonwhite testimony against whites in court. Challenges to these laws by blacks and Chinese during Reconstruction followed a trajectory that would be repeated in later contests. Each minority challenged the others for higher status in court, at the polls, in education, and elsewhere, employing stereotypes and ideas of racial difference popular among whites to argue for its own rightful place in “civilized” society. Whites contributed to the melee by occasionally yielding to blacks in order to keep the Chinese and California Indians at a disadvantage.

These dynamics reverberated in other state legal systems throughout the West in the mid- to late 1800s and nationwide in the twentieth century. As An Aristocracy of Color reveals, Reconstruction outside of the South briefly promised an opportunity for broader equality but in the end strengthened and preserved the racial hierarchy that favored whites.

About this title

About the Author:

D. Michael Bottoms earned his doctorate in United States history at the University of California–Los Angeles and has taught at UCLA, the University of Puget Sound, George Mason University, and, most recently, Whitman College.

Review:

“Bottoms brings exploration of Reconstruction and changing attitudes about race westward. . . . This is a highly interesting story, and Bottoms tells it well.” —Elliott West, author of The Essential West: Collected Essays

About this edition

• Publisher: OU Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0806146494
• ISBN 13: 9780806146492
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290