Redeeming La Raza : transborder modernity, race, respectability, and rights /

"Redeeming La Raza examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: González, Gabriela (Professor of history) (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Description
Summary:"Redeeming La Raza examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies as they encountered barriers and obstacles in a society that often treated Mexicans as a nonwhite minority. Middle-class transborder activists sought to redeem the Mexican masses from body politic exclusions in part by encouraging them to become identified with the nation-state. Redeeming La Raza was as much about saving them from traditional modes of thought and practices that were perceived as hindrances to progress as it was about saving them from race and class-based forms of discrimination that were part and parcel of modernity. At the center of this link between modernity and discriminatory practices based on social constructions lay the economic imperative for the abundant and inexpensive labor power that the modernization process required. Labeling groups of people as inferior helped to rationalize their economic exploitation in a developing modern nation-state that also professed to be a democratic society founded upon principles of political egalitarianism. This book presents cases of transborder activism that demonstrate how the politics of respectability and the politics of radicalism operated, often at odds but sometimes in complementary ways."--Provided by publisher.
Physical Description:1 online resource (xvi, 261 pages)
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9780199914159
019991415X
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0199345538
0199914141
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0190909625
9780190909628