This article offers that Claire Jean Kim's theory of racial triangulation provides an ideal framework to study workers of color, the racialization of their labor and the ways in which actual and potential employers neglect and discriminate against these workers. Specifically, the piece determines that racial triangulation theory bolsters analysis of race-based power that employers exert in the construction and maintenance of racial inequality in regard to management of labor and employment possibilities for workers of color. A triangulated approach allows for a sharp focus on employer engineered labor market inequality as they oversee, hire, and refuse to be racially inclusive in hiring practices. Most significantly, racial triangulation theory addresses the forces of racial inequity within the meso-level of U.S. social structure when applied to study of organizational dynamics such as workplaces. I open the article by assaying historical and contemporary studies on workers of color to illustrate white employer domination and the ways in which workers of color are referenced to each other as inferior and superior workers. Subsequently, the article looks to fresh analytical directions in which sociologists can evaluate racism as a triangulated, multidimensional social force in the workplace and other social contexts.

This article explains how the uS's employment of racial state projects directly affected efforts to unionise farm workers in California -the 1942 Bracero Program which imported Mexican agricultural workers into the uS Southwest, and Japanese internment, which forcibly moved Japanese people from their homes in uS Pacific coast states to internment camps situated throughout the country. Both projects decimated the momentum and militancy of the farm worker movement. Thus, the projects created a period of suspended social movement activity in which farm labour organisers directed their energies away from confrontation with growers and towards confrontations with the state. The state's emergence as a central actor in the farm labour struggle managed to exploit the differences in terms of land-ownership/class and citizenship rights between groups of workers: 'white' Americans, Mexican Americans, Japanese, Filipino and Braceros -non-citizen Mexican workers brought in on a temporary basis. All of which weakened the capacity for joint action -until the mid-1960s.

In California, between 1933 and 1939, Filipino, Japanese and Mexican farm workers engaged in far-reaching labor strikes. In this article, I argue that the practice of White supremacy prevented interracial farm labor unionism via the creation of a racial hierarchy that aligned Japanese, Mexicans and Filipinos into specific positions. Previous scholarship deemphasizes the roles of race and racism in analysis of farm worker mobilization. I focus upon four key actors, which actively maintained the hierarchy: landowners, the state, organized labor, and the White public.

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