Recentering U.S. Empire: A Structural Perspective on the Color Line

Abstract

In the past 20 years, scholars of top sociology and race and ethnicity articles increasingly have mentioned the term “color line.” Prominent among them are sociologists concerned with how incoming waves of Latin American and Asian immigration, increasing rates of intermarriage, and a growing multiracial population will affect the U.S. racial order. While much of this work cites Du Bois, scholars stray from his definition of the color line in two ways. First, they characterize the color line as unidimensional and Black–white rather than as many divisions between non-white people and whites. Second, scholars portray the color line as the outcome of microlevel factors rather than the product of international geopolitical arrangements. I contend that in contrast to scholarship that portrays immigrants and intermarried and multiracial people as shifting the color line, international and imperial policies related to immigration, intermarriage, and multiracial identification are longstanding sites of the construction of the U.S. racial order. Scholars should conceptualize the United States as an empire state in order to analyze the international political history of multiple color lines. In doing so, they can distinguish between differences in kind and degree of racial divisions.

The Racial Boundaries of Inequality

“…Similarly, Kim (2007) has argued that the racialization and subordination of Asians by White Americans is closely bound up with citizenship. Our results reflect that distinction in how Asians and Blacks are racialized and emphasize the need to consider the specific historical and contemporary dynamics that contribute to a group’s racialized position (also see Quisumbing King 2018). Despite their shared connection to more generalizable boundary-making processes, the content of those boundaries may differ.…”

For a Du Boisian economic sociology

“…We need to consider as central to economic sociology this wide range of relevant research from sex tourism, fantasy‐production, marital and sexual relationships, violence, sex work, migration and remittances, masculinities, care work, and gendered labor in factories, maquiladoras, and call centers (e.g., Agathangelou, 2004; Aneesh, 2015; Berry, 2018; Brennan, 2004; Choo, 2016; Constable, 2003; David, 2015; Fernández‐Kelly, 1983; Glenn, 1986; Hoang, 2015; Lee, 1998; Lee, 2017; Matlon, 2016; McKay, 2018; Mendoza, 2015; Padilla, 2008; Parreñas, 2001; Parreñas, 2011; Rodriguez, 2010; Salzinger, 2003; Tadiar, 2004). Or the vast research on empire and postcolonialism that focuses on race, power, and economic activity (e.g., Anderson, 2006; Appadurai, 1990; Arvin, 2019; Bhattacharyya, 1997; Cooper, 2014; Go, 2004; Go, 2008; Magubane, 2004; Mendoza, 2015; Quisumbing King, 2019; Steinmetz, 2007; Stoler, 2002; Stoler, 2006). Recognizing the contributions of this wide‐ranging scholarship to economic sociology would mean incorporating these scholars and their works in syllabi and citing their work in economic sociology arguments.…”

Antiracism amidst empire? Understanding the United States' relationship to whiteness

“…The second oft‐used conceptualization of U.S. empire refers to the “Insular” or “extra‐continental territories” in the sense of U.S. occupation and rule over the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, Samoa, Guam, the Marianas Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone (Alexander, 2016; Donoghue, 2006; Fojas, 2014; Go, 2000, 2004, 2008; Quisumbing King, 2018, 2019; Silva, 2004; Steinmetz, 2014). Viewed in isolation from the rest of U.S. history, such contexts mark U.S. empire as “beginning” after the Spanish American War in 1898 and ending either after the Philippines won Independence in 1946 or the unilateral extension of U.S. nationality or citizenship rights to United States’ territories in Oceania.…”