Racial Scripts & Policing
The racial caste system of both imperial nations dominated the lower Rio Grande Valley. In her book, How Race is Made in America, Natalia Molina, describes repetitive racial narratives that are used to marginalize groups as racial scripts. These racial scripts have been used across time, and recycled across racial groups in the United States. “The notion that Mexicans, like blacks, were a population ready to spiral out of control was a popular racial script for portraying Mexicans as unsuitable newcomers.” Is used to deny the right to immigration for Mexicans. Molina writes “politicians and everyday citizens argued that, like slaves, the Mexican population would increase at unprecedented rates and create a multitude of problems.”
Richard L. Copley, I am a man, 1968, photographic print
“Slavery was a political economic system designed to extract the greatest profits for whites. Regarding blacks as racially inferior helped whites justify using them as slaves. The low wage labor Mexicans engaged in in the Southwest was in no way comparable to slavery: the thread that runs through both political economies, however, once again places an emphasis on the profits for those at the top of the power structure while disregarding those doing the labor… Thus comparing Mexicans to slaves was not just a racial comparison but was fundamentally about how to continue to fuel the political economy while maintaining a racial hierarchy.”
- Natalia Molina, 6, How Race is Made in America
Spider Martin, Rev. Hosea Williams, John Lewis, and others in the March for Voting Rights to Montgomery confronted by Alabama State Troopers, Selma Alabama, 1965, Photograph, 13 x 19.5 inches, James “Spider” Martin photographic archive, Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin
Photograph, Jonathan Bachman, protester Ieshia Evans being arrested in Baton Rouge, 2016
