Book review: An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West

Book review: An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West

Les Benedict, Michael. “Book Review: Bottoms, An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850–1890, by Michael Les Benedict.” (2014): 700-701.

This book has been a perceptive study, Michael Bottoms visited the professor of history at Whitman college and took a long view of how the reconstruction in California affected the race relations.  The author has begun by describing how the white Californians have been able to bring up a binary racial order that has distinguished the non-whites and whites before the occurrence of the civil war.

This book has examined the racial relationships among the chines, whites, blacks, Native Americans and how these groups interacted with each other and the hierarchy that had been created by the white’s state inhabitants. The white Californians found that African Americans, Native American and Chinese’s shared the same degraded features and that they were similarly denied their fundamental rights that included the crucial right to against the white in court. Bottoms has particularly been perceptive when describing the eviction movement as ethnic abolition. Bottoms has stressed that Chinese and African American agency through describing how each group has tried to improve the status of the beliefs at that time. Rather than a cooperate, they reconstructed new laws that were used as a tool for strengthening their positions in the racial hierarchical in the effect of supporting and preserving white supremacy.

The book has been retrieved from an editorial 1868 of the Elevator, a black newspaper that had revealed a complaint about an aristocracy of color that banded the African Americans from inclusion in the California society fully. Bottoms has revealed that there was more of the works of the aristocracy of color that happened in California arising in more than the aim of the whites keeping the blacks down. He then focused on the struggles of interconnection between the Chines immigrants and the black Californians during the evolution of the far west racial regime.

Bottoms has argued that the Chinese and black have seized upon reconstruction of the federal legislation that had been designed to protect the freed slave in the south and drew it to California.  This was related to the lead of Elliot West and others that argued the importance of the re-envisioned of the western national reconstruction. According to Bottoms, the two groups showed a significant resourcefulness in how they made their claims of reconstructions.  They relied heavily on court testimonies, legislative debates, and judicial decisions. They also acted directly and at times used pixies to reveal their claims and desires of reconstruction. However, they were fought by the whites in every turn in California which was termed as the most unreconstructed state by Bottoms.

It is evident that the aim of reconstruction by the Chines and the blacks collided with a racial regime in California.  The blacks in California attempted to apply changes in attitudes and laws to gain equal rights.  However, the changes of reconstruction were resisted by the California whites with racial makeups. The voters in California rejected the Republican party that elected a state legislature and self-ruled governor which denied to ratify the fourteenth-fifteenth Amendments. However, the amendments were ratified, and the white Californians had to change to them.

The black Californians then advanced slowly through achieving greater status in the racial hierarchy in California above the Chinese but below the whites. Reconstruction had forced the white Californians to assume the hierarchical concept of race and abandon their twofold racism that distinguished the non-whites rather than putting them together. This leads them to accommodate the new African American status while they endorsed more than ever oppressive discriminations against the population of the Chinese. The West coast then finally accepted to pass a law that barred the immigration of the Chinese laborer’s.

Bottoms has contended that for successful understanding of the implications of the reconstruction, it is necessary to ignore the issues that were commonly accepted in the southern context and reconsider the legal actions. Bottoms has argued through an analysis of various legal documents, federal state, court cases and municipal ordinances. Through these, he has found out that racial diversity does not only challenge reconstruction but also help in defining reconstruction of legislation in the rest of the country.

Conclusion

Bottoms has less concern with discussing the difference among the whites and has aimed at describing the racial views in massive terms. It is evident from his descriptions of later events that there were important and evident differences between the racial views of Democrats and the Republicans. Despite his thorough discussion of the undergirded ideas of the white racial attitudes, Bottoms has not fully grappled them in all their intricacy. In sum, Bottoms has given an interesting, convincing perspective study of how reconstruction has affected a racially different state that is outside the south. The book has been an addition to the historical literature through presenting information that will trigger further perspectives of the readers.

Works cited

Les Benedict, Michael. “Book Review: Bottoms, An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850–1890, by Michael Les Benedict.” (2014): 700-701.

 

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