
Racist by Design
Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control
Kelly Lytle Hernandez(Author)
WW Norton & Co (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 22. September 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-324-11709-4 (ISBN)
Description
Historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez argues that white supremacy has shaped every aspect of the American immigration regime in this nuanced and powerful new book. She explains how southern states passed some of the nation's first immigration bans to restrict Black arrival in response to the 1791 Haitian revolution. She shows how the Supreme Court used cases about Chinese exclusion to declare immigration law outside the guardrails of the Constitution. She reveals how early twentieth century eugenicists and segregationists built much of our modern immigration system, which was explicitly designed to be "whites-only." And she details how much of the system's racist provisions remain in force today.
Racist by Design demonstrates how a complex legal machine continues to target non-white migrants for exclusion, punishment and removal while creating a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalised workers to provide cheap labour for the American economy.
Kelly Lytle Hernandez's Bad Mexicans (9781324064411) has been praised as:
"There is no Hollywood movie about the magonistas, although reading Bad Mexicans is like watching one... Lytle Hernandez's pen is her sword; her writing is a monument to the belief that language can change the world." - Geraldo Cadava, The New Yorker
Racist by Design demonstrates how a complex legal machine continues to target non-white migrants for exclusion, punishment and removal while creating a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalised workers to provide cheap labour for the American economy.
Kelly Lytle Hernandez's Bad Mexicans (9781324064411) has been praised as:
"There is no Hollywood movie about the magonistas, although reading Bad Mexicans is like watching one... Lytle Hernandez's pen is her sword; her writing is a monument to the belief that language can change the world." - Geraldo Cadava, The New Yorker
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
12 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-324-11709-4 (9781324117094)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Kelly Lytle Hernandez is the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA. She is a MacArthur "genius grant" recipient and the author of Racist by Design, Bad Mexicans, and several other award-winning books about race, immigration, policing, and the carceral state. She lives in Los Angeles.