1936 Sociological Study of Race, Labor, and Xenophobia in the United States: Alien Americans

Schrieke, B. Alien Americans: A Study of Race Relations. New York: The Viking Press, 1936. First edition. Octavo. 186pp. Publisher's original beige cloth with red horizontal ruling and black spine lettering. A significant pre-WWII sociological study exploring race and immigration in the United States, authored by German sociologist and anthropologist B. Schrieke (1884–1963), who was commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation to study American race relations during a research visit to the U.S. in the 1930s. Alien Americans stands as a rare and early comparative analysis of race, ethnicity, labor, and national identity across the American landscape, deeply (truncated) shaped by Schrieke's outsider perspective and his training in the European academic tradition. His critique of racial ideologies and economic exploitation among Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Native American, and Black communities provides a powerful window into Depression-era ethnic stratification and the structural foundations of white supremacy in U.S. labor systems.

The book opens with "The Chinese in California," charting their arrival during the Gold Rush and their exclusion from social and legal rights. "Distinction was commanded solely by vigour and personal courage," Schrieke notes, in describing the harsh meritocracy of the mining camps, while also recording white resentment of Chinese, Mexican, and Black laborers. In the chapter "The Japanese in California," he praises Japanese immigrant farmers as industrious, observing that they "reclaimed the land from the desert and blazed the trail for the horde of other nationalities that followed." These ethnic labor comparisons segue into chapter-length studies of Mexicans, Indigenous people, and African Americans in the South, each tied to capitalism and the racial state. Schrieke confronts anti-Mexican labor prejudice directly, noting that "dark colour appears as a handicap to employment not only in food industries but in other industries," and quoting white employers who view darker-skinned Mexicans with suspicion. In "Negro Education," he recounts appalling firsthand observations: a boarded-up, windowless rural school, where the superintendent admitted to closing dozens of Black schools for budget reasons. Data from the Julius Rosenwald Fund shows that in 1930, Georgia spent $35.42 annually on each white pupil, compared to just $6.38 for each Black student. In "The South and the Negro," Schrieke writes: "Although there has been 'a remarkable industrial development' in a limited area... the South has remained predominantly agricultural... the Negro has retained no civilization and no religion of his own." His anthropological distance at times reproduces racialized tropes even as he critiques segregation, as when he refers to Black Americans as having "no language trouble" and contrasts their "lack of civilization" with Japanese or European immigrant communities.

Still, Schrieke condemns the racial caste system with unmistakable clarity. "Why not suppress the insults, recognize the Negro as a man, but maintain the separation of the races?" he asks rhetorically, then answers: "No! This very contempt is the best possible barrier... The colour problem is an abyss into which we can look only with terror." Slight lean to spine, light soiling and shelfwear to boards, some foxing to outer edge of textblock. Overall very good.A rare and important title in the study of American race relations, particularly notable for its empirical rigor and blunt recording of structural racism during the Depression years. (Inventory #: 21873)