Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

UNEQUAL FREEDOM: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor Evelyn Nakano Glenn Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002; 306 pp. In Unequal Freedom, Evelyn Nakano Glenn offers an extensive and clearlywritten exploration of gender and racial relations within the structures of labour and citizenship in the United States from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era (1870 to 1930). Beyond simply documenting unequal labour and citizenship outcomes for marginalized groups, Glenn's main argument is that both systems "have been constituted in ways that privilege white men and give them power over racialized minorities and women. Simultaneously, citizenship and labor have been arenas in which groups have contested their exclusion, oppression and exploitation" (p. 1). Glenn is interested in multiple social, political, economic processes occurring at local levels through which labour and citizenship both support existing gender and race hierarchies and recreate new ones; in other words, how has the state and society developed to support "unequal freedoms. " Pointing to the "worker citizen" as central to what it means to be "American," Glenn makes a major contribution to the study of racial and gender oppression by examining the linkages between labour and citizenship in American society. Glenn's work is a historiography and comparative case study presented in seven chapters: the first three describe her main concepts, gender, race, labour and citizenship, and theoretical framework; the next three examine local regions of the south, southwest and Hawaii; the last provides summary and conclusions. While this is a work of American history, the analysis of the material has international appeal, as readers will want to consider the connections between labour and citizenship in their specific national contexts. In the first chapter, Glenn presents a theoretical perspective that race and gender are socially constructed, relational concepts in an interlocking system framework. Race and gender are categories that derive meaning from being positioned in relation to each other; they cannot be understood separately. This allows Glenn to examine the dominant class in contrast to the subordinate "other" and consider the systemic nature of oppression because groups are connected systematically. She focusses her analysis on the processes of racialization and gendering rather than characteristics of gender and race as fixed, or biologically determined, categories by examining people's qualitative experience as it is produced from the intersection of oppressions and as it takes particular forms which are contexrually and historically specific. Glenn's methodological challenge is to find and use data (mainly government documents and secondary accounts) that investigate the impacts of gender and race simultaneously. Her analysis examines local experiences of dominant and subdominant racialized groups in three regions: whites and blacks in the south, Anglos and Mexicans in the south-west, and haoles and Japanese in Hawaii. This multiple site approach enables Glenn to compare and contrast the various forms in which oppression and exclusion are manifest. She is careful in her analysis to recognize race as significant while also capturing the diversity within racialized groups in terms of ethnicity, class and political affiliation. In chapter two, Glenn offers a general definition of citizenship and explores its intent of "universality. " She assesses what is actually experienced for different groups - exclusion and uneven access to citizenship rights. Exclusion involves both differential treatment, where racialized and gendered groups are denied citizenship formally in laws and policy, and differential impacts, where formal citizenship status is granted but local practices enforce standards differentially for groups, or where lack of material resources prevents meaningful participation and exercise of rights. …