Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (review)

Although many scholars have called for stronger theoretical ties between race and gender, few have substantively engaged in an analysis that contributes to this task. Evelyn Nakano Glenn succeeds in doing this analysis, examining "two major structures through which unequal race and gender relations have been shaped and contested in the United States" (1). The first is citizenship, which has been used to create boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The second is labor, which privileges the economic order and determines who has access to goods and services, levels of autonomy, and standards of living. Through these structures, she begins her important work of creating a space where issues of gender and class are no longer separated. In this effort, she examines the period that extends roughly from 1870 to 1930. As case studies, she examines blacks in the South, Mexicans in the Southwest, and Japanese in Hawaii, noting that this type of regional approach allows her to "make certain comparative statements about how U.S. citizenship and labor systems" affected these groups and how they utilized alternative channels of communication to address this "exclusion and oppression" (3).

Glenn dedicates her first three chapters to establishing a framework within which to work, noting how relationality, representation, and power all serve as points of congruence between race and gender. She also examines citizenship, focusing on how masculine whiteness served as the norm from which other groups, including white women and people of color, were judged. Glenn establishes an important rhetorical link, recognizing that much of the opposition presented by white women and people of color took place in less formal ways and sites, suggesting that these types of "contestation have been even more neglected by scholars of citizenship than formal challenges" (52). This answers the calls of a variety of contemporary critical communication scholars who advocate the study of vernacular rhetorics.

Glenn finally examines labor and the shifting requirements for citizenship. The evolution of the capitalistic economy led to two primary configurations of race and gender relations. First, men were responsible for production outside the home, while women were responsible for (social) reproduction inside the home, which included "cooking, cleaning, childcare, shopping, and other labor that maintained people on a daily basis" (70). Second, new class formations and conflicts emerged. An increase in wage labor, limited to the "free" labor that was owned by white males, led to the stratification of the workforce, which further excluded blacks and women. Because of the American "obligation to work and earn," both women and people of color were at an immediate disadvantage in achieving any type of citizenship status, thereby clearly linking labor to both gender and race.

In chapter 4, Glenn begins her analysis in earnest, examining blacks in the South. Her central claim is that blacks were constructed as "anti-citizens." Black men were systematically removed from the voting process and any type of property ownership. Black women were not considered "true women" and hence were relegated to servitude. Consistent with her goal, Glenn identifies "sites of local contestation" utilized by blacks, a theme that continues in the following two chapters. The first site was rooted in the way blacks turned "segregation into congregation" (126). The second site of contestation was in public spaces, particularly in black objections to the segregation of urban streetcars. The third site was contained in oppositional strategies at work. Often, blacks played off of stereotypes that they were lazy, ignorant, shiftless, and amoral (135). By examining contested sites, she enacts recent calls to study vernacular rhetorics, presenting the first of three strong examples of rooting out the hidden discourses of oppressed peoples.

Chapter 5 examines Mexicans in the Southwest. In contrast to blacks in the South, Mexicans were in an ambiguous position in terms of race; "white" was typically set forth in opposition to "black" and "Indian." Mexicans were not white or nonwhite, but rather "not-quite-white," creating a space of uncertainty...