In partnership with Seminary Co-op Bookstores, join the International House Global Voices Lecture Series for a conversation with Reece Jones on his book, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall. They will be joined in discussion by John Washington.

Webinar ID: 936 4980 6546
Webinar Passcode: IHouse
Click to join via Zoom.

This program is free and open to the public.

About the book: Racist anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, have left many Americans wondering: How did we get here? In a sweeping account, Reece Jones reveals that although the US is often mythologized as a nation of immigrants, it has a long history of immigration restrictions that are rooted in the racist fear of the “great replacement” of whites with non-white immigrants. After the arrival of the first slave ship in 1619, the colonies that became the United States were based on the dual foundation of open immigration for whites from Northern Europe and racial exclusion of slaves from Africa, Native Americans, and, eventually, immigrants from other parts of the world.

Connecting past to present, Jones uncovers the link between the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s, the “Keep America American” nativism of the 1920s, and the “Build the Wall” chants initiated by former president Trump in 2016. Along the way, we meet a bizarre cast of characters, such as John Tanton, Cordelia Scaife May, and Stephen Miller, who moved fringe ideas about “white genocide” and “race suicide” into mainstream political discourse. Through gripping stories and in-depth analysis, Jones explores the connections between anti-immigration hate groups and the Republican Party, exposing the lasting impacts of white supremacist ideas on United States law.

About the author: Reece Jones is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and a professor in and the chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai‘i. He has researched immigration for over 20 years and is the author of Border Walls and Violent Borders, over 2 dozen journal articles, and 4 edited books. He is editor in chief of the journal Geopolitics and lives in Honolulu with his family.

About the interlocutor: John Washington writes about immigration and border politics, as well as criminal justice and literature. His first book, The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexico Border and Beyond, was published in 2020 by Verso Books. Washington is also a translator, having co-translated, most recently, The Hollywood Kid, by Óscar Martínez and Juan Martínez, and Blood Barrios, by Alberto Arce, which won a PEN Translates Award.

Presented by the International House Global Voices Lecture Series and Seminary Co-op Bookstores.