The Unruly Facts of Race
The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate
Book •
Sunmin Kim's 'The Unruly Facts of Race' examines how the Dillingham Commission (1907–1911) and the social scientists who worked with it produced, contested, and mobilized racial knowledge amid large-scale immigration.
Kim traces how unruly empirical findings challenged 19th-century racial essentialism, leading to concepts such as ethnicity and a form of racial liberalism that selectively incorporated some immigrant groups while excluding others, notably Asians.
The book foregrounds figures including Franz Boas, Yamato Ichihashi, and Zora Neale Hurston to show how expertise, fieldwork, and political interests shaped immigration debates and policy outcomes like national quotas.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Kim illustrates how facts gathered in the field were interpreted differently by nativists, labor activists, women field workers, and immigrant intellectuals, producing conflicting narratives about assimilation and belonging.
The work asks sociologists to reconsider assimilationist assumptions and highlights alternative approaches, inspired by Hurston, that describe racialized groups on their own terms rather than solely by comparison to a national norm.
Kim traces how unruly empirical findings challenged 19th-century racial essentialism, leading to concepts such as ethnicity and a form of racial liberalism that selectively incorporated some immigrant groups while excluding others, notably Asians.
The book foregrounds figures including Franz Boas, Yamato Ichihashi, and Zora Neale Hurston to show how expertise, fieldwork, and political interests shaped immigration debates and policy outcomes like national quotas.
Drawing on extensive archival research, Kim illustrates how facts gathered in the field were interpreted differently by nativists, labor activists, women field workers, and immigrant intellectuals, producing conflicting narratives about assimilation and belonging.
The work asks sociologists to reconsider assimilationist assumptions and highlights alternative approaches, inspired by Hurston, that describe racialized groups on their own terms rather than solely by comparison to a national norm.
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Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
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Matt Dawson
Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
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Matt Dawson
Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
