Undermining Race rewrites the history of race, immigration, and labor in the copper industry in Arizona. The book focuses on the case of Italian immigrants in their relationships with Anglo, Mexican, and Spanish miners (and at times with blacks, Asian Americans, and Native Americans), requiring a reinterpretation of the way race was formed and figured across place and time.
Phylis Martinelli argues that the case of Italians in Arizona provides insight into "in between" racial and ethnic categories, demonstrating that the categorizing of Italians varied from camp to camp depending...