Racial Ambiguity to Racialized Identity Race Relations in the Texas Borderlands

Abstract

This paper focuses on the concept of racial ambiguity and the shifting “racial border,” a phrase used by historian James Leiker. The study relies on primary documents, from a forty-five year period, including Texas laws and statutes, regional newspapers and editorials, and census data. The documents identify the trend of the shifting racial border, its effects on the transformative racial and ethnic relations historically, and how these groups interacted in the evolving Texas frontier. The trends discussed illuminate how race relations evolved in the state, as well as explain later patterns of structural occurrences. Texas is thus an integral actor in the history of the United States predicated on physical and cultural boundaries.