Placing Racial Triangulation, Triangulating Place and Race: Chinese Grocery Stores in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow Era

Abstract

Chinese were first imported to the Mississippi Delta1 as the solution to the shortage of Black laborers and the maintenance of the plantation system after the Civil War. As foreigners and people of color, the Delta Chinese found the economic niche of grocery stores in the Jim Crow South. Simultaneously concentrated and scattered around the Delta region, these grocery stores served as multiscalar, multiracial, and multifunctional space triangulated between White and Black, not only as one of the most racially mingled spaces in the Jim Crow South but also as a space for self-mobilization and cultural preservation. By examining the Chinese experiences and Chinese grocery stores in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow Era through a multiscalar lens, this article attempts to incorporate space/place/scale2 into racial triangulation theory. Racial formation is both relational and spatial. Space/place/scale are not only axes of racialization but also constituted, produced, and transformed by historical, socioeconomic, and political processes of racialization and racial formation. The Chinese experience between Black and White exemplifies the power of human agency in rescaling the hegemony of White supremacy through the making of place and identity. This article also echoes with Black geographies and calls for the geographies of non-Whiteness that cross-examine multiracial relationships and advocate for cross-racial solidarity against racism and White supremacy.