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Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: the Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs
How did immigrants to the United States come to see themselves as white?
David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, Roediger continues that history into the twentieth century.
He recounts how ethnic groups considered white today, including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans, were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly looked down on them as inferior.
From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants, the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods, Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America.
A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present.
David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, Roediger continues that history into the twentieth century.
He recounts how ethnic groups considered white today, including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans, were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly looked down on them as inferior.
From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants, the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods, Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America.
A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present.
339 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2005
About the author
David R. Roediger
43 books118 followersDavid Roediger teaches history and African American Studies at the University of Kansas. He was born in southern Illinois and educated in public schools in that state, with a B.S. in Ed from Northern Illinois University. He completed a doctorate in History at Northwestern in 1979. Roediger has taught labor and Southern history at Northwestern, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, and University of Illinois. He has also worked as an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University. He has written on U.S. movements for a shorter working day, on labor and poetry, on the history of radicalism, and on the racial identities of white workers and of immigrants. The former chair of the editorial committee of the Charles H. Kerr Company, the world's oldest radical publisher, he has been active in the surrealist movement, labor support and anti-racist organizing.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 2, 2017
Another book I didn't get nearly enough time with during a period of extreme research and writing. "Working Toward Whiteness" left a greater mark on me than any of the other books that I read during that period though. While I've had to stop and think about other sources that I was working off of as I go through and backfill books I've read into GoodReads, this book never left the forefront of my mind.
For me, this book is the true definition of a five star. It legitimately forced me out of a mindset I had about the world, and made me look at it in a completely different way.
For me, this book is the true definition of a five star. It legitimately forced me out of a mindset I had about the world, and made me look at it in a completely different way.
August 4, 2019
This book examines the social status of European immigrants to the United States from the early to mid 20th century. It argues that while many of these immigrants were not considered white when they arrived in this country, the experiences within the country, especially in the realm of labor and housing, slowly gained them the status of whiteness. This is contrasted with the experiences with black, Hispanic and Asian Americans who were kept out of this status no matter how long they had lived here.
This book does a good job of showing that far from being a set racial category, whiteness is a social construct. Race and what it means to be white has had different definitions at a different time as some immigrants who were not considered white at first would gain that status over time. It also shows that this country has been set up in a way that privileges white status over everything else as immigrants would come to find out and take violent action to protect their newly gained white status. While this book is an academic book and is a dry read in parts it does a good job of explaining the subject matter and showing that the racial caste system in this country involves more than just one's physical appearance.
This book does a good job of showing that far from being a set racial category, whiteness is a social construct. Race and what it means to be white has had different definitions at a different time as some immigrants who were not considered white at first would gain that status over time. It also shows that this country has been set up in a way that privileges white status over everything else as immigrants would come to find out and take violent action to protect their newly gained white status. While this book is an academic book and is a dry read in parts it does a good job of explaining the subject matter and showing that the racial caste system in this country involves more than just one's physical appearance.
October 7, 2008
This book recounts how American ethnic groups considered white today--including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans--once occupied a liminal racial status in their new country, and only gradually achieved the status of "white" americans.
February 26, 2021
White dudes...
What I learned from reading this book is that I have a much lower tolerance for blowhard white professors than I did in my teens and twenties when books like this were assigned reading. If this is what “academia” is reduced to then lord help us all.
1. This author’s self-aggrandizement jumps off the page and made this a needlessly annoying read.
2. No new ideas are presented here. Over 20% of the book is citations. No, really.
3. No clear, convincing, or even newish ideas are presented to answer the titular question of how immigrants became perceived as “white,” or what was even meant by “white” during the time period in question.
Overall: find something else to read.
What I learned from reading this book is that I have a much lower tolerance for blowhard white professors than I did in my teens and twenties when books like this were assigned reading. If this is what “academia” is reduced to then lord help us all.
1. This author’s self-aggrandizement jumps off the page and made this a needlessly annoying read.
2. No new ideas are presented here. Over 20% of the book is citations. No, really.
3. No clear, convincing, or even newish ideas are presented to answer the titular question of how immigrants became perceived as “white,” or what was even meant by “white” during the time period in question.
Overall: find something else to read.
December 13, 2019
The title sounded quite intriguing and I was curious to see what the author had to say. I was familiar with the concept of Irish and Italian people "becoming" white and was interested in the process or history of this. Author Roediger takes the reader through the history and the societal/cultural context of this.
This was a tough and boring read. It's an academic study that isn't particularly compelling even if the subject matter itself is pretty important. I didn't necessarily disagree with anything the author had to say, it's just it was excruciating to get through.
Needless to say, it was not for me and it's hard for me to judge its merits since I'm no expert on this subject. It's probably a good read but needs context of a class or other materials to help make better sense of the text.
Library borrow was best.
This was a tough and boring read. It's an academic study that isn't particularly compelling even if the subject matter itself is pretty important. I didn't necessarily disagree with anything the author had to say, it's just it was excruciating to get through.
Needless to say, it was not for me and it's hard for me to judge its merits since I'm no expert on this subject. It's probably a good read but needs context of a class or other materials to help make better sense of the text.
Library borrow was best.
October 23, 2008
I always suspected we Irish were social climbers as well as being ill-tempered drunks.
May 31, 2022
I am always interested in the conception of white identity in the US which is why I picked up this book. David Roediger explores the legal and social forces that would create our modern understanding of white identity by examining the trends in immigration to the US from the 1880s through the 1940s.
This book dovetails nicely with other works on eugenics and Black scholars of the time. What makes this book unique is the perspective. The focus on labor history and how white identity was used to divide union organization is fascinating.
This book is divided into three sections; section 1 explores how race came to play a part in the politics of new immigrants, section two explores the 'inbetweenness' of new immigrant experience, and section 3 wraps everything together to show how racial and ethnic identities of new immigrants were subsumed by white american identity.
Roediger shows how meaningless white identity is by showing how flexible the meaning of whiteness is in the history of US immigration laws. He describes the way Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Irish were not considered white at the beginning of the 20th century and how these disparate ethnic groups attained their white status at the expense of POC.
This book is very good. It doesn't quite make five stars as it is a bit disorganized. The writing drags in places and can be hard to follow. It definitely helps to come to this book with some background knowledge of early 20th century immigration laws and the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.
3.5 stars
This book dovetails nicely with other works on eugenics and Black scholars of the time. What makes this book unique is the perspective. The focus on labor history and how white identity was used to divide union organization is fascinating.
This book is divided into three sections; section 1 explores how race came to play a part in the politics of new immigrants, section two explores the 'inbetweenness' of new immigrant experience, and section 3 wraps everything together to show how racial and ethnic identities of new immigrants were subsumed by white american identity.
Roediger shows how meaningless white identity is by showing how flexible the meaning of whiteness is in the history of US immigration laws. He describes the way Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Irish were not considered white at the beginning of the 20th century and how these disparate ethnic groups attained their white status at the expense of POC.
This book is very good. It doesn't quite make five stars as it is a bit disorganized. The writing drags in places and can be hard to follow. It definitely helps to come to this book with some background knowledge of early 20th century immigration laws and the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.
3.5 stars
October 1, 2019
This book is somewhat misleading in several ways, but all the same there is something worthwhile to discover and so it is still worthwhile to interact with a book like this even where it is wrong a lot. The reasons why this book is mistaken are still worthwhile. For one, the immigrants who "became white" in the author's term were already white to begin with, it is just that when they acculturated they no longer had the sort of problematic tendencies that made them an underclass and were able to be accepted as part of the mainstream culture after three generations or so. The fact that the author uses a Marxist scheme of interpreting class and an intersectionalist perspective in viewing justice means that there is a lot of rubbish in this book (and these qualities, it should be noted, make for rubbish in any similar book, it should be noted). That said, the author does at least provide enough of a discussion that it is possible to come to a better understanding when it comes to questions of race and culture than the author does.
This particular book is about 250 pages long and it is divided into three parts and seven large chapters. The author begins with an introduction to the 2018 edition and then provides two chapters on how one sees race in new immigrant history (I) by looking at the language of new immigrants, race and ethnicity in the early 20th century (1) and the popular language, social practice, and messiness of race (2). After that there are two chapters that look at the issue of new immigrants being "in between" (II), with chapters of the burden of proof and intermediate identities (3) as well as the racial consciousness of new immigrants (4), along with a healthy dollop of Marxist language. After that the author provides three chapters that look at the way that new immigrants were able to "enter the white house" as the author refers to it (III), with chapters on the coercion of immigration restrictions (5), the way that people found homes in an age of social and racial restrictions (6), and the new deal, unions, and what new immigrants received by eventually becoming white (7) in the eyes of others. After that the book closes with an afterword that shows the author's own white guilt as well as acknowledgements, notes, and an index.
What worth does this book have? For one, the author does a good job at pointing out that throughout American history a variety of ethnic groups have been viewed as simultaneously "white" but also not sufficiently American to benefit from the full privileges of being part of our dominant culture. Indeed, one can see fairly easily a tripartite sort of picture. Those cultures who are able to acculturate without any visible or linguistic or cultural differences are accepted by the third generation or so. Those cultures which have praiseworthy qualities but who are not able to acculturate have respected places within society but also a certain sense of vulnerability to moods of xenophobia against those who are viewed as outsiders at all (see, after all, the fate of the Japanese and Jews in World War II in America). And those cultures which are viewed (often with good reason) as inferior tend to have a difficult time seeking the respect and honor that they would wish. One can see the patterns the author reveals and better understand the struggle that cultures (and historians) have in defining cultures and what one approves or does not approve of them in precise enough terms. Language is hard, after all.
This particular book is about 250 pages long and it is divided into three parts and seven large chapters. The author begins with an introduction to the 2018 edition and then provides two chapters on how one sees race in new immigrant history (I) by looking at the language of new immigrants, race and ethnicity in the early 20th century (1) and the popular language, social practice, and messiness of race (2). After that there are two chapters that look at the issue of new immigrants being "in between" (II), with chapters of the burden of proof and intermediate identities (3) as well as the racial consciousness of new immigrants (4), along with a healthy dollop of Marxist language. After that the author provides three chapters that look at the way that new immigrants were able to "enter the white house" as the author refers to it (III), with chapters on the coercion of immigration restrictions (5), the way that people found homes in an age of social and racial restrictions (6), and the new deal, unions, and what new immigrants received by eventually becoming white (7) in the eyes of others. After that the book closes with an afterword that shows the author's own white guilt as well as acknowledgements, notes, and an index.
What worth does this book have? For one, the author does a good job at pointing out that throughout American history a variety of ethnic groups have been viewed as simultaneously "white" but also not sufficiently American to benefit from the full privileges of being part of our dominant culture. Indeed, one can see fairly easily a tripartite sort of picture. Those cultures who are able to acculturate without any visible or linguistic or cultural differences are accepted by the third generation or so. Those cultures which have praiseworthy qualities but who are not able to acculturate have respected places within society but also a certain sense of vulnerability to moods of xenophobia against those who are viewed as outsiders at all (see, after all, the fate of the Japanese and Jews in World War II in America). And those cultures which are viewed (often with good reason) as inferior tend to have a difficult time seeking the respect and honor that they would wish. One can see the patterns the author reveals and better understand the struggle that cultures (and historians) have in defining cultures and what one approves or does not approve of them in precise enough terms. Language is hard, after all.
January 23, 2019
It is interesting to think about whiteness as a spectrum of experience, affirmation, and acceptance, but also as a transitional space—this is part of the challenge of the emerging “whiteness studies” field, that it seeks to interrogate something that historically has long been so much of a given that it went utterly unquestioned. Yet in Roediger’s look at the spaces of conditional whiteness emerging for immigrants from across Southern Europe and beyond from the late 19th through early 20th century, he marks whiteness as a status into which one emerged and staked claims. The shifting anxieties of the era first marked immigrants as a threat of contagion, especially looking at Italians, Jews, Syrians and Slavs as bringing the “dregs” of Europe into the United States. The fact that such immigrants were overtly racialized is traced, argues Roediger, from the evolution of racial slurs themselves (his notes on the roots of the “guinea” as a slur against Italians so as to conflate them with blacks are particularly interesting) to the employment spaces in which they were prohibited to the eventual opening of access through specific practices that exposed new immigrants to the principles of white supremacy and US race relations. Roediger argues that not only were these immigrants made white through their inculcation in American racism, but through their learned experiences that taught them how to displace color and racial taint onto other members of their community, and eventually, onto African-Americans. The idea that the immigrant community who became the nation’s “working class” required a facilitated transition to whiteness, one mediated by shifting state policies, the ever-resurgent presence of scientific racism, and the constant framing of the exclusion of African-Americans and Asians as necessary economic defenses for the labor and housing markets. It is disappointing, in the course of my reading this for my rural studies list, that there is so much attention focused on the urban experience of race—and the emergent category of “ethnicity”—and so little dedicated to the rural experience of race, particularly as Robin Kelley manages to weave both together in her book. Nevertheless, looking to the formulation of whiteness as a status that immigrants could selectively attain—and only by turning against African-Americans and framing them as the “anti-neighbor”—allows Roediger to expose shifting definitions of humanity and citizenship well before WWII.
October 10, 2020
Look, I feel bad about this rating. I do. There is really fascinating history in here! I learned a bunch of interesting stuff! But this man’s writing made me want to bludgeon myself senseless. Alas, the paperback copy proved unfit for the task at hand.
In all seriousness, it makes me genuinely angry that a professional editor at a major publishing company somehow read this and said, yup, this is good. Green light, send it to press. It’s written as if Roediger made a gigantic bulleted list of all the interesting facts and anecdotes he learned in his (truly impressive!) research, but rather than try to boil it down for readers into a coherent narrative, he simply converted all the bullet points into sentences, strung them together one after another without omitting a single redundant detail and spewed out a never-ending vomit of full-page paragraphs that make the same point over and over and over again.
Apologies to Roediger, who is an excellent researcher and maybe a perfectly decent human being. But I cannot get over how genuinely awful the writing was. This would have gotten 4 stars in the hands of someone who didn’t actively hate his readers. A half-decent writer paired with an editor willing to say, ok, anecdote 50 doesn’t really add much that we didn’t learn in anecdotes 1-49, might’ve earned 5 stars. The content was that good, and the execution that miserable.
In all seriousness, it makes me genuinely angry that a professional editor at a major publishing company somehow read this and said, yup, this is good. Green light, send it to press. It’s written as if Roediger made a gigantic bulleted list of all the interesting facts and anecdotes he learned in his (truly impressive!) research, but rather than try to boil it down for readers into a coherent narrative, he simply converted all the bullet points into sentences, strung them together one after another without omitting a single redundant detail and spewed out a never-ending vomit of full-page paragraphs that make the same point over and over and over again.
Apologies to Roediger, who is an excellent researcher and maybe a perfectly decent human being. But I cannot get over how genuinely awful the writing was. This would have gotten 4 stars in the hands of someone who didn’t actively hate his readers. A half-decent writer paired with an editor willing to say, ok, anecdote 50 doesn’t really add much that we didn’t learn in anecdotes 1-49, might’ve earned 5 stars. The content was that good, and the execution that miserable.
Read
January 28, 2009This is another selection for the Anti-Racist reading group. Roediger describes the history of "White" becoming a race. He explains how various new immigrants to the United States were defined for inferiority but gradually were able to work their way into privilege. This path to privilege also included adopting racism towards African-Americans and newer immigrants (often considered racially "darker").
Roediger presents many many examples of how racial dynamics shift and how that shapes the concept of race. For example, upon arrival Jews and Southern Italians were considered racially darker and therefore discriminated against. Gradually that changed and they were able to assimilate as white.
I was most struck and intrigued by the important role of a few vocal Jewish immigrants sympathizing and criticizing persecution and discrimination (as this was their heritage). But of course predominantly taking the same part in assimilating and discriminating as many other groups.
There was also a great analysis of the institutionalized racism within the New Deal. I am curious if the Obama economic plan will be more empowering to nonWhites.
Roediger presents many many examples of how racial dynamics shift and how that shapes the concept of race. For example, upon arrival Jews and Southern Italians were considered racially darker and therefore discriminated against. Gradually that changed and they were able to assimilate as white.
I was most struck and intrigued by the important role of a few vocal Jewish immigrants sympathizing and criticizing persecution and discrimination (as this was their heritage). But of course predominantly taking the same part in assimilating and discriminating as many other groups.
There was also a great analysis of the institutionalized racism within the New Deal. I am curious if the Obama economic plan will be more empowering to nonWhites.
August 5, 2011
Redundant and a bit dull at times but generally a good view of the immigrant experience in America.
July 1, 2026
My notes/highlights:
WASP
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is an informal, sometimes disparaging term for a group of high-status and influential White Americans of English Protestant ancestry. The term applies to a group who control disproportionate financial, political and social power in the United States.
New immigrants
Whiter and longer-established immigrants
Color-races
vs
Nation-races
Attributing inferiorities and evils to the race of the immigrants
Race
Vs.
Ethnicity:
Competing concepts
Ethnic may clarify the difference between the
- nation-race of new immigrants and
- color-race of blacks and Asians
Ethnicity dulls self-reflection by supposing that only those "unlike ourselves" possess ethnicity.
Unmeltable ethnics
White ethnic first used in 1964
included Jews, Irish, Italians
linked to their achievement of power in the U.S.
Gain in social status lead to loss of a racial classification.
Ethnic minorities bacame; Negroes, Asians, and other nonwhites.
Race
Is a category one may not voluntarily resign.
Overcoming ethnic prejudices
Blamed for failing to properly choose ancestors
shtetl to WASP
shtetl:
a small Jewish town or village in eastern Europe.
Radical antiracist scholar
White ethnics had been viewed racially, but were not victims of racism
Light years ahead of its time
on many fronts
The oppression and exclusion suffered by people of color was of an entirely different order than what the European new immigrants experienced.
- Race-as-genes
and
- ethnicity-as-culture
Are false, because race was about "stock" AND culture in the early 20th century
Stock and culture (heredity and environment)
Irish:
Once (previously) racially stigmatized immigrant
Iranian:
Now (currently) racially stigmatized immigrant
Irish could claim white rights at some point
Gaining fuller humanity required participation in inhumanity
Becoming American required the European new immigrants to buy into the motion of American blacks as the real aliens.
Invidiously separated
Invidious
(of an action or situation) likely to arouse or incur resentment or anger in others.
"she'd put herself in an invidious position"
synonyms:unpleasant, awkward, difficult;
(of a comparison or distinction) unfairly discriminating; unjust.
"it seems invidious to make special mention of one aspect of his work"
synonyms:unfair, unjust, iniquitous,unwarranted;
Mitigate:
make less severe, serious, or painful.
"he wanted to mitigate misery in the world"
synonyms:alleviate, reduce, diminish, lessen,weaken, lighten, attenuate, take the edge off, allay, ease, assuage, palliate,relieve, tone down
"the worst symptoms have been mitigated"
lessen the gravity of (an offense or mistake).
"he would have faced a prison sentence but for mitigating circumstances"
in·vec·tive
inˈvektiv/
noun
insulting, abusive, or highly critical language.
"he let out a stream of invective"
synonyms:abuse, insults, expletives, swear words,swearing, curses, foul language, foul language
The new immigrants saw their racial fitness questioned, through
- denigration of their place in the hierarchy of races
The racial order new immigrants were placed, and they placed themselves
Racially despised people
Racial slur:
"an Irish is a only a negro turned wrong side out."
Hideous
In a country where the
distinction between white and black is intended as a
distinction of value
an·te·bel·lum
ˌantēˈbeləm/
adjective
occurring or existing before a particular war, especially the American Civil War.
"the conventions of the antebellum South"
.... when the word gained currency
- to celebrate whites
- to villainizes non-whites
"unassimilated Sicilian mobsters"
unconcealed racial prejudice
Have come to be thought of as white
Popular perceptions of race
My less than white racial status, alongside my nationality matters to you?
In 1909, an Italian editor wrote: " Italians are
- maltreated
- mocked
- scorned
- disdained
- abused
In every way"
Before Columbus's "discovery",
9 - 18 million people living in North America
After,
0.25 million in USA
0.12 million in Canada
Texas was annexed 1836, became a state 1845
Arizona, 1848, fully annexed 1853
1800 - 1860
Market revolution
Period where US economy grew because of exporting COTTON
made possible by slave labor
1898
Annexation of
- Puerto Rico,
- Cuba,
- Guam,
- Philippines
White supremacy = racism =
justifying exploitation by institutionalizing the inferiority of its victims"
Origins of Whiteness and White Supremacy as Concepts
The first European settlers called themselves English, Irish, German, French, Dutch, etc. -- not white. Over half of those who came in the early colonial period were servants. By 1760 the population reached about two million, of whom 400,000 were enslaved Africans. An elite of planters developed in the southern colonies. In Virginia, for example, 50 rich white families held the reins of power but were vastly outnumbered by non-whites. In the Carolinas, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 Black slaves and 60,000 indigenous peoples in the area. Class lines hardened as the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. The problem of control loomed large and fear of revolt from below grew.
There had been slave revolts from the beginning but elite whites feared even more that discontented whites -- servants, tenant farmers, the urban poor, the property-less, soldiers and sailors -- would join Black slaves to overthrow the existing order. As early as 1663, indentured white servants and Black slaves in Virginia had formed a conspiracy to rebel and gain their freedom. In 1676 came Bacon's Rebellion by white frontiersmen and servants alongside Black slaves. The rebellion shook up Virginia's planter elite. Many other rebellions followed, from South Carolina to New York. The main fear of elite whites everywhere was a class fear. Their solution: divide and control. Certain privileges were given to white indentured servants. They were allowed to join militias, carry guns, acquire land, and have other legal rights not allowed to slaves. With these privileges they were legally declared white on the basis of skin color and continental origin. That made them "superior" to Blacks (and Indians). Thus whiteness was born as a racist concept to prevent lower-class whites from joining people of color, especially Blacks, against their class enemies. The concept of whiteness became a source of unity and strength for the vastly outnumbered Euroamericans -- as in South Africa, another settler nation. Today, unity across color lines remains the biggest threat in the eyes of a white ruling class.
Titanic sank in 1912
One black family and Japanese passengers were written recorded as "italian", used as a general term for all of the darker skinned passengers on board
- Westernized
Vs.
- Orientalists
- De-westernization
and
- De-orientalization
Gate-keeping strategies of immigration restriction
The total lack of clarity regarding whether the racial categories were...
Physical and cultural attributes of race
Simultaneously labile and resistant to change
The immigrant who seeks to mitigate his nonwhiteness,
- group process
- individual process
- overcoming biology
- changing habits
- practicable
- quixotic
By history
Vs
By biology
"Peasants made inarticulate by centuries of caste rule"
Hereditarian perspective
- Wop (slur term for Italian or other South Europeans)
- Hunkie
- guinea
- greaser
-
Inspections on entering the country,
Immigrants were
- scrutinized
- tried
- examined
- ranked against each other
For the most part white-skinned, but
generally regarded as inferior.
Immigrants held jobs that "Americans" avoided
"If he proves himself a man and acquires wealth and cleans himself up -- very well, we might receive them in a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him." Henry Pratt Fairchild's 1911 comparison of immigrants
WOW
Supreme Court 1923 case
Thind
Bhagat Singh Thind
Indian
Denied naturalization based on "common speech" and "popular understanding" that he's not white.
Supreme Court 1922 case
Ozawa
Japanese
Denied naturalization (citizenship) because he was born in Japan even though he had lived in the US for 20 years.
the Naturalization Act of 1906 which allowed only “free white persons” and "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent" to naturalize.
1870
1906
1940
1990 (introduced the DV lottery. 55,000 cap allotted in 1995)
Prior to 1906, an alien could be naturalized in any U.S. "court of record." State-level naturalization courts managed proceedings and had varying standards across the country.
Section 401 (later Section 349(a)(8) of the 1952 law) provided that natural-born American citizens would lose their citizenship if convicted of military desertion during time of war.
"Race to the man in the street, is neither
- biological
- cultural
- linguistic
- religious
- political.
It's all, any, or none of them."
It's an irrational view.
By Ralph Bunche
Supreme Court justices held this irrational view.
1790, first Congress
- 1840s, 1850s, racially based campaigns against Irish naturalization
- early 20th century, against Italians
Both aimed to DELAY, NOT DENY, citizenship to them.
riposte
rəˈpōst/
noun
1. a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
synonyms:retort, counter, rejoinder, sally,return, answer, reply, response;
informalcomeback
"an indignant riposte"
2.FENCING
a quick return thrust following a parry.
1. make a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
"“I'd have made lamb chops had I known you're a vegetarian,” Kris riposted"
synonyms:retort, counter, rejoin, return,retaliate, hurl back, answer, reply,respond, come back
"“Heaven help you,” riposted Alicia"
2. make a quick return thrust in fencing.
Racist naturalization policy
Hungarians, also known as Magyars
The legal equation of whiteness with fitness for citizenship
"Anglo-Saxon superiority" and an all-white "American race"
Red Finns vs. white Finns
Socialist vs. churchly
fecund
ˈfekənd,ˈfēkənd/
adjective
producing or capable of producing an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertile.
"a lush and fecund garden"
synonyms:fertile, fruitful, productive, high-yielding;More
technical
(of a woman or women) capable of becoming pregnant and giving birth.
Native-born birth rates
Admitting his previous errors
in·vet·er·ate
inˈvedərət/
adjective
having a particular habit, activity, or interest that is long-established and unlikely to change.
"he was an inveterate gambler"
synonyms:ingrained, deep-seated, deep-rooted,entrenched, congenital, ineradicable,incurable
"inveterate corruption"
(of a feeling or habit) long-established and unlikely to change.
synonyms:confirmed, hardened, incorrigible,addicted, habitual, compulsive,obsessive;
The inveterate citadel of academic racism:
Harvard University
squalor
ˈskwälər/
noun
a state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.
"they lived in squalor and disease"
synonyms:dirt, filth, grubbiness, grime, muck,foulness, vileness, poverty,wretchedness, meanness, seediness,shabbiness, sordidness, sleaziness,neglect, decay, dilapidation;
Francis Amasa Walker
Statistician
Ivy league professor
President of MIT (1881-1897)
Shifted focus of anti-immigrant initiatives from anti-Catholic bigotry to race. -
"Immigrants problems are those of race, AND class and history."
Edward Drinker Cope
American evolutionary biologist:
"Four inferior forms of humanity:
- non-white races
- all women
- southern Europeans (as opposed to Northern Europeans)
- lower classes within superior races
"Race suicide": a homogeneous nativist view that allowing different immigrant in would outnumber and overpower them, so, immigration causes their race to die.
As a result of high immigration rates and low birth rates among the nation's "English-speaking race".
Shared and popularized
Competition would be cutthroat
Cut throat competition is a term that was widely used to describe the reason forconsumer protection regulation, labour law, and enforcement of competition law or antitrust, in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In economics, cut throat competition is also referred to as ruinous, excessive or unfettered competition. More generally, cut throat competition is also subsumed under the term "destructive competition".
Many countries have strict legislation against cut throat competition and anti-competitive practices in pricing.
Employers preferred a labor force divided by race and national origin.
Work gangs segregated by nationality and/or race could be made to compete against each other in a strategy designed in the long run
- to undermine labor unity and depress wages and
- to spur competition and productivity
- to forestall development of solidarity
Research analyzing ... was
as rare as opinions were numerous.
hearsay and rumor
hear·say
ˈhirˌsā/
information received from other people that one cannot adequately substantiate; rumor.
"according to hearsay, Bob had managed to break his arm"
synonyms:rumor, gossip, tittle-tattle, idle talk
NWNP:
Native-born whites with native-born parents.
African Americans found themselves on the lowest rungs of job ladders.
Jim Crow values and attitudes of the corporate elite.
The noncitizen
slavelike subservience
Instead of framing their anti-new-immigrant laws, based on "stock" (race), AFL supported literacy tests designed to reduce the number of Slavic and Mediterranean immigrants.
1902?
To oppose entry of "the scum" from "the least civilized countries of Europe"
Coolie
Padrone coolie
= a patron or master, in particular.
a Mafia boss. (USinformal)
an employer, especially one who exploits immigrant workers.
The padrone system was a contract laborsystem utilized by many immigrant groups to find employment in the United States, most notably Italian, but also Greeks, Chinese,Japanese, and Mexicans.[1] The word 'padrone' is an Italian word meaning 'boss' or 'manager' when translated into English. The system was a complex network of business relationships formed to meet a growing need for skilled and unskilled workers.[2] Padrones were labor brokers, usually immigrants or first-generation Americans themselves, who acted as middlemen between immigrant workers and employers.[3][4]
Transoceanic travel became more efficient and less expensive due to introduction of the steamship in the 1860s. This made enticements by labor agents attractive to individuals who were looking for better wages, but did not want to make The United States their permanent home.[5] In the U.S., these 'birds of passage' were employed in growth areas nationwide where the local labor force was too small. They worked for mining and railroad companies and agribusinesses, dug canals, and raised livestock. The system died out after the First World War interrupted the flow of immigrants from Europe, and was virtually extinct by 1930.
- Unskilled
Vs.
- Semi-skilled
Vs.
- skilled
Changes in machinery, led to deskilling work
Slavic workers saw the union as a vehicle to combat racial discrimination.
Whites draw a line between themselves and new immigrants based on
- false pride, and
- real privileges
The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was one of a series of laws designed to prevent interracial relationships.
The Racial Integrity Act required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth and divided society into only two classifications: white and colored (essentially all other, which included numerous American Indians). It defined race by the "one-drop rule", defining as "colored" persons with any African or Native American ancestry. It also expanded the scope of Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (anti-miscegenation law) by criminalizing all marriages between white persons and non-white persons. In 1967 the law was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in its ruling on Loving v. Virginia.
The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be "feebleminded," including the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, or epileptic."[2]
WASP
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is an informal, sometimes disparaging term for a group of high-status and influential White Americans of English Protestant ancestry. The term applies to a group who control disproportionate financial, political and social power in the United States.
New immigrants
Whiter and longer-established immigrants
Color-races
vs
Nation-races
Attributing inferiorities and evils to the race of the immigrants
Race
Vs.
Ethnicity:
Competing concepts
Ethnic may clarify the difference between the
- nation-race of new immigrants and
- color-race of blacks and Asians
Ethnicity dulls self-reflection by supposing that only those "unlike ourselves" possess ethnicity.
Unmeltable ethnics
White ethnic first used in 1964
included Jews, Irish, Italians
linked to their achievement of power in the U.S.
Gain in social status lead to loss of a racial classification.
Ethnic minorities bacame; Negroes, Asians, and other nonwhites.
Race
Is a category one may not voluntarily resign.
Overcoming ethnic prejudices
Blamed for failing to properly choose ancestors
shtetl to WASP
shtetl:
a small Jewish town or village in eastern Europe.
Radical antiracist scholar
White ethnics had been viewed racially, but were not victims of racism
Light years ahead of its time
on many fronts
The oppression and exclusion suffered by people of color was of an entirely different order than what the European new immigrants experienced.
- Race-as-genes
and
- ethnicity-as-culture
Are false, because race was about "stock" AND culture in the early 20th century
Stock and culture (heredity and environment)
Irish:
Once (previously) racially stigmatized immigrant
Iranian:
Now (currently) racially stigmatized immigrant
Irish could claim white rights at some point
Gaining fuller humanity required participation in inhumanity
Becoming American required the European new immigrants to buy into the motion of American blacks as the real aliens.
Invidiously separated
Invidious
(of an action or situation) likely to arouse or incur resentment or anger in others.
"she'd put herself in an invidious position"
synonyms:unpleasant, awkward, difficult;
(of a comparison or distinction) unfairly discriminating; unjust.
"it seems invidious to make special mention of one aspect of his work"
synonyms:unfair, unjust, iniquitous,unwarranted;
Mitigate:
make less severe, serious, or painful.
"he wanted to mitigate misery in the world"
synonyms:alleviate, reduce, diminish, lessen,weaken, lighten, attenuate, take the edge off, allay, ease, assuage, palliate,relieve, tone down
"the worst symptoms have been mitigated"
lessen the gravity of (an offense or mistake).
"he would have faced a prison sentence but for mitigating circumstances"
in·vec·tive
inˈvektiv/
noun
insulting, abusive, or highly critical language.
"he let out a stream of invective"
synonyms:abuse, insults, expletives, swear words,swearing, curses, foul language, foul language
The new immigrants saw their racial fitness questioned, through
- denigration of their place in the hierarchy of races
The racial order new immigrants were placed, and they placed themselves
Racially despised people
Racial slur:
"an Irish is a only a negro turned wrong side out."
Hideous
In a country where the
distinction between white and black is intended as a
distinction of value
an·te·bel·lum
ˌantēˈbeləm/
adjective
occurring or existing before a particular war, especially the American Civil War.
"the conventions of the antebellum South"
.... when the word gained currency
- to celebrate whites
- to villainizes non-whites
"unassimilated Sicilian mobsters"
unconcealed racial prejudice
Have come to be thought of as white
Popular perceptions of race
My less than white racial status, alongside my nationality matters to you?
In 1909, an Italian editor wrote: " Italians are
- maltreated
- mocked
- scorned
- disdained
- abused
In every way"
Before Columbus's "discovery",
9 - 18 million people living in North America
After,
0.25 million in USA
0.12 million in Canada
Texas was annexed 1836, became a state 1845
Arizona, 1848, fully annexed 1853
1800 - 1860
Market revolution
Period where US economy grew because of exporting COTTON
made possible by slave labor
1898
Annexation of
- Puerto Rico,
- Cuba,
- Guam,
- Philippines
White supremacy = racism =
justifying exploitation by institutionalizing the inferiority of its victims"
Origins of Whiteness and White Supremacy as Concepts
The first European settlers called themselves English, Irish, German, French, Dutch, etc. -- not white. Over half of those who came in the early colonial period were servants. By 1760 the population reached about two million, of whom 400,000 were enslaved Africans. An elite of planters developed in the southern colonies. In Virginia, for example, 50 rich white families held the reins of power but were vastly outnumbered by non-whites. In the Carolinas, 25,000 whites faced 40,000 Black slaves and 60,000 indigenous peoples in the area. Class lines hardened as the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. The problem of control loomed large and fear of revolt from below grew.
There had been slave revolts from the beginning but elite whites feared even more that discontented whites -- servants, tenant farmers, the urban poor, the property-less, soldiers and sailors -- would join Black slaves to overthrow the existing order. As early as 1663, indentured white servants and Black slaves in Virginia had formed a conspiracy to rebel and gain their freedom. In 1676 came Bacon's Rebellion by white frontiersmen and servants alongside Black slaves. The rebellion shook up Virginia's planter elite. Many other rebellions followed, from South Carolina to New York. The main fear of elite whites everywhere was a class fear. Their solution: divide and control. Certain privileges were given to white indentured servants. They were allowed to join militias, carry guns, acquire land, and have other legal rights not allowed to slaves. With these privileges they were legally declared white on the basis of skin color and continental origin. That made them "superior" to Blacks (and Indians). Thus whiteness was born as a racist concept to prevent lower-class whites from joining people of color, especially Blacks, against their class enemies. The concept of whiteness became a source of unity and strength for the vastly outnumbered Euroamericans -- as in South Africa, another settler nation. Today, unity across color lines remains the biggest threat in the eyes of a white ruling class.
Titanic sank in 1912
One black family and Japanese passengers were written recorded as "italian", used as a general term for all of the darker skinned passengers on board
- Westernized
Vs.
- Orientalists
- De-westernization
and
- De-orientalization
Gate-keeping strategies of immigration restriction
The total lack of clarity regarding whether the racial categories were...
Physical and cultural attributes of race
Simultaneously labile and resistant to change
The immigrant who seeks to mitigate his nonwhiteness,
- group process
- individual process
- overcoming biology
- changing habits
- practicable
- quixotic
By history
Vs
By biology
"Peasants made inarticulate by centuries of caste rule"
Hereditarian perspective
- Wop (slur term for Italian or other South Europeans)
- Hunkie
- guinea
- greaser
-
Inspections on entering the country,
Immigrants were
- scrutinized
- tried
- examined
- ranked against each other
For the most part white-skinned, but
generally regarded as inferior.
Immigrants held jobs that "Americans" avoided
"If he proves himself a man and acquires wealth and cleans himself up -- very well, we might receive them in a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him." Henry Pratt Fairchild's 1911 comparison of immigrants
WOW
Supreme Court 1923 case
Thind
Bhagat Singh Thind
Indian
Denied naturalization based on "common speech" and "popular understanding" that he's not white.
Supreme Court 1922 case
Ozawa
Japanese
Denied naturalization (citizenship) because he was born in Japan even though he had lived in the US for 20 years.
the Naturalization Act of 1906 which allowed only “free white persons” and "persons of African nativity or persons of African descent" to naturalize.
1870
1906
1940
1990 (introduced the DV lottery. 55,000 cap allotted in 1995)
Prior to 1906, an alien could be naturalized in any U.S. "court of record." State-level naturalization courts managed proceedings and had varying standards across the country.
Section 401 (later Section 349(a)(8) of the 1952 law) provided that natural-born American citizens would lose their citizenship if convicted of military desertion during time of war.
"Race to the man in the street, is neither
- biological
- cultural
- linguistic
- religious
- political.
It's all, any, or none of them."
It's an irrational view.
By Ralph Bunche
Supreme Court justices held this irrational view.
1790, first Congress
- 1840s, 1850s, racially based campaigns against Irish naturalization
- early 20th century, against Italians
Both aimed to DELAY, NOT DENY, citizenship to them.
riposte
rəˈpōst/
noun
1. a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
synonyms:retort, counter, rejoinder, sally,return, answer, reply, response;
informalcomeback
"an indignant riposte"
2.FENCING
a quick return thrust following a parry.
1. make a quick clever reply to an insult or criticism.
"“I'd have made lamb chops had I known you're a vegetarian,” Kris riposted"
synonyms:retort, counter, rejoin, return,retaliate, hurl back, answer, reply,respond, come back
"“Heaven help you,” riposted Alicia"
2. make a quick return thrust in fencing.
Racist naturalization policy
Hungarians, also known as Magyars
The legal equation of whiteness with fitness for citizenship
"Anglo-Saxon superiority" and an all-white "American race"
Red Finns vs. white Finns
Socialist vs. churchly
fecund
ˈfekənd,ˈfēkənd/
adjective
producing or capable of producing an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertile.
"a lush and fecund garden"
synonyms:fertile, fruitful, productive, high-yielding;More
technical
(of a woman or women) capable of becoming pregnant and giving birth.
Native-born birth rates
Admitting his previous errors
in·vet·er·ate
inˈvedərət/
adjective
having a particular habit, activity, or interest that is long-established and unlikely to change.
"he was an inveterate gambler"
synonyms:ingrained, deep-seated, deep-rooted,entrenched, congenital, ineradicable,incurable
"inveterate corruption"
(of a feeling or habit) long-established and unlikely to change.
synonyms:confirmed, hardened, incorrigible,addicted, habitual, compulsive,obsessive;
The inveterate citadel of academic racism:
Harvard University
squalor
ˈskwälər/
noun
a state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.
"they lived in squalor and disease"
synonyms:dirt, filth, grubbiness, grime, muck,foulness, vileness, poverty,wretchedness, meanness, seediness,shabbiness, sordidness, sleaziness,neglect, decay, dilapidation;
Francis Amasa Walker
Statistician
Ivy league professor
President of MIT (1881-1897)
Shifted focus of anti-immigrant initiatives from anti-Catholic bigotry to race. -
"Immigrants problems are those of race, AND class and history."
Edward Drinker Cope
American evolutionary biologist:
"Four inferior forms of humanity:
- non-white races
- all women
- southern Europeans (as opposed to Northern Europeans)
- lower classes within superior races
"Race suicide": a homogeneous nativist view that allowing different immigrant in would outnumber and overpower them, so, immigration causes their race to die.
As a result of high immigration rates and low birth rates among the nation's "English-speaking race".
Shared and popularized
Competition would be cutthroat
Cut throat competition is a term that was widely used to describe the reason forconsumer protection regulation, labour law, and enforcement of competition law or antitrust, in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In economics, cut throat competition is also referred to as ruinous, excessive or unfettered competition. More generally, cut throat competition is also subsumed under the term "destructive competition".
Many countries have strict legislation against cut throat competition and anti-competitive practices in pricing.
Employers preferred a labor force divided by race and national origin.
Work gangs segregated by nationality and/or race could be made to compete against each other in a strategy designed in the long run
- to undermine labor unity and depress wages and
- to spur competition and productivity
- to forestall development of solidarity
Research analyzing ... was
as rare as opinions were numerous.
hearsay and rumor
hear·say
ˈhirˌsā/
information received from other people that one cannot adequately substantiate; rumor.
"according to hearsay, Bob had managed to break his arm"
synonyms:rumor, gossip, tittle-tattle, idle talk
NWNP:
Native-born whites with native-born parents.
African Americans found themselves on the lowest rungs of job ladders.
Jim Crow values and attitudes of the corporate elite.
The noncitizen
slavelike subservience
Instead of framing their anti-new-immigrant laws, based on "stock" (race), AFL supported literacy tests designed to reduce the number of Slavic and Mediterranean immigrants.
1902?
To oppose entry of "the scum" from "the least civilized countries of Europe"
Coolie
Padrone coolie
= a patron or master, in particular.
a Mafia boss. (USinformal)
an employer, especially one who exploits immigrant workers.
The padrone system was a contract laborsystem utilized by many immigrant groups to find employment in the United States, most notably Italian, but also Greeks, Chinese,Japanese, and Mexicans.[1] The word 'padrone' is an Italian word meaning 'boss' or 'manager' when translated into English. The system was a complex network of business relationships formed to meet a growing need for skilled and unskilled workers.[2] Padrones were labor brokers, usually immigrants or first-generation Americans themselves, who acted as middlemen between immigrant workers and employers.[3][4]
Transoceanic travel became more efficient and less expensive due to introduction of the steamship in the 1860s. This made enticements by labor agents attractive to individuals who were looking for better wages, but did not want to make The United States their permanent home.[5] In the U.S., these 'birds of passage' were employed in growth areas nationwide where the local labor force was too small. They worked for mining and railroad companies and agribusinesses, dug canals, and raised livestock. The system died out after the First World War interrupted the flow of immigrants from Europe, and was virtually extinct by 1930.
- Unskilled
Vs.
- Semi-skilled
Vs.
- skilled
Changes in machinery, led to deskilling work
Slavic workers saw the union as a vehicle to combat racial discrimination.
Whites draw a line between themselves and new immigrants based on
- false pride, and
- real privileges
The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was one of a series of laws designed to prevent interracial relationships.
The Racial Integrity Act required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth and divided society into only two classifications: white and colored (essentially all other, which included numerous American Indians). It defined race by the "one-drop rule", defining as "colored" persons with any African or Native American ancestry. It also expanded the scope of Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (anti-miscegenation law) by criminalizing all marriages between white persons and non-white persons. In 1967 the law was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in its ruling on Loving v. Virginia.
The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be "feebleminded," including the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, or epileptic."[2]
August 3, 2024
Actual Rating 9.5/10
Have you ever heard someone say "Well, Irish/Italians were discriminated against too!" and then the conversation just kind of ends because you're kind of flabbergasted that the person saying that never stopped to think "...and then what happened?" Well then, this is the perfect book for them (and you)!
In all seriousness, I do think this topic is one that is extremely important when it comes to understanding the concept of race, racial identity, and racism. People love to say "race is a social construct" yet fail to interrogate what exactly makes it so and how it came to be. Admittedly, this -- how immigrants from South/East Europe came to "be" white -- has been a topic I have thought about quite a bit but have failed to research in depth.
I think this book does a really good job at discussing the differences in waves of European immigration to the U.S., how factors such as proximity to whiteness, labor and religion impacted a group's assimilation into becoming "white," and how quickly certain groups would wield their (even tiny slice of) whiteness in order to further distance themselves from "the other" in order to further inculcate themselves into "good whites." I kept thinking about what I wanted to include in this review and I'm failing to remember half of it, but ultimately I guess the crux is "groups of people would forget what solidarity meant as soon as they got a taste of some power (and could pin "otherness" on someone else to feel like they belonged)" and that is unfortunately an evergreen lesson to keep in mind. I wish there was a bit more exploration into the interplay of whiteness and groups that were non-Black (i.e. there is brief mention of Mexicans, Asians, etc. but no deep analysis -- mainly a white/Black dichotomy), but I recognize how that itself can be an entirely separate book.
Unrelated but related, shoutout to "M. Wilkins", the owner of this book prior to myself. They took substantial notes and underlined/circled almost everything in the first half of the book but then...gave up? Maybe they thought the book was gonna be one thing and ended up being another. It's hard to tell, they seem like someone who was truly uninformed and looking to learn more, but also circled terms like "lynching" and maybe it's best to start elsewhere if that's the case. In any case, I hope they learned a lot and became radicalized after finishing the book.
Have you ever heard someone say "Well, Irish/Italians were discriminated against too!" and then the conversation just kind of ends because you're kind of flabbergasted that the person saying that never stopped to think "...and then what happened?" Well then, this is the perfect book for them (and you)!
In all seriousness, I do think this topic is one that is extremely important when it comes to understanding the concept of race, racial identity, and racism. People love to say "race is a social construct" yet fail to interrogate what exactly makes it so and how it came to be. Admittedly, this -- how immigrants from South/East Europe came to "be" white -- has been a topic I have thought about quite a bit but have failed to research in depth.
I think this book does a really good job at discussing the differences in waves of European immigration to the U.S., how factors such as proximity to whiteness, labor and religion impacted a group's assimilation into becoming "white," and how quickly certain groups would wield their (even tiny slice of) whiteness in order to further distance themselves from "the other" in order to further inculcate themselves into "good whites." I kept thinking about what I wanted to include in this review and I'm failing to remember half of it, but ultimately I guess the crux is "groups of people would forget what solidarity meant as soon as they got a taste of some power (and could pin "otherness" on someone else to feel like they belonged)" and that is unfortunately an evergreen lesson to keep in mind. I wish there was a bit more exploration into the interplay of whiteness and groups that were non-Black (i.e. there is brief mention of Mexicans, Asians, etc. but no deep analysis -- mainly a white/Black dichotomy), but I recognize how that itself can be an entirely separate book.
Unrelated but related, shoutout to "M. Wilkins", the owner of this book prior to myself. They took substantial notes and underlined/circled almost everything in the first half of the book but then...gave up? Maybe they thought the book was gonna be one thing and ended up being another. It's hard to tell, they seem like someone who was truly uninformed and looking to learn more, but also circled terms like "lynching" and maybe it's best to start elsewhere if that's the case. In any case, I hope they learned a lot and became radicalized after finishing the book.
February 11, 2023
The concept of "race" and "whiteness" has been a topic of academic discussion since the 1990s, so it came as a surprise to me to see this book back as a second edition just a few years ago (first published in 2005, new edition 2018). Having already read Ignatiev's "How the Irish Became White," I was curious to see how this would be applied to other "non-Hispanic/Latino" and "non-Black" peoples. I was not disappointed. Extremely well-documented and well-written (for an academic book), anyone interested in researching the background of America's ongoing "race" problems is sure to find this informative.
However, the second half of the book became entangled in detailed descriptions of the workplace, housing, unionized discrimination, and even Frank Sinatra (that one was an eye-opener, though). The constant references to existing studies inevitably started with "As X says" or "As X has said," as if every reader is supposed to know who on earth that X person is and why we should care about what they said. In other words, although slightly more accessible in terms of lack of technical jargon, this is a sociologist's book written for other sociologists, and those who are not familiar with the world of academia will find much of the book a heavy, dense, ponderous read. Lots of more images and tabled data or charts showing the number of immigrants from various countries and cultures would have been very helpful in unpacking the extensive, tortuous history described.
But it is a good compendium of the immigrants' journey -- for Europeans, at any rate, especially those from "undesirable" countries in the mid to late 19th century.
However, the second half of the book became entangled in detailed descriptions of the workplace, housing, unionized discrimination, and even Frank Sinatra (that one was an eye-opener, though). The constant references to existing studies inevitably started with "As X says" or "As X has said," as if every reader is supposed to know who on earth that X person is and why we should care about what they said. In other words, although slightly more accessible in terms of lack of technical jargon, this is a sociologist's book written for other sociologists, and those who are not familiar with the world of academia will find much of the book a heavy, dense, ponderous read. Lots of more images and tabled data or charts showing the number of immigrants from various countries and cultures would have been very helpful in unpacking the extensive, tortuous history described.
But it is a good compendium of the immigrants' journey -- for Europeans, at any rate, especially those from "undesirable" countries in the mid to late 19th century.
August 9, 2016
borrowed from library, 1 Feb. 2014
part of my study about " how the H did we get here?"(we refers to women)this book is focusing on racism where the word race means any racial or ethnic difference. It carefully avoids (so far) dealing with women but covers preAmerican ethnic presumptions as well as the 'white, black and inbetweens' with the built in understanding about 'you' can be inbetween as long as you don't ally with blacks. If you stay in this country and keep your head down, your grandchildren with be born to parents who are native born and so your grandchildren will be white.
All this enforced by the census, labor unions and courts.
It explains the intense efforts my Jewish parents who were zero generation put into assimilation. It also explains a lot about my father who was swarthy in skin and had nearly kinky hair and who went to Texas A&M and defended his right to be called Dr with vehemance. See
Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America It also explains his near appoplexy when I, a teenager, invited a young workman who was probably Mexican and whose skin was much the same color as his, into the house for a drink of water during building the roof on the house. I had offended his sense of class though I had merely acted in concert with what I had believed he had taught me to think of the world WE lived in as classless.
It explains why my very upper middle class Aunts hired swartzes to clean their Brooklyn qppartments and my mother always had whites living in the maid's apartment of our house. It explains how my Aunt handed her maid clothes as part of a payment one winter week even though that was not previously agreed upon.
from the library computer:
Booklist Reviews
When immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in America, their status was somewhere below that of "native" white Americans but above that of blacks and other nonwhites. In the period 1890 to 1945, social upheavals in labor, housing, and politics shifted and allowed these immigrants to take on the mantle of whiteness. Roediger explores the social forces that elevated the social status of these immigrants and contributed to deepening racial divisions. This ethnic focus is really deemed by Roediger as part of race history in the U.S., how people were placed within an evolving intellectual and social structure. Roediger focuses on the early twentieth century, when these new immigrants lived an in-between existence as their white consciousness took form. Segregated housing practices, and labor unions favoring the immigrants over blacks, helped to solidify the whiteness status. U.S. policy, notably the New Deal, also helped to confirm the inclusion of people who had formerly suffered the low social status of unassimilated immigrants. ((Reviewed May 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
Choice Reviews
Since the days of Benjamin Franklin, Americans have struggled to define themselves in ways that both suit their sense of self-identity and help them delineate those of the proverbial "others"--those in their midst, yet seemingly different. Twentieth-century efforts largely have divided US society into two groups, those who are white, and those who are not. Roediger's brilliantly written work, intellectual history at its finest, examines how immigrants fit into this dynamic. On the basis of extensive research in both primary (although mostly published, as opposed to manuscripts) and secondary sources, the author (Univ. of Illinois) argues that immigrants initially occupied a status "in between" black and white, but that by the New Deal and WW II, they had "worked" their way into the ranks of whites. This, in turn, reinforced the still popular notions of a racially bifurcated US society. Not everyone will agree with all of Roediger's interpretations and conclusions, but this should not detract from his careful reasoning, based on solid evidence, and clear presentation. This work will join the author's previous book, The Wages of Whiteness (CH, Mar'92, 29-4105), and Matthew F. Jacobson's Whiteness of a Different Color (1998) as the standard texts dealing with matters of ethnic identity. Summing Up: Essential. All academic readers/libraries. Copyright 2006 American Library Association.
Kirkus Reviews
A cogent analysis of culture and race in early 20th-century America that ranks with such classics as Grace Hale's Making Whiteness (1998) and Linda Gordon's The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (1999).Look around a grocery store, subway or church: many of the people we now think of as ‘white' would have been viewed as distinctly not white just a century ago. That's the premise with which Roediger (History/Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) opens his exploration of how fin de siècle immigrants to America negotiated race. Back in 1900, "Slavonic" and "Latin" were understood to be racial designations, just like "white" and "black." By 1950, that had changed; Jews, Italians, Poles, the Irish and other European immigrants were considered as white as Betsy Ross. How and why did this transformation take place? According to Roediger, many factors were at work. Immigrants who wanted to marry outside their ethnic group quickly learned that whiteness was crucial, since laws forbade dating and marriage between people perceived to be of different races. Second-generation immigrant kids defied their parents to become friends with children of different ethnicities. Roediger's title is a double-entendre: immigrants worked or strived to become white; and the jobs they held, as well as their participation in the labor movement, shaped their racial status. One of Roediger's most interesting arguments has to do with housing. Home ownership is an indicator of the extent to which immigrant groups had been accepted into mainstream, white American society, he acknowledges, but immigrants "did not so much ‘buy into' the American Dream of home ownership as help create it." They made significant sacrifices to own homes, and helped turn a house into a badge of success. Will foment new scholarly debates and bring the finest fruits of academic work to a broad audience. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
part of my study about " how the H did we get here?"(we refers to women)this book is focusing on racism where the word race means any racial or ethnic difference. It carefully avoids (so far) dealing with women but covers preAmerican ethnic presumptions as well as the 'white, black and inbetweens' with the built in understanding about 'you' can be inbetween as long as you don't ally with blacks. If you stay in this country and keep your head down, your grandchildren with be born to parents who are native born and so your grandchildren will be white.
All this enforced by the census, labor unions and courts.
It explains the intense efforts my Jewish parents who were zero generation put into assimilation. It also explains a lot about my father who was swarthy in skin and had nearly kinky hair and who went to Texas A&M and defended his right to be called Dr with vehemance. See
Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America It also explains his near appoplexy when I, a teenager, invited a young workman who was probably Mexican and whose skin was much the same color as his, into the house for a drink of water during building the roof on the house. I had offended his sense of class though I had merely acted in concert with what I had believed he had taught me to think of the world WE lived in as classless.
It explains why my very upper middle class Aunts hired swartzes to clean their Brooklyn qppartments and my mother always had whites living in the maid's apartment of our house. It explains how my Aunt handed her maid clothes as part of a payment one winter week even though that was not previously agreed upon.
from the library computer:
Booklist Reviews
When immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in America, their status was somewhere below that of "native" white Americans but above that of blacks and other nonwhites. In the period 1890 to 1945, social upheavals in labor, housing, and politics shifted and allowed these immigrants to take on the mantle of whiteness. Roediger explores the social forces that elevated the social status of these immigrants and contributed to deepening racial divisions. This ethnic focus is really deemed by Roediger as part of race history in the U.S., how people were placed within an evolving intellectual and social structure. Roediger focuses on the early twentieth century, when these new immigrants lived an in-between existence as their white consciousness took form. Segregated housing practices, and labor unions favoring the immigrants over blacks, helped to solidify the whiteness status. U.S. policy, notably the New Deal, also helped to confirm the inclusion of people who had formerly suffered the low social status of unassimilated immigrants. ((Reviewed May 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
Choice Reviews
Since the days of Benjamin Franklin, Americans have struggled to define themselves in ways that both suit their sense of self-identity and help them delineate those of the proverbial "others"--those in their midst, yet seemingly different. Twentieth-century efforts largely have divided US society into two groups, those who are white, and those who are not. Roediger's brilliantly written work, intellectual history at its finest, examines how immigrants fit into this dynamic. On the basis of extensive research in both primary (although mostly published, as opposed to manuscripts) and secondary sources, the author (Univ. of Illinois) argues that immigrants initially occupied a status "in between" black and white, but that by the New Deal and WW II, they had "worked" their way into the ranks of whites. This, in turn, reinforced the still popular notions of a racially bifurcated US society. Not everyone will agree with all of Roediger's interpretations and conclusions, but this should not detract from his careful reasoning, based on solid evidence, and clear presentation. This work will join the author's previous book, The Wages of Whiteness (CH, Mar'92, 29-4105), and Matthew F. Jacobson's Whiteness of a Different Color (1998) as the standard texts dealing with matters of ethnic identity. Summing Up: Essential. All academic readers/libraries. Copyright 2006 American Library Association.
Kirkus Reviews
A cogent analysis of culture and race in early 20th-century America that ranks with such classics as Grace Hale's Making Whiteness (1998) and Linda Gordon's The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (1999).Look around a grocery store, subway or church: many of the people we now think of as ‘white' would have been viewed as distinctly not white just a century ago. That's the premise with which Roediger (History/Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) opens his exploration of how fin de siècle immigrants to America negotiated race. Back in 1900, "Slavonic" and "Latin" were understood to be racial designations, just like "white" and "black." By 1950, that had changed; Jews, Italians, Poles, the Irish and other European immigrants were considered as white as Betsy Ross. How and why did this transformation take place? According to Roediger, many factors were at work. Immigrants who wanted to marry outside their ethnic group quickly learned that whiteness was crucial, since laws forbade dating and marriage between people perceived to be of different races. Second-generation immigrant kids defied their parents to become friends with children of different ethnicities. Roediger's title is a double-entendre: immigrants worked or strived to become white; and the jobs they held, as well as their participation in the labor movement, shaped their racial status. One of Roediger's most interesting arguments has to do with housing. Home ownership is an indicator of the extent to which immigrant groups had been accepted into mainstream, white American society, he acknowledges, but immigrants "did not so much ‘buy into' the American Dream of home ownership as help create it." They made significant sacrifices to own homes, and helped turn a house into a badge of success. Will foment new scholarly debates and bring the finest fruits of academic work to a broad audience. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
November 23, 2020
On the negative side, neither the clearest writing nor the best organization I've encountered recently, makes it pretty difficult to categorize what you've read & even harder to decide what you've learned. Now the positives, changing conceptualizations of categories such as whiteness, color, race, and ethnicity are studied along with the various immigrant & minority groups to which these labels are applied. As the concepts apply to southern & eastern Europeans & Jews, it is shown that their whiteness rating varies with their distancing from African-Americans. It is shown how this is accomplished in education, housing, employment political affiliations, and in other aspects of life informally, culturally & with the impetus provided by the economic & political systems. To a lesser extent, changing views & status of other minorities such as Asians, Native Americans, & Mexicans are discussed.
October 13, 2020
Working towards whiteness point towards an invisible history. The history of how ethnic and racial minorities from Europe where bribed, coerced and accented to literally buy into whiteness. The way unions were used to as both a tool of social progress but also a mean of teaching these new immigrants what it meant to be white and separating children from their culture of origin as a mean of establishing and bolstering white number in the US and how this was also used to aid efforts to redline neighborhood to isolate P.O.C. in may parts of America.
January 4, 2021
A comprehensive historical review, a bit repetitive at times. As a Ukrainian American, I learned a lot about how my people were not considered fully White but were discriminated against similar to the Irish, Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans. But their treatment, although, unfair, was nothing compared to how African American or Mexicans were treated at the same time in history.
April 11, 2021
This book contains many valuable insights...if you can get through the author's many incoherent sentences and paragraphs. It's an arduous task...but in general, worth it the read because of the content needs to be realized. But once again, from a reader's standpoint - this book is very poorly written.
February 5, 2023
Very interesting. As a descendent of Jewish and Eastern European immigrants who came through Ellis Island, I’ve been seeking this history for a while. But the intended audience of this book is clearly academics, which isn’t me. I’d like to read an account of this history written for a more popular audience. This is stuff a lot of us need to know as we examine our whiteness.
April 7, 2018
Really a phenomenal book. Highly recommended.
May 19, 2019
3.5 An interesting synthesis of historical academic work on whiteness. He focuses primarily on urban areas. Good if you have little background knowledge on the subject.
April 9, 2024
undoubtedly great content and an important look into america's conception of race, but i cant imagine it would be possible to make it a more boring read than roediger has
Did Not Finish
May 16, 2026Compelling premise, but the writing was dull and repetitive. It was too much of a chore to read to keep going
Want to Read
June 26, 2026Whiteness
July 5, 2018
Book is a great introduction into the pseudonym of “being white”. White trash is another great book to read to supplement this. Basically “White” is a economic social term that really only applied to a certain stock of Europeans British French and some Germans. Europeans coming through Ellis Island were not considered white and were discriminated against based on ethnicity. They had to work towards being called white. Also by reading the book you see how white changed,politically from time to time. During one era Chinese and Mexicans were considered white. Then that changed. Basically there is no such thing as white peoples nor black or yellow ppl. You have Asians Africans and Europeans. Also the book shows the roots of Affirmative action with a poor European class.
Read
June 13, 2010Glad I read this book. One of the most powerful books I read in 2007 or so. So well written and really great for assigning to undegrads as a "light" piece (along with heavier readings). The book is about how whites understood white ethnics over time, from when they were fresh off the boat to the CR era. The only problem with focusing on New York (or at least using NY as a common example) is that there are so few Anglo Saxons in NY to judge the white-or-not. I would have much rathered if this book took into account how these white ethnics understood themselves! Nevertheless, the book is worth far more than the coverprice. Dave Roediger is amazingly talented.
March 7, 2016
Kapitel 1 har fin analyse af etnicitet begrebet, som først fik betydning fra ca 1920 frem. Omkring 1940 skelnede man mellem grupper, som var racer - negroide, eskimoer, indianere og asiater - etniske - syd og østeuropæere - og grupper, som ikke var nogle af delene - amerikanere og nordeuropæere og englændere.
Jeg har kun læst det første kapitel.
Jeg har kun læst det første kapitel.
January 23, 2016
Roediger takes on the process by which "new immigrants" became white between 1890-1930. In many ways he contrasts this with contemporaneous constructions of blackness and explores this, often, through popular representations.
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