What do you think?
Rate this book
Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America
In the 1950s, America was seen as a vast melting pot in which white ethnic affiliations were on the wane and a common American identity was the norm. Yet by the 1970s, these white ethnics mobilized around a new version of the epic tale of plucky immigrants making their way in the New World through the sweat of their brow. Although this turn to ethnicity was for many an individual search for familial and psychological identity, Roots Too establishes a broader white social and political consensus arising in response to the political language of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, whites sought renewed status in the romance of Old World travails and New World fortunes. Ellis Island replaced Plymouth Rock as the touchstone of American nationalism. The entire culture embraced the myth of the indomitable white ethnics—who they were and where they had come from—in literature, film, theater, art, music, and scholarship. The language and symbols of hardworking, self-reliant, and ultimately triumphant European immigrants have exerted tremendous force on political movements and public policy debates from affirmative action to contemporary immigration. In order to understand how white primacy in American life survived the withering heat of the Civil Rights movement and multiculturalism, Matthew Frye Jacobson argues for a full exploration of the meaning of the white ethnic revival and the uneasy relationship between inclusion and exclusion that it has engendered in our conceptions of national belonging.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
8 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Frye Jacobson
11 books18 followersMatthew Frye Jacobson, a professor of American Studies at Yale, is the author of Whiteness of a Different Color and Special Sorrows. He lives in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 31, 2018
The argument book is compelling and interesting but alas, a substantive amount of the evidence Jacobson marshals feels tangential to that argument. Indeed, Jacobson seems to have at least 2 books here, if not three or four.
The book starts out strong; the first half alone is worth the price of admission. The first half or so details the "white ethnic revival" in its broadest outline: the backstory of Ellis Island in America's collective memory, the explosion of "white ethnicity" in popular cinema and literature, the singular importance of "Roots" as a cultural object, and, of course, the role of civil rights and black militance in prompting/shaping the white ethnic revival.
However, this first half already seems to be at least two arguments. Or, rather, there is one argument which Jacobson backs up with ample evidence, and then another set of evidence altogether for an argument that never appears to be explicitly stated. The explicit argument is, I think, amply demonstrated by Jacobson: that Civil Rights victories and emergent militant black consciousness in the 1960s prompted a white ethnic revival as a "backlash" of sorts. While benefitting from white advantage in some form, the ethnic revival emerges as a response by white ethnics too recently emigrated to the US to have "directly" benefitted from slavery. The white ethnic revival, then, is a way to both to sidestep blame for structural racism - if your grandparents weren't there, then you don't have white advantage, the logic seems to go - and a way to claim a sort of identity of one's own, distinct from that of whiteness. (One interesting tidbit Jacobson points out: the massive surge in self-identifying Polish people in the midst of the white ethnic revival, in a time with effectively no new immigration from Poland to the US.)
The other argument, however, is never quite stated, although Jacobson provides a bevy of evidence for it: the unique nature of the *Jewish* ethnic revival. It is difficult to overlook how much space is dedicated to the Jewish ethnic revival; and yet, although Jacobson provides a great deal of evidence for its singularity (in a later chapter, for instance, he even discusses the influence of conflict in Israel-Palestine on "black-Jewish" relations within feminist discourse). Which leads to another unexplored aspect of the white ethnic revival: even though Jacobson devotes a chapter to feminism, and a large section of it is dedicated to feminist breaks with church and temple, the religious component of the ethnic revival is treated as basically univocal. Treating the Jewish ethnic revival as part of the white ethnic revival already seems odd given Jacobson's examples, but the treatment seems strange even in terms of the Christian white ethnics. While Jacobson makes passing references to Scandinavian ethnics, Jacobson does not explore the specific role of Catholicism in Italian/Irish/Polish ethnic revival, compared to Scandinavians (who seem to have had the weakest "ethnic revival") or Greeks (who seem to have have had a weak ethnic *revival* precisely because they were weakly integrated into the American mainstream at the time other hyphenated identities emerged in full force?).
The remainder of the book gets increasingly convoluted, although there are still snatches of insight up until the book's end. The long chapter on the white ethnic revival's influence on second wave feminism is interesting in its own right, but often seems tangential to the main argument. The same for the influence of the white ethnic revival on the New Left. And, in any case, both of these chapters are primarily about the prominence of Jews within both feminism and the New Left. Although Jews are not the sole focus of these chapters, their special prominence leads me to wonder if Jacobson did not perhaps weaken his own argument - perhaps the Jewish ethnic revival is its own distinct phenomenon, which happened to coincide and imbricate with other ethnic revivals? Surely there is a family resemblance between *all* the ethnic revivals described in the book but the Jewish identity seems to strain Jacobson's argument (odd, since the Jewish identity so dominates the book, and in particular its last half).
That said, this is a big and messy book in the best sense. That Jacobson's argument and evidence suggest 50 other arguments is a strength. The book is not particularly tightly argued or presented, but it is one of the more thought provoking books on 20th century American history I've read. I'd recommend reading this alongside Jacobson's book "Barbarian Virtues" (which immediately precedes "Roots Too" on Jacobson's CV) and David Roediger's classic "Wages of Whiteness". A grand unified theory of contemporary American whiteness (or of race itself) has yet to appear, but "Roots Too" is surely a major intellectual milestone along the way.
The book starts out strong; the first half alone is worth the price of admission. The first half or so details the "white ethnic revival" in its broadest outline: the backstory of Ellis Island in America's collective memory, the explosion of "white ethnicity" in popular cinema and literature, the singular importance of "Roots" as a cultural object, and, of course, the role of civil rights and black militance in prompting/shaping the white ethnic revival.
However, this first half already seems to be at least two arguments. Or, rather, there is one argument which Jacobson backs up with ample evidence, and then another set of evidence altogether for an argument that never appears to be explicitly stated. The explicit argument is, I think, amply demonstrated by Jacobson: that Civil Rights victories and emergent militant black consciousness in the 1960s prompted a white ethnic revival as a "backlash" of sorts. While benefitting from white advantage in some form, the ethnic revival emerges as a response by white ethnics too recently emigrated to the US to have "directly" benefitted from slavery. The white ethnic revival, then, is a way to both to sidestep blame for structural racism - if your grandparents weren't there, then you don't have white advantage, the logic seems to go - and a way to claim a sort of identity of one's own, distinct from that of whiteness. (One interesting tidbit Jacobson points out: the massive surge in self-identifying Polish people in the midst of the white ethnic revival, in a time with effectively no new immigration from Poland to the US.)
The other argument, however, is never quite stated, although Jacobson provides a bevy of evidence for it: the unique nature of the *Jewish* ethnic revival. It is difficult to overlook how much space is dedicated to the Jewish ethnic revival; and yet, although Jacobson provides a great deal of evidence for its singularity (in a later chapter, for instance, he even discusses the influence of conflict in Israel-Palestine on "black-Jewish" relations within feminist discourse). Which leads to another unexplored aspect of the white ethnic revival: even though Jacobson devotes a chapter to feminism, and a large section of it is dedicated to feminist breaks with church and temple, the religious component of the ethnic revival is treated as basically univocal. Treating the Jewish ethnic revival as part of the white ethnic revival already seems odd given Jacobson's examples, but the treatment seems strange even in terms of the Christian white ethnics. While Jacobson makes passing references to Scandinavian ethnics, Jacobson does not explore the specific role of Catholicism in Italian/Irish/Polish ethnic revival, compared to Scandinavians (who seem to have had the weakest "ethnic revival") or Greeks (who seem to have have had a weak ethnic *revival* precisely because they were weakly integrated into the American mainstream at the time other hyphenated identities emerged in full force?).
The remainder of the book gets increasingly convoluted, although there are still snatches of insight up until the book's end. The long chapter on the white ethnic revival's influence on second wave feminism is interesting in its own right, but often seems tangential to the main argument. The same for the influence of the white ethnic revival on the New Left. And, in any case, both of these chapters are primarily about the prominence of Jews within both feminism and the New Left. Although Jews are not the sole focus of these chapters, their special prominence leads me to wonder if Jacobson did not perhaps weaken his own argument - perhaps the Jewish ethnic revival is its own distinct phenomenon, which happened to coincide and imbricate with other ethnic revivals? Surely there is a family resemblance between *all* the ethnic revivals described in the book but the Jewish identity seems to strain Jacobson's argument (odd, since the Jewish identity so dominates the book, and in particular its last half).
That said, this is a big and messy book in the best sense. That Jacobson's argument and evidence suggest 50 other arguments is a strength. The book is not particularly tightly argued or presented, but it is one of the more thought provoking books on 20th century American history I've read. I'd recommend reading this alongside Jacobson's book "Barbarian Virtues" (which immediately precedes "Roots Too" on Jacobson's CV) and David Roediger's classic "Wages of Whiteness". A grand unified theory of contemporary American whiteness (or of race itself) has yet to appear, but "Roots Too" is surely a major intellectual milestone along the way.
October 6, 2020
I could do a whole personal essay on this, having witnessed first-hand a number of different ways people in my life have interacted with white ethnic identity, and having interacted with it in various ways in my own life. Let’s just say that “Roots Too” begins with a recitation of Hansen’s Law. This was a proposal by a sociologist early in the twentieth century who said that the second generation of any given ethnic group in America rejects its ethnic heritage, while the third generation goes looking for it again. Well, I’m fourth-generation, and I don’t think Hansen had anything to say about that. What I do know is that however it was for my parents or grandparents, for me, white gentile ethnic identities have had virtually no meaningful impact on my life, and none in comparison to race, class, sexual orientation, even region seems to be a bigger deal. I think this is fair to say for most of my white age peers.
I guess it fits with my dismissal of white ethnic identity that I don’t turn this into a personal essay, given how personal narratives of self-discovery constituted much of the white ethnic revival of the late twentieth century. We hear a lot about these in “Roots Too.” This is very much cultural history, so we get extended chapters about white ethnicity in movies and books as produced by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, assorted Roths (Henry and Philip!), and numerous people I’ve never heard of who apparently made a splash in the late twentieth century.
In fact, I’d argue Jacobson basically buried the lede. To me, most of the interest in this story is the way white ethnic identity politics became one tool in the toolbox of America’s denial of its ongoing race problems after the recession of the Civil Rights/Black Freedom movement. It’s proved a remarkably diverse tool. From the right, you have the white-ethnic-bootstraps narrative, “our ancestors became successful through hard work and no handouts blah blah blah.” From the (notional, liberal) left, it’s basically proven to be a busy-box, a distraction, and there’s nothing the declining white seventies left loved more than a good distraction. This is how you got embarrassing spectacles like former SDS head Tom Hayden (never the sharpest tool in the shed, frankly, though he seemed an earnest enough old guy) trying to defect to befuddled Irish cops at the Dublin airport and briefly changing his name to something more Irish-sounding, or radical feminists trying to construct pre-Indo-European spiritualities for themselves. Forty, nearly fifty years on, this stuff is just cringe-making, especially because we know it helped weaken and distract from the fights to come. Jacobson tells all these stories, but only after long chapters on the movies and books, much of which focused on technical aspects of their construction, like the way the films emulated old photos of immigrants. I guess it’s nice that he’s not too thesis-heavy, but he could have gotten to the point quicker.
In fact, as Jacobson argues, New Left and New Right joined hands (and sometimes shared personnel, like ex-new-left-er-turned-neocon-white-ethnic-whisperer Michael Novak) in their criticism of the “melting pot” concept so popular in the 1950s and in their embrace of white ethnicity. In classic form, the right used the concepts to advance their own power and the left used it on journeys of self-discovery. Arguably, we are still dealing with the fallout, not only in the form of toxic memes like “Irish slaves” blobbing around like turds in a pond, but in the form of the fetishization of supposed pre-modern “community” forms and values you still see on much of the left today. It’s not the biggest problem we face, by a long shot, but it’s not helpful.
Jacobson uses the language of there being a transition from a “Plymouth Rock” America to an “Ellis Island” America. You’d figure that’d be a good thing- maybe a baby step, but it’s still nice that white ethnics aren’t facing prejudice anymore, right? Well, for one thing, Jacobson couldn’t have known this in 2006 but the most enduring of the Ellis Island prejudices, antisemitism, has seen a revival in recent years. The white ethnic revival treated Jews more or less like it did Italians, Irish, etc. They all “succeeded,” fanned out into the suburbs, went looking for their roots afterwards, etc. But it seems antisemitism is more persistent, tied in more deeply with historical dynamics, than the other prejudices facing contemporaneous white immigrant groups. There’s been no QAnon-style revival of anti-Catholicism, for instance, to go along with their revival of the blood libel. Meanwhile, Jacobson admirably resisted the blandishments of “whiteness studies,” which was going strong at the time and insisted that the Irish, Italians, etc. “became” white. Nope- as Jacobson points out, according to the law of the land, the Naturalization Act of 1790, they were considered “free white persons” from the very beginning, whatever other prejudices they faced. The embrace of “Ellis Island America,” with its hyphenate-identites taken on board as fully American, indeed, the bedrock American, signaled a circling of the wagons, not a liberation. ****
I guess it fits with my dismissal of white ethnic identity that I don’t turn this into a personal essay, given how personal narratives of self-discovery constituted much of the white ethnic revival of the late twentieth century. We hear a lot about these in “Roots Too.” This is very much cultural history, so we get extended chapters about white ethnicity in movies and books as produced by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, assorted Roths (Henry and Philip!), and numerous people I’ve never heard of who apparently made a splash in the late twentieth century.
In fact, I’d argue Jacobson basically buried the lede. To me, most of the interest in this story is the way white ethnic identity politics became one tool in the toolbox of America’s denial of its ongoing race problems after the recession of the Civil Rights/Black Freedom movement. It’s proved a remarkably diverse tool. From the right, you have the white-ethnic-bootstraps narrative, “our ancestors became successful through hard work and no handouts blah blah blah.” From the (notional, liberal) left, it’s basically proven to be a busy-box, a distraction, and there’s nothing the declining white seventies left loved more than a good distraction. This is how you got embarrassing spectacles like former SDS head Tom Hayden (never the sharpest tool in the shed, frankly, though he seemed an earnest enough old guy) trying to defect to befuddled Irish cops at the Dublin airport and briefly changing his name to something more Irish-sounding, or radical feminists trying to construct pre-Indo-European spiritualities for themselves. Forty, nearly fifty years on, this stuff is just cringe-making, especially because we know it helped weaken and distract from the fights to come. Jacobson tells all these stories, but only after long chapters on the movies and books, much of which focused on technical aspects of their construction, like the way the films emulated old photos of immigrants. I guess it’s nice that he’s not too thesis-heavy, but he could have gotten to the point quicker.
In fact, as Jacobson argues, New Left and New Right joined hands (and sometimes shared personnel, like ex-new-left-er-turned-neocon-white-ethnic-whisperer Michael Novak) in their criticism of the “melting pot” concept so popular in the 1950s and in their embrace of white ethnicity. In classic form, the right used the concepts to advance their own power and the left used it on journeys of self-discovery. Arguably, we are still dealing with the fallout, not only in the form of toxic memes like “Irish slaves” blobbing around like turds in a pond, but in the form of the fetishization of supposed pre-modern “community” forms and values you still see on much of the left today. It’s not the biggest problem we face, by a long shot, but it’s not helpful.
Jacobson uses the language of there being a transition from a “Plymouth Rock” America to an “Ellis Island” America. You’d figure that’d be a good thing- maybe a baby step, but it’s still nice that white ethnics aren’t facing prejudice anymore, right? Well, for one thing, Jacobson couldn’t have known this in 2006 but the most enduring of the Ellis Island prejudices, antisemitism, has seen a revival in recent years. The white ethnic revival treated Jews more or less like it did Italians, Irish, etc. They all “succeeded,” fanned out into the suburbs, went looking for their roots afterwards, etc. But it seems antisemitism is more persistent, tied in more deeply with historical dynamics, than the other prejudices facing contemporaneous white immigrant groups. There’s been no QAnon-style revival of anti-Catholicism, for instance, to go along with their revival of the blood libel. Meanwhile, Jacobson admirably resisted the blandishments of “whiteness studies,” which was going strong at the time and insisted that the Irish, Italians, etc. “became” white. Nope- as Jacobson points out, according to the law of the land, the Naturalization Act of 1790, they were considered “free white persons” from the very beginning, whatever other prejudices they faced. The embrace of “Ellis Island America,” with its hyphenate-identites taken on board as fully American, indeed, the bedrock American, signaled a circling of the wagons, not a liberation. ****
November 12, 2024
an interesting topic written in the most boring, least accessible way possible
December 7, 2015
Much too detailed. Jacobson's use of examples to back up his argument may have been laudable from an academic standpoint, but for a college undergrad the prolific references to films and novels from the 70s were dreadfully boring and rather ineffective. I got lost in the lists of names, and often could not figure out the main point he was trying to make. The topic itself is interesting - white ethnic revival and the theme of a "usable past" - but I feel I could learn as much from reading a summary of the novel as from reading the novel itself.
*Required reading for History 227 (race and ethnicity)
*Required reading for History 227 (race and ethnicity)
October 1, 2014
This is a great concept for book. Jacobson digs into all kinds of expressions of public culture from movies, to music, to politics, and shows how American identity and American culture has been reframed. The book is best read as a series of essays and some are stronger than others. In addition to its strong central thesis, it is full of sparkling tidbits and revelations that you'll desperately want to slide into conversations.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews