Vicissitudes and Victories

Whiteness of a Different Color

Since I read so much for my major, I've decided to post book reviews and summaries on my blog for the books that I am reading. Today I finished reading a book by the above name about the creation of race by Matthew Frye Jacobson. Jacobson's premise is that the nature of what it means to be considered "white" has changed over time. He argues that the Founding Fathers gave the right to vote to all white males which encompassed the majority of European immigrants at the time. Jacobson argues that Americans began to doubt this unified and white racial identity in 1840 with the entrance of large numbers of Irish immigrants fleeing the Irish Potato Famine. Anglo-Saxon and Protestant Americans perceived the Irish as Celts--members of a completely different and obviously inferior race. White people extended their ideas about racial inferiority to Italians, Greeks, Jews, and Slavs. All of these marginal groups fell outside the accepted definition of whiteness at one time in American history.

The initiation of a more inclusive perception of whiteness began in 1924 when the United State's immigration laws severely limited all immigration from places viewed as inferior. As first generation immigrants remained out of sight, a more unified definition of whiteness began to develop in contrast to other racial minorities. Jacobson illustrates this process by showing how race consciousness is determined by politicians, courts, and popular culture. He follows the stories of Jews, Japanese, and African Americans as they negotiate interstitial racial space. Although Jacobson's approach tends to be rather white-centric, he successfully incorporates a study of race, class, and even gender into the story of the fluid nature of what it means to be white.

posted by Joel @ 11:29 PM