Why read Whiteness of a Different Color?

Book cover of Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

Book description

America's racial odyssey is the subject of this remarkable work of historical imagination. Matthew Frye Jacobson argues that race resides not in nature but in the contingencies of politics and culture. In ever-changing racial categories we glimpse the competing theories of history and collective destiny by which power has been…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Whiteness of a Different Color as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Alan H. Goodman

Author

In 1939 it was well-accepted that Europe was home to many different races. Jacobson tells the story of how, after the Holocaust, different ethnic and national groups slowly because members of the “Caucasian” or White race. Jacobson uses a variety of sources, including those from popular culture to tell the story of how these marginal groups, such as the Irish, Poles, Italians, and of course Ashkenazi Jews, became honorary white. This is a highly readable book about the history of racism against some ethnic Europeans. More so, it is an important book for showing how racial categories change through time…

From Alan's list on what race is (and is not).