Book

Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 1958-

Whiteness of a different color : European immigrants and the alchemy of race / Matthew Frye Jacobson.

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1998.

x, 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

America's racial odyssey is the subject of this 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 organized and contested in the United States. Capturing the excitement of the new field of "whiteness studies" and linking it to traditional historical inquiry. Jacobson shows that in this nation of immigrants "race" has been at the core of civic assimilation: ethnic minorities in becoming American were reracialized to become Caucasian. He provides a counterhistory of how nationality groups such as the Irish or Greeks became Americans as racial groups like Celts or Mediterraneans became Caucasian. Jacobson tracks race as a conception and perception, emphasizing the importance of knowing not only how we label one another but also how we see one another, and how that racialized vision has largely been transformed in this century

European Americans -- Race identity.

White people -- Race identity -- United States.

Immigrants -- United States -- History.

Racism -- United States -- History.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-323) and index.

Introduction : the fabrication of race -- The political history of whiteness -- "Free white persons" in the republic, 1790-1840 -- Anglo-Saxons and others, 1840-1924 -- Becoming Caucasian, 1924-1965 -- History, race, and perception -- 1877 : the instability of race -- Looking Jewish, seeing Jews -- The manufacture of Caucasians -- The crucible of empire -- Naturalization and the courts -- The dawning civil rights era -- Epilogue : ethnic revival and the denial of white privilege.

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