This is a fascinating book, scholarly and erudite, well researched and well documented by a respected historian. I was expecting something a great deal more angry and focused on white oppression of African Americans. That is apparently what a number of reviewers saw, so I was pleasantly surprised as well as instructed. I always wondered why white people are called `Caucasian'. Anyone who has had a few history courses will have known something about the craniometry craze in the late nineteenth century, but Dr. Painter draws it all together by showing who the influential scientists were and how they became spread the idea of seeing everything in racial terms through an imagined glorious, pure Saxon past. It was startling to see how deeply Ralph Waldo Emerson was involved. A description of the stunning amount of scholarship devoted to dividing up Europeans into races and ranking them according to `Saxon' cultural ideals of beauty while largely ignoring the rest of humanity occupies the first twenty-six chapters; relations with blacks do not come up until the last two short chapters (of 28). Measuring skulls and blathering on and on about some imagined Saxon golden age now seems daft and laughable, but it should be a continuing lesson to science. Many of these people saw that their data had problems but ignored the contradictions, and ignored even common sense. When they were taken up by the Nazi party and implemented into government policy, they were a contributing factor to the holocaust the Germans visited on Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, anyone perceived to be deficient breeding stock.
I was in university before black studies and had not even heard of white studies until I read this book. The idea of whiteness being continually redefined and expanded due to the exigencies of immigration to the New World was entirely new to me. Dr. Painter presents the concept of four great expansions of whiteness: 1) in the 1840's when the property-owning requirement for voting was abandoned, paving the way for the rise of the `Jacksonian common man', 2) in the 1890's when previous waves of Irish and German immigrants were accepted as white so they could join us in discriminating against new waves of Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Slavs, pretty much everybody from southern and eastern Europe, 3) in the 1940's during World War II when Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were accepted as white, and even other Catholics, and 4) in the 1960's when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally forced the inclusion of blacks and Asians in the definition of `American' and thus in a strange way as `white'. It's a bit of a saving grace that the great harms done in this whole deluded effort to define whiteness led to continual expansions of the definition of what it means to be a citizen of America.
Franz Boas, with his students Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, are presented as modernist heroes in this book. They constructed an alternative theory of human nature, the `blank slate', the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be molded into any shape, to battle the pervasive racial theories of the day. They were somewhat too successful in convincing academia and the lay public into abandoning nature as the explainer of all and substituting nurture in its place. Many of their well-meaning ideas have been shown to have no basis but continue to hinder our ability to address societal problems such as violence.
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From the Publisher
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| Sojourner Truth | Standing at Armageddon | The History of White People | We Were Always Free | The Narrative of Hosea Hudson | Exodusters | |
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| Price | $18.99 | $19.99 | $17.06 | $21.62 | $27.95 | $22.45 |
| Praise for Works by Nell Irvin Painter | "A triumph of scholarly maturity, imagination, and narrative art." —Arnold Rampersad | "A gripping and forceful narrative." —Nancy F. Cott, author of Public Vows | "An insightful and lively exposition from a distinguished scholar." —Linda Gordon, New York Times Book Review | "A deeply personal account of an extraordinary American family." —Newsweek | "Moving, fearful, and funny." —Benita Eisler, The Nation | "Nell Irvin Painter has produced a book which rescues the Exodusters from obscurity." —American Historical Review |
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A History Book You Won't Put Down and Nor Forget — Ten Stars!
Had to read this book again. You'll be done for the decade if you read no other book. To say that Nell Irvin Painter's newest book, The History of White People, is absolutely astounding and highly enlightening would be an extreme understatement. To know whom we really are as a people and nation in the 21st century begins with reading this extremely engaging history book.No doubt, The History of White People unravels our complete cultural and historical genetic code. It is notably even more relevant currently regarding American notions and delusions about "Whiteness" and "White privilege." Ms. Painter unlocks in a highly factual, clearly written and concise text why we are the way we are as Americans regardless of ethnicity.The book even explains why our past history stills plays-out heavily in many complicated and destructive ways in the present. It goes far deeper, broader and more honest than what we learned throughout high school, college and in today's news media. In fact, the book explains the deeper and bigger truths of what we are and where we have come from as a civilization across the world. All of our pretentious modern day social, racial, class, cultural, political and economic rhetoric will be exploded and transformed into a more factual reality of our real identities upon reading this book.I bought the hardcover and Audible versions to ensure that it becomes a permanent part of my home and travels. This book is worthy of becoming an instant classic. I absolutely guarantee, after reading even the first few chapters of The History of White People, you will never honestly look at America, Americans, yourself and the world the same way.
Top reviews from other countries
Pacesetter
it has led to centuries of whites feeling superior to other people
Reviewed in Canada on December 22, 2017
mwandishi
Understand the world we live in!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2015