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A review by morgan_blackledge
History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
5.0
The primary takeaway from The History of White People is that whiteness, and the entire construct of race, is like a really recent thing.
Of course I had heard this before, but for some reason, the gravity of this fact never really registered for me before reading this book.
That force of nature we call race, with whiteness at the center of the shit storm, is like a 100% made up thing, and not even that long ago.
Dude!
This is not to say that difference isn't real, or that culture is trivial. No no. Not at all. It's real. It's really real.
But the demarcation of social status, as conferred by skin color, and shit like tweaky little noses and thin lips and shit (as opposed to class, or vocation, or religion, or region of origin) that's like a pretty recent thing. And it's almost entirely indigenous to America.
How did I not know this?
Somehow I just sort of assumed that whiteness always existed, and it was like this REAL thing, and like white people always identified as white, and always otherized black and brown people since the dawn of creation.
Nope.
In fact, now that I say it like that, it sounds so fucking dumb. Of course that isn't the case. That literally couldn't possibly be the case.
The truth of the matter is, that white people pretty much made the whole darn thing up, like 200 years ago (well like a little longer ago than that, but you get it), and guess what, they conveniently positioned themselves at the top of the totem pole.
If you're still not convinced, or if you're curious at all as to how this swindle went down, than go ahead and read this dang book already.
It chronicles the making of whiteness, beginning with ancient Greece (who's citizenship absolutely did not consider themselves white, because that shit didn't exist yet) and continuing through to European colonialism, and to the American slave trade, and the American revolution, and the genesis of democracy, and on to European romanticism, through to the beginning of scientific racism, to the American eugenics movement (where by 65,000 Americans were legally involuntarily sterilized) which later inspired the Nazzis.
And then the whole 2016 election thing happened......
Anyway, one of the many bitter revelations in the book concerns (one of my former heroes) Ralph Waldo Emerson (of all people), who as it turns out, in addition to being a grooving AF transcendentalist (and who is like the godfather of the whole hippy back to nature thing) also contributed handsomely to white race theory.
Son of a gun!
Another one of the awful clinkers in this story (for me anyway) was the prominent role the social sciences (most notably psychology, and more specifically psychometrics) played in the systematic validation of crackhead AF white racist theory.
Wow yuck!
Another fascinating twist in the story is the process by which formerly non-white groups (like the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Jews) were progressively admitted into the American whiteness club (initially limited to Europeans of Nordic decent) as they assimilated into American life.
Doing!
Lest I fail to mention, the book is phenomenally well written and researched. It's a marvelous piece of scholarship.
My third eye has been violently forced open by this psychic crowbar of a text.
Fuck yeah!
Five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Of course I had heard this before, but for some reason, the gravity of this fact never really registered for me before reading this book.
That force of nature we call race, with whiteness at the center of the shit storm, is like a 100% made up thing, and not even that long ago.
Dude!
This is not to say that difference isn't real, or that culture is trivial. No no. Not at all. It's real. It's really real.
But the demarcation of social status, as conferred by skin color, and shit like tweaky little noses and thin lips and shit (as opposed to class, or vocation, or religion, or region of origin) that's like a pretty recent thing. And it's almost entirely indigenous to America.
How did I not know this?
Somehow I just sort of assumed that whiteness always existed, and it was like this REAL thing, and like white people always identified as white, and always otherized black and brown people since the dawn of creation.
Nope.
In fact, now that I say it like that, it sounds so fucking dumb. Of course that isn't the case. That literally couldn't possibly be the case.
The truth of the matter is, that white people pretty much made the whole darn thing up, like 200 years ago (well like a little longer ago than that, but you get it), and guess what, they conveniently positioned themselves at the top of the totem pole.
If you're still not convinced, or if you're curious at all as to how this swindle went down, than go ahead and read this dang book already.
It chronicles the making of whiteness, beginning with ancient Greece (who's citizenship absolutely did not consider themselves white, because that shit didn't exist yet) and continuing through to European colonialism, and to the American slave trade, and the American revolution, and the genesis of democracy, and on to European romanticism, through to the beginning of scientific racism, to the American eugenics movement (where by 65,000 Americans were legally involuntarily sterilized) which later inspired the Nazzis.
And then the whole 2016 election thing happened......
Anyway, one of the many bitter revelations in the book concerns (one of my former heroes) Ralph Waldo Emerson (of all people), who as it turns out, in addition to being a grooving AF transcendentalist (and who is like the godfather of the whole hippy back to nature thing) also contributed handsomely to white race theory.
Son of a gun!
Another one of the awful clinkers in this story (for me anyway) was the prominent role the social sciences (most notably psychology, and more specifically psychometrics) played in the systematic validation of crackhead AF white racist theory.
Wow yuck!
Another fascinating twist in the story is the process by which formerly non-white groups (like the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Jews) were progressively admitted into the American whiteness club (initially limited to Europeans of Nordic decent) as they assimilated into American life.
Doing!
Lest I fail to mention, the book is phenomenally well written and researched. It's a marvelous piece of scholarship.
My third eye has been violently forced open by this psychic crowbar of a text.
Fuck yeah!
Five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️