The author traces the growth and decline of whiteness studies over the past two and a half decades, from the publication of David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness in the early 1990s to the present day. Although it accurately identified race as a social construct in modern society, ‘whiteness’ also employed over-simplifications that ultimately undermined its critical relevance. Nonetheless, the author demonstrates how the colourful career of ‘whiteness’ as a scholarly concept can inform contemporary debates over immigration and identity.
Irish-American (New York) (28January1854); Citizen (New York) (21January1854); Citizen (New York) (30December1854). According to Mitchel’s own account on 14 January 1854, the Citizen’s weekly circulation was 50,000. If so, the negative reaction to the ‘Alabama article’ cost him 20 per cent of his readership.
3.
RoedigerDavid R., The Wages of Whiteness: race and the making of the American working class (New York, Verso, 1999, 2nd edition). Roediger’s analysis of the dialectics of race and class was heavily influenced by DuBoisW. E. B., Black Reconstruction in the United States, 1860–1880 (New York, Russell & Russell, 1935). Another scholar who made important contributions to the subject was MorganEdmund S. In American Slavery, American Freedom: the ordeal of colonial Virginia (New York, W. W. Norton, 1975), Morgan showed how the political and economic rights granted to Virginia’s poor whites by the landed elites were predicated on black enslavement. Other early studies include FredricksonGeorge M., The Black Image in the White Mind: the debate on Afro-American character and destiny, 1817–1914 (New York, Harper and Collins, 1971) and JordanWinthrop D., White Over Black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1968). The quantitative data presented in Figures 1–4 were retrieved from two separate online databases on 15 January 2013. WorldCat was used to calculate how many books with the word ‘whiteness’ in the title were published in each given year (adult works of non-fiction including PhD dissertations but excluding MA and BA theses). The ISI Web of Science’s ‘Arts & Humanities Citation Index’ and ‘Social Sciences Citation Index’ databases were employed to figure out the number of articles. In an effort to render manageable the sheer volume of material available, I restricted the search to books and articles with the word ‘whiteness’ in the title. Although this approach excluded important works like Noel Ignatiev’s How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995), it illustrates the general trends. I am grateful to Sue Collins (Carnegie Mellon University Hunt Library) and Priscilla Finley (University of Nevada, Las Vegas Lied Library) for helping me to design this methodology.
4.
FieldsBarbara J., ‘Ideology and race in American history’, in KousserJ. MorganMcPhersonJames M., eds, Region, Race, and Reconstruction: essays in honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York, Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 143; Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, op. cit., pp. 13–15.
5.
Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, op. cit., p. 14; BarrettJames R.RoedigerDavid R., ‘Inbetween peoples: race, nationality, and the “new immigrant” working class’, Journal of American Ethnic History (Vol. 16, no. 3, Spring 1997), pp. 3–44; Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, op. cit., pp. 1, 2; NaylorAdam, [untitled book review], History (Vol. 83, no. 272, October1998), p. 662.
6.
JacobsonMatthew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European immigrants and the alchemy of race (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 7–9; BrodkinKaren, How Jews Became White Folks: and what that says about race in America (Piscataway, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1998), p. 175; RoginMichael, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish immigrants in the Hollywood melting pot (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996), pp. 13, 12.
7.
Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, op. cit., p. 59; Rogin, Blackface, White Noise, op. cit., p. 12.
8.
For book reviews relating to the first criticism, see SpickardPaul, [untitled book review], Social History (Vol. 26, no. 1, January2001), pp. 114–17; VaughanAlden T., [untitled book review], William and Mary Quarterly (Third Series Vol. 56, no. 4, October1999), pp. 830–33; KatznelsonIra, [untitled book review], Social History (Vol. 18, no. 1, January1993), pp. 100–03; DealDouglas, [untitled book review], Journal of Southern History (Vol. 65, no. 3, August1999), pp. 608–10; ArnesenEric, ‘Whiteness and the historians’ imagination’, International Labor and Working-Class History (Vol. 60, Fall2001), pp. 3–32; KolchinPeter, ‘Whiteness studies: the new history of race in America’, Journal of American History (Vol. 89, no. 1, June2002), pp. 154–73. Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, op. cit., p. 179. Book reviews that elucidated the second criticism include: YacovoneDonald, [untitled book review], New England Quarterly (Vol. 69, no. 4, December1996), pp. 667–09; MulderinkEarl F., [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 83, no. 2, September1996), p. 614; NolanJanet, [untitled book review], International Migration Review (Vol. 31, no. 2, Summer1997), p. 487; DinerHasia, [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 87, no. 2, September2000), p. 699; CrippsThomas, [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 83, no. 4, March1997), pp. 1462–63; IgnatievNoel, [untitled book review], American Historical Review (Vol. 105, no. 4, October2000), p. 1305. For reviews that contribute to the third criticism, see Kolchin, ‘Whiteness studies’, op. cit., p. 163; BernsteinIver, [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 79, no. 3, December1992), p. 1121; WattsSteven, [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 78, no. 4, March1992), p. 1444; BrackmanHarold, ‘Review essay: through the prism of race and slavery’, Association for Jewish Studies Review (Vol. 24, no. 2, 1999), p. 328; Arnesen, ‘Whiteness’, op. cit., p. 20. The fourth criticism is explicated in detail in FieldsBarbara J., ‘Whiteness, racism, and identity’, International Labor and Working-Class History (Vol. 60, Fall2001), pp. 48–56.
9.
Kolchin, ‘Whiteness studies’, op. cit., p. 173.
10.
GuglielmoThomas, White on Arrival: Italians, race, color, and power in Chicago, 1890–1945 (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 7–9; GoldsteinEric L., The Price of Whiteness: Jews, race, and American identity (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 1, 3, 4, 6. GuterlMatthew Pratt makes a distinction between race and colour, similar to Guglielmo’s, in The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001).
11.
KazalRussell A., Becoming Old Stock: the paradox of German-American identity (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 3, 6.
12.
GomezLaura E., Manifest Destinies: the making of the Mexican American race (New York, New York University Press, 2007), p. 115; MoraAnthony, Border Dilemmas: racial and national uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848–1912 (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2011). See also MeeksEric V., Border Citizens: the making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2007).
13.
CarnevaleNancy C., [untitled book review], Journal of American Ethnic History (Vol. 25, nos. 2–3, winter/spring2006), p. 330; GuterlMatthew Pratt, ‘Review: a note on the word “white”’, American Quarterly (Vol. 56, no. 2, June2004), p. 445; BrettellCaroline, [untitled book review], Journal of Social History (Vol. 38, no. 3, spring2005), pp. 808–12; AlbaRichard, [untitled book review], American Historical Review (Vol. 109, no. 1, February2004), pp. 209–10; GrossStephen J., [untitled book review], Journal of American Ethnic History (Vol. 24, no. 4, Summer2005), pp. 100–11; BrooksCharlotte, ‘Identity crisis’ [book review], Reviews in American History (Vol. 33, no. 1, March2005), pp. 100–01; AmatoJoseph Anthony, [untitled book review], Journal of Social History (Vol. 40, no. 2, winter2006), pp. 526–29; LuebkeFrederick C., [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 92, no. 1, June2005), pp. 251–52; BuhlePaul, [untitled book review], American Historical Review (Vol. 112, no. 1, February2007), pp. 223–24; WebbClive, [untitled book review], Journal of American History (Vol. 93, no. 3, December2006), p. 913; ToppMichael Miller, ‘“It is providential that there are foreigners here”: whiteness and masculinity in the making of Italian American syndicalist identity’, in GuglielmoJenniferSalemoSalvatore, eds, Are Italians White? How race is made in America (New York, Routledge, 2003), pp. 98–110.
14.
For examples, see BaumBruce, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: a political history of racial identity (New York, New York University Press, 2006); BoucherLeigh., eds, Re-orienting Whiteness (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); ChoateMark I., Emigrant Nation: the making of Italy abroad (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008); Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: race and ethnicity in the early Syrian American diaspora (California, University of California Press, 2009); JonesCecily, Engendering Whiteness: white women and colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1627–1865 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007); NgaiMae M., Impossible Subjects: illegal aliens and the making of modern America (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005); SmithersGregory, Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s–1890s (New York, Routledge, 2011). For an earlier comparative history of racism, see FredricksonGeorge M., White Supremacy: a comparative study of American and South African history (New York, Oxford University Press, 1981). Barbara Jeanne Fields’ 2001 argument that European immigrants could not – and certainly would not want to – acquire a racial identity remains unresolved. Most historians politely ignore it. Others have vigorously attacked it. In White Metropolis: race, ethnicity, and religion in Dallas, 1841–2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 181, PhillipsMichael suggested that Fields ‘is not very familiar with the [whiteness] literature’ and charged that she ‘cannot simply disagree with whiteness scholars; she attributes to them malevolent motives’. Those who choose to study immigrant identity through the lens of race, however, will need to engage, rather than ignore, her critical point about the essential nature of racism in America.
15.
This is not to suggest that unreconstructed views of immigrant whiteness completely disappeared from the literature. Examples from the post-2001 period include EaganCatherine M., ‘“White,” if “not quite”: Irish whiteness in the nineteenth-century Irish-American novel’, in KennyKevin, ed., New Directions in Irish-American History (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 140–55; NowatzkiRobert, ‘Paddy jumps Jim Crow: Irish-Americans and Blackface minstrelsy’, Éire-Ireland (Vol. 41, nos 3/4, Fall/Winter2006), pp. 162–84; RoedigerDavid R., Working Toward Whiteness: how America’s immigrants became white: the strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs (New York, Basic Books, 2005); NevelsCynthia Skove, Lynching to Belong: claiming whiteness through racial violence (College Station, TAMU Press, 2007); PainterNell Irvin, The History of White People (New York, W.W. Norton, 2010). For Professor Painter’s discussion of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants, see pp. 132, 133, 143. For David Roediger’s latest foray in the field, see How Race Survived U.S. History: from settlement and slavery to the Obama phenomenon (New York, Verso, 2008). Chapter 5 is entitled ‘A nation stays white: how race survived mass immigration’.
Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, op. cit., p. 11.
18.
Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, op. cit., p. 13; Pew Hispanic Center, ‘Statistical portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2011’, op. cit. There were also those who felt that the whiteness scholarship understated the importance of class in American history. For example, see HartmanAndrew, ‘The rise and fall of whiteness studies’, Race & Class (Vol. 46, no. 2, October2004), pp. 22–38. Contrary to popular correlations between immigration and unemployment, many observers argue that in fact the opposite may be true: that immigrants, if anything, help expand the economy during downturns. See, for example, AndersonStuart, ‘Let’s not blame immigrants for high unemployment rates’, Immigration Reform Bulletin [Cato Institute] (September2010), available at: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irb_september2010.pdf.
