History of White People

Our story begins in Greek and Roman antiquity, where the concept of race did not exist, only geography and the opportunity to conquer and enslave others. Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into "Saxons," "Anglo-Saxons," and "Teutons," envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers.

Here was a worldview congenial to northern Europeans bent on empire. There followed an explosion of theories of race, now focusing on racial temperament as well as skin color. Spread by such intellectuals as Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle, white race theory soon reached North America with a vengeance. Its chief spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did the most to label Anglo-Saxons--icons of beauty and virtue--as the only true Americans. It was an ideal that excluded not only blacks but also all ethnic groups not of Protestant, northern European background. The Irish and Native Americans were out and, later, so were the Chinese, Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks--all deemed racially alien. Did immigrations threaten the very existence of America? Americans were assumed to be white, but who among poor immigrants could become truly American? A tortured and convoluted series of scientific explorations developed--theories intended to keep Anglo-Saxons at the top: the ever-popular measurement of skulls, the powerful eugenics movement, and highly biased intelligence tests--all designed to keep working people out and down.

As Painter reveals, power--supported by economics, science, and politics--continued to drive exclusionary notions of whiteness until, deep into the twentieth century, political realities enlarged the category of truly American.

A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People forcefully reminds us that the concept of one white race is a recent invention. The meaning, importance, and realty of this all-too-human thesis of race have buckled under the weight of a long and rich unfolding of events.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 03/01/2010
ISBN: 9780393049343
Pages: 496
Weight: 1.87lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.47w x 1.36d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2009 pg. 44
Publishers Weekly 12/14/2009 pg. 47
Library Journal 01/15/2010 pg. 121
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2010 pg. 74
Booklist 02/15/2010 pg. 12
New York Review of Books 04/08/2010 pg. 70
New York Times Book Review 03/28/2010 pg. 1
New York Times Book Review 04/04/2010 pg. 22
New Yorker (The) 04/12/2010 pg. 70
Choice 07/01/2010
Christian Century 12/28/2010 pg. 36
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2010 pg. 64