White Privilege

This discussion of the "ambiguous whiteness" of some ethnic
groups took place on WMST-L in July/August 2003.  At the end, it
contains a link to a "white privilege" bibliography compiled by
WMST-L member Anne Wiley.

PART 5 OF 5

Hello, i was wondering if someone could hepl me trace
writings on the ambiguous whiteness of eastern and
southern europeans (comparared to the hyper whiteness
of the british, french, etc). I am interested both in
materials dealing with historical development of
whiteness within europe and abroad and contemporary
developments. At the moment I have only found the
works of A. Bonnett aand frye jacobsen
thanks
nancy spina
MA candidate
University of British Columbia

Hi Nancy,

Off the top of my head, there's the book titled _How the Irish Became White_. I
know they're not easern or southern, but I think it stands. There are the key
anthologies _Critical Race Studies_, _Critical Race Theory_, _Whiteness: A
Critical Reader_, etc. I mention them because they are chock full of different
disciplinary work, especially the first two which include notes for additional
readings.

All the best,
Jennifer Harris
University of Windsor
jharris  AT  yorku.ca
jharris  AT  uwindsor.ca

Karen Brodkin (Sacks) has an article in Rothenberg's "Race, Class, and
Gender"--5th ed.: "How Jews Became White," with references at the end
and a section on "Euroraces" that would be relevant.

 Jo-Ann Pilardi
 Towson U., MD  jpilardi  AT  towson.edu

--On Wednesday, July 23, 2003 1:03 PM -0700 Nancy Spina
<nancy_spina  AT  YAHOO.COM> wrote:

> Hello, i was wondering if someone could hepl me trace
> writings on the ambiguous whiteness of eastern and
> southern europeans (comparared to the hyper whiteness
> of the british, french, etc).

It's possible that you may find some useful references in two past
WMST-L discussions of whiteness.  Both are available as files in the
WMST-L File Collection..  One is entitled "Whiteness and Women" and
the other is called "White Privilege."  The former file contains
references to many books and articles, while part of the latter file
focuses on the issue of whether Jews are considered white by
themselves or others.  You can find them both in the WMST-L File
Collection at http://www.umbc.edu/wmst/wmsttoc.html .  The main
listing is arranged alphabetically.

        Joan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Joan Korenman                  jskor  AT  umbc.edu
U. of Md. Baltimore County     http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/
Baltimore, MD 21250  USA       http://www.umbc.edu/wmst/

The only person to have everything done by Friday is Robinson Crusoe
--------------------------------------------------------------------

You might also try "Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants
and the Alchemy of Race" by Matthew Frye Jacobson (Harvard UP).

Hanne Blank

Hanne Blank, writer / editor
hanne  AT  hanneblank.com
misia_sert  AT  yahoo.com

http://www.hanne.net
**********************************************************

Yes, Karen Brodkin has an excellent book called _How Jews Became White
   Folks: And What That Says About Race in America_, Rutgers
   Univ. Press, 1998. It mixes personal, historical, and cultural
   analyses, and she does talk about several (mostly Eastern) European
   immigrant groups in addition to Jews.  Re: Nancy's original
   question: As Jennifer Harris mentioned in one reply there's also a
   lot of recent work--in literary as well as legal studies, etc.--on
   whiteness, some of which deals with different immigrant groups in
   the U.S. (and perhaps elsewhere), some discussing Eastern and
   Southern Europeans. There's a book called _White_, by Richard Dyer,
   and several edited collections on whiteness. You could do a title
   or keyword search on "whiteness" to turn up some whose titles I
   don't have at hand. Marilyn

Marilyn Edelstein
Associate Professor of English
Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara CA 95053
408-554-4123
medelstein  AT  scu.edu

  Personally, unless your interest is strictly social rather than normative,
I would start with the U.S. Supreme Court cases that determined which
foreigners were "white" and could thereby be naturalized citizens.  Since
before 1800, U.S. law had only permitted "white men" to be naturalized.
Moreover, a female U.S. citizen lost her citizenship if she married a
non-citizen.
    Jews were declared "white" enough by the high Court, and I think after
"Semetics" were "white" under the law, that permitted Arabs, Lebanese,
Turks, etc., to naturalize.  I don't think the "Jew" issue came up until
they started coming by the millions from Eastern Europe.  The parents of
Louis Dembitz Brandeis, for example, were both German Jews who settled in
Louisville, Ky. before the Civil War--there were probably Jews in
Washington's army.
    Anyway, the number of Jews and Slavs coming over the sea was key to
making the matter a serious issue--until then, anyone from Europe was
"white" enough to naturalize.  Irish, for instance, were widely despised,
but no one seriously challenged their racial qualification for citizenship.
Quite a few fought and many died in the Civil War as non-citizens,
incidentally.  I think there were also a few German units in which hardly
anyone spoke English.

    You aren't interested in Mexicans and other Hispanics, Hawaiians,
Fillipinos, other Asians, South Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and
other Pacific Islanders, West Indians or Africans, so I'll leave them all
out.

    All this madness ended after WWII.

   Anyway, the Supreme Court cases are easy to find once you have the
citations.  I am sure you will find their reasoning on why "Jews" are white,
but "Hispanics" are not, fascinating.  I might know the citations if I had
practiced immigration, but I never did.

Hannah Miyamoto
hsmiyamoto  AT  msn.com

For Jews, the issue was westernness more than whiteness. In general, the
black/white line is more salient in the US, while the east/west line is
more salient in Europe. I have an article coming out on this in the
American Sociological Review next month. Brodkin's book doesn't take into
account that European Jews made themselves western by inventing internal
eastern others - today that other is Jews from Arab countries - and that
their struggles with whiteness in the US drew from this history.

Aziza Khazzoom
Assistant Professor
Sociology Department
264 Haines Hall
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551

A great referent for legal and social aspects of Irish-American and
Mexican-American whiteness is Linda Gordon's The Great Arizona Orphan
Abduction.

There's a LGBT anthology of Italian and Sicilian American writings,
think it's called Hey Paisan, which deals in places with the
experience of ethnic prejudice visited on south Europeans in the U.S.
--
Max Dashu   <maxdashu  AT  LMI.net>
<http://www.suppressedhistories.net>
Global Women's Studies

See Are Italians White? eds. Jennifer Guglielmo and Sal Salerno (Routledge,
forthcoming) and
Mary Bucci Bush's novella' Drwoning. Also the writings of David Roediger.

Edvige Giunta
New Jersey City University
egiunta  AT  njcu.edu

Hello,

I've been out of town since early July and am just catching up on email, 
so I just came across this thread on whiteness. I think someone already 
mentioned Brodkin Sacks', Ignatiev's, and Roediger's work (Roediger's 
_The Wages of Whiteness_ would be particularly helpful, I think, also 
perhaps his new _Colored White_), but you might also take a look at 
these:

Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race
Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States
Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity
Ian Lopez, White By Law
George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
Joe Feagin, Racist America (around p. 87 and elsewhere are discussions 
of immigrants "becoming" white.)

Like others have noted, there are many "whiteness" anthologies out with 
individual chapters that would certainly be useful, also. Hope this 
helps.

Karyn McKinney
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. K.D. McKinney
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Penn State Altoona
135 CAC, 3000 Ivyside Park
Altoona, PA  16601
kdm12  AT  psu.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Greetings-
I have been out of town, but my institution recently hosted speaker Tim
Wise on White Privilege and our librarian Wanda Meck assisted me in putting
together a bibliography and web resources. It may be more general, but I
know it listed some similar resources to the batch of recent emails.

It is located at:
http://www.gcc.mass.edu/folderacad/library/Path/WhitePrivPath.htm

Regards,
Anne Wiley
wiley  AT  crocker.com
wiley  AT  gcc.mass.edu