Working Toward Whiteness : How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey From Ellis Island to the Suburbs

Part One. SEEING RACE IN NEW IMMIGRANT HISTORY; CHAPTER 1: New Immigrants, Race, and "Ethnicity" in the Long Early Twentieth Century; CHAPTER 2: Popular Language, Social Practice, and the Messiness of Race; Part Two. "INBETWEENNESS"; CHAPTER 3: "The Burden of Proof Restswith Him": New Immigrants and the Structures of Racial Inbetweenness; CHAPTER 4: Inside the Wail: New Immigrant Racial Consciousness; Part Three. ENTERING THE WHITE HOUSE; CHAPTER 5: "A Vast Amount of Coercion": The Ironies of Immigration Restriction; CHAPTER 6: Finding Homes in an Era of Restriction.;A preeminent scholar explores the history of the "new immigrants" who came to the United States in the late nineteenth century and describes how they became insiders by the end of World War II. How did immigrants to the United States come to see themselves as white? David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness , a classic study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness , Roediger continues that history into the twentieth century. He recounts how ethnic groups considered white today-including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans-were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly looked down on them as inferior. From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants-the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods-Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America. A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present. In an Introduction to the 2018 edition, Roediger considers the resonance of the book in the age of Trump, showing how Working Toward Whiteness remains as relevant as ever even though most migrants today are not from Europe. Part One. SEEING RACE IN NEW IMMIGRANT HISTORY CHAPTER 1: New Immigrants, Race, and "Ethnicity" in the Long Early Twentieth Century CHAPTER 2: Popular Language, Social Practice, and the Messiness of Race Part Two. "INBETWEENNESS" CHAPTER 3: "The Burden of Proof Restswith Him": New Immigrants and the Structures of Racial Inbetweenness CHAPTER 4: Inside the Wail: New Immigrant Racial Consciousness Part Three. ENTERING THE WHITE HOUSE CHAPTER 5: "A Vast Amount of Coercion": The Ironies of Immigration Restriction CHAPTER 6: Finding Homes in an Era of Restriction. CHAPTER 7: A New Deal, an Industrial Union, and a White House: What the New Immigrant Got IntoAFTERWORD: The Houses We've Lived in and the Workings of Whiteness ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES INDEX.