Working toward whiteness: how America's immigrants became white: the strange journey from Ellis Island to the suburbs

Abstract

This fascinating new book by an award-winning historian of race and labour tells the definitive story of how Ellis Island immigrants became accepted as cultural insiders in America At the vanguard of the study of race and labour in American history, David Roediger is one of the most highly respected scholars in his field. He is also the author of the now-classic The Wages of Whiteness, a study of racism in the development of a working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, he continues that history in to the twentieth century, recounting how American ethnic groups that are considered today, such as Jewish, Italian and Polish Americans, once occupied a confused racial status in their own country. While some historians have claimed that these immigrants were white on arrival, Roediger paints a very different picture, showing that it wasn't until the 1920's (ironically just when immigration laws became much more restrictive), that these ethnic groups definitively became part of America, primarily thanks to the nascent labour movement and a rise in home-buying. From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants - the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighbourhoods - Working Toward Whiteness explores the murky realities of race in twentieth-century America. In this masterful history, which is sure to be a key text in its field, David Roediger charts the strange transformation of these new immigrants into the white ethnics of America today.

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