Nell Painter has done a highly academic, factual thesis on the concept of whiteness and race tracing through more than 20 centuries of human history. Painter explains how slavery existed long before black people were enslaved in America and in rest of the world, going back all the way to Roman and Greek times. She describes how the concept of race as we perceive it today came about only around the 18th century, how it is a social construct much like gender is.

Painter covers white slavery, how good-looking white women were prized as slaves, the origin of word “Caucasian”, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s obsession with Anglo-Saxon race superiority, his friendship across the pond with Thomas Carlyle in spite of their differing views on slavery, how whiteness became the defining aspect of being American. Irish immigrants fleeing their country from abject poverty, despite their whiteness, were treated as scum on account of them being Celts and Catholics. At one point, they were treated no different than black people (Negros). Yet, when the opportunity came around civil war, Irish Americans capitalized on their whiteness to advance on their claim of being Americans, with hordes of immigrants coming into the country into the Union territory.

Race dominated much of 19th century in the form of skull measurements (cephalic observations), driven by William Ripley and his 1899 book “Races of Europe,” a notion that was contested by German American Jew Franz Boas. Even Boas, a Jew who fled Germany in fear of persecution, took a dim view of Hungarian & Polish Jews who made their way into America after him. With rising immigration, the need to protect white American life took a different turn with eugenics, sterilization and intelligence tests of immigrants.

In her book, we learn about the American economist, William Ripley who was obsessed with cephalic measurements as the defining factor of race; French anthroposociologists Lapouge and Gobineau who spouted anti-Semitic hatred and Aryan race supremacy; Madison grant, the New England conservationist who believed in Teutonic race supremacy. In order to explain the German behavior during WW I, Grant espoused the view that current Germans were Alpine rather than Nordic, borrowing on Ripley’s definitions.

Early 20th century resistance to immigration resistance against Jewish and other Europeans was spearheaded by the weekly Saturday Evening Post with its explicit cartoons and articles from race supremacists. The immigration restriction act of 1924, rise of KKK and their hated against Catholics, Jews and Black people defined the early 20s in America. Henry Ford and his racist antsemitic views.

Led by Franz Boas and subsequently by Ruth Benedict in an environment that was amenable to reconsidering race, the fallacies of 19th and 18th century race studies and the irrational racial classifications were challenged during Great Depression and the period leading to WW II. The concept of cultural pluralism (repudiating the Anglo-Saxon imagery of Americans), American inclusiveness as a nation of immigrants took roots in late 1930s and beyond, thanks to the rise of Nazis in German and Japanese racial overtures. Americans All, Immigrants All aired as a radio program in 1938, following FDR’s speech earlier in that year. Unfortunately, American inclusion only went as far as European white immigrants and Mexicans who were considered white; African-Americans, native Americans and Asians were still treated as second class citizens.

Post WW II saw the establishment of Israel and they becoming a strong ally of America, so much so that America changed from being a Christian nation to becoming a Judeo-Christian nation. Post WW II also saw suburbanization of America with billions of dollars being poured into helping veterans resettle. Federal Housing Authority FHA and VA distinctly favored white veterans as Italian Americans became the next group to be included in the “white American” club.

With the passing of Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voter Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968, black people made some headway in their struggle for equality, at least on paper. They still remained at the bottom of the race equation even as the “white ethnic” groups emerged in the country, with the “white Americans” at the top and blacks at the bottom. Black nationalist Malcolm X mesmerized the nation with his oratory skills causing the rise of black power that the white ethnics detested. Most offended were the Jews who seemed to have the last word in anything related to suffering.

The fears of 18th and 19th century race supremacists came to true in 21st century with the intermingling of “races” sexually. The turn of the century also saw idea of race being questioned vis a vis ethnicity; with human genome mapping. Painter ends her book tamely with skin color being the definitive distinction between humans as the whole race theory of 18th and 19th century buckled.

Critical Review

Painter disappoints on three counts, from my perspective.

For a book published in 2010, with an exhaustive coverage of race and what constitutes becoming American, she completely overlooks the Asians who came into the country following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Surely, the 21 million Asian Americans (per the 2010 Census) merit a discussion if not a complete chapter in her book.

In page 385, she makes two decidedly disturbing statements. “Americans’ disorderly sexual habits have always overflowed neat racial lines and driven race thinkers crazy.” And in the last paragraph, “With so many nonwhite and white Americans marrying willy-nilly, barriers between the progeny of European immigrants have largely disappeared.”

Does Painter disapprove of the interracial / multiracial sexual intermingling which is what 18th and 19th century Anglo-Saxon racists such as Emerson, Ripley, and other feared? Shouldn’t she be delighted that such an event came to pass erasing the racial lines that had existed for many centuries?

How exactly does one not marry “willy-nilly” but in a fashion that would have been acceptable to Painter? Within their own race? Own ethnicity? Own skin color?

History is a story that is always being written without any stop. It is a deep letdown to read Painter say nothing meaningful in the final paragraph of her book, simply acknowledging the “fundamental black/white binary endures” and will do so.