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

This book examines the social status of European immigrants to the United States from the early to mid 20th century. It argues that while many of these immigrants were not considered white when they arrived in this country, the experiences within the country, especially in the realm of labor and housing, slowly gained them the status of whiteness. This is contrasted with the experiences with black, Hispanic and Asian Americans who were kept out of this status no matter how long they had lived here.This book does a good job of showing that far from being a set racial category, whiteness is a social construct. Race and what it means to be white has had different definitions at a different time as some immigrants who were not considered white at first would gain that status over time. It also shows that this country has been set up in a way that privileges white status over everything else as immigrants would come to find out and take violent action to protect their newly gained white status. While this book is an academic book and is a dry read in parts it does a good job of explaining the subject matter and showing that the racial caste system in this country involves more than just one's physical appearance.

Great book!! Focusing around Europeans moving into the United States adjusting to a new pseudonym term called “white”. Which after reading this book will solidify it’s a term that loosely meant a class system. As Europeans mainly from southern and Eastern Europe were not classified as white and were taunted. Italians were hung. Greeks were discriminated against and called non white. The main reason for all Europeans being called white has more to do with economic movements. African and Asians Americans stared encroaching economically into the European Americans world. Then you start getting these so called all white neighborhoods. Ethnicity identity declined. And the quote white identity prevailed. Race identity has more to do with a Europeans class system more than anything else. White is elite superior Right etc. While black represents Low level slave heathen inferiority. African ppl are different tones of brown. Humans don’t come in black?!!!

What I learned from reading this book is that I have a much lower tolerance for blowhard white professors than I did in my teens and twenties when books like this were assigned reading. If this is what “academia” is reduced to then lord help us all.1. This author’s self-aggrandizement jumps of the page and made this a needlessly annoying read.2. No new ideas are presented here. Over 20% of the book is citations. No, really.3. No clear, convincing, or even newish ideas are presented to answer the titular question of how immigrants became perceived as “white,” or what was even meant by “white” during the time period in question.Overall: find something else to read.

Any white person should read to understand the role that was played in excluding the people that built this country

Excellent subject matter treated in a way that is accessible to all. I'm hoping somehow to include it in my lecture classes.

Roediger's book, Working Towards Whiteness helps to illuminate a gap in most American's historical knowledge, the shifting line of racial classification. While we often accept that current definition of race, including whiteness are givens, Roediger does a great job of laying out the process of how many European immigrants, while "white" wouldn't have been the beneficiaries of the privileges of "whiteness" they share in today.While we've got a long way to go towards being a fully inclusive country, we could make a great deal more headway towards that goal if people took the time to read this work.

This is one of the finest sociological treatises on American immigration of a former "underclass"- -working Whites from southern and eastern Europe who came to this country in droves between the 1880s and 1930s. Roediger presents a solid analytical framework for readers to use as a compass through the complex history and transformation of "foreigners" of the same color into "gradual natives" whose color is a badge of acceptable passage over time. Here we see Jews, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians and other "undesirables" sweat their way across factory floors, climb to academic heights, even get elected to high national offices beyond the dreams of their ancestors. The data are presented clearly; the interpretations are crisp and penetrating. Roediger does a great service to his subjects who happened to be "Americans in the making". A must study for any scholar of race and assimilation, and a good read for anyone interested in how some of us got to be "Americans" even with the wrong religions, national origins, or accents as impediments fueled by homegrown bigots of an earlier time!

How we have forgotten history.

Very helpful

Definitely an interesting and important read!