The History of White People

[wlotus]

"Exoticizing and sexualizing women of allegedly inferior “races” has a long and continuous history in racial thought; it’s just that today they are usually darker-skinned women."

Books / Sunday Book Review
Who’s White?
By LINDA GORDON
Published: March 28, 2010
Nell Irvin Painter’s accessible study shows that deciding who is white has always been heavily influenced by class and culture.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love the bit about the Germans slipping from Nordic to Alpine during WWI.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

That IS an interesting-sounding book.

*puts it on list*

[ciardhapagan.livejournal.com]

I see from the article the author does touch slightly on the English prejudice towards the Celtic people of the British Isles- not just the Irish (who were treated the worst) but also the Scottish, and how the people of Scottish descent(especially the poorer and rural) in the mountains of the southeast were treated as subhuman by those of English descent.

Those stereotypes are still used by upper class fauxgressive whites outside of the southeast US as a general smear on all lower middle class and poor whites in the US south. (yeah I'm sensitive about that, because I know the history- I'm 3/4 Scottish on both sides of my family.) The Welsh dealt with prejudice from the English too, but it's something few people have knowledge of. (I have a bit of Welsh ancestry on my mom's side,) Even today the English make sneering "jokes" about Welsh sheep farmers...

A fair number of lower middle class and poor southerners have some knowledge of the history of prejudice that's been directed toward them, at the beginning because many of them were of the Celtic diaspora, and later because of class. This is why southern whites (especially of the lower economic levels) are so "touchy" on the subject of prejudice. It's not that they are "racist", it's that they are angry that the history of class prejudice they've endured is belittled and ignored.

That leads to something I've noticed the fauxgressives (and the rightwingers for other reasons) try to pretend never happened was how successful Jesse Jackson Sr.'s presidential campaign of 1988 was in much of those areas. Why? Because he didn't pit one group against the other- in the Rainbow Coalition he reached out to every single disadvantaged group- we've all been treated poorly, lets join together and show the people who've put us down that they can't stomp on us any more. And look who was scared to death of him- the white fauxgressive elite! He won 13 states despite the scaremongering tactics of the mainstream media- network TV, newspapers like the New York Times, and magazines like Time and Newsweek. Bill and Hillary Clinton are much loved in the same regions for the same reasons, and the fauxgressive elite hate them too.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I didn't know most of that history. Thank you for filling me in!

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

ooh, interesting!