The History of White People

 About the Author   Recommended Readers   Reception   Guiding Questions for Readers   Cultures, Time Periods, Evidence   Organizational Strengths   Limitations   Extras! 

“...race is an idea, not a fact, and its questions demand answers from the conceptual rather than the factual realm.”

 Nell Irvin Painter  is an award-winning author, celebrated public intellectual, and leading historian of the United States.

 A general audience with at least a beginner’s knowledge of western history and politics ex. Julius Caesar, French Revolution, colonization of America, American Civil War

 Review: Who’s White? by Linda Gordon, The New York Times  Key Quote: “Painter, a renowned historian recently retired from Princeton, has written an unusual study: an intellectual history, with occasional excursions to examine vernacular usage, for popular audiences. It has much to teach everyone, including whiteness experts, but it is accessible and breezy, its coverage broad and therefore necessarily superficial.”

 Review: On the History of American Whiteness by Bruce Baum, Reviews in American History  Key Quotes:

• “...it is devoted to the white Americans who started the United States in 1776 and experienced successive 'enlargements' of white immigrants." It is not a global history of "white people.”
• “...Painter’s book comes some twenty years after critical white studies, which built upon earlier critical analyses of American whiteness by black and Native American writers…not ground-breaking in the manner of, say, DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (1935) or David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness (1991).”
• “What Painter does provide, however, is considerable: a thorough, highly readable, and—aside from how it skips over the colonial period—comprehensive study of American whiteness, with a wealth of telling stories and details.”

“So long as racial discrimination remains a fact of life and statistics can be arranged to support racial difference, the American belief in races will endure.”

• What is whiteness and who qualifies as a white person?
• Who created these definitions? How and when did they come about?
• Why did the people influencing the meaning of whiteness describe it in different and specific ways?
• Has the definition of whiteness changed over time? How, when, and why?
• How is whiteness defined with regards to other races? 
• How did understandings of other races play a role in defining whiteness?
• Are there different kinds of whiteness? How are they organized? How is whiteness determined…
• Through geography?
• Through ancestry?
• Through skin color?
• Through other observable physical characteristics?
• Through political or socio-economic standing?

The book traces the shifting seat of power in the global West, from ancient Greeks and Scythians, and Romans, Celts and Germani, over the rise and fall of empires, before eventually focusing on America, from the first settlers to more current history. The time period covered is quite broad, from roughly 500-600 BCE to the present day. It provides some global context while keeping its vantage point rooted in the West. Individual thinkers and writers that shaped race ideology are a key focus of the book, and it relies heavily on primary sources by these individuals. The book is organized in a fairly straightforward and chronological manner, but focuses on specific examples as a reflection of the broader historical context.

• A highly comprehensive book with an organic flow. Within chapters and between them, the transition from section to section is neat and evident, as if the reader is gradually being escorted from one point to the next.
• The order that the book follows is roughly chronological, which makes it easy to see the progression of big-picture ideas.
• The inclusion of images is a strong feature in the book, giving readers a visual break or pause for breath while also underscoring key points and making them more memorable.

• The format, although digestible, becomes slightly redundant after a time. In a book that is so jam-packed with information about historical figures, it sometimes starts to feel like a collection of biographies with the throughline of race ideology and the construction of whiteness.
• While the people at the center of the story are crystallized well, their broader socio-political contexts can fade into the background, particularly for a lay reader.
• This book takes a very personal approach, digging into the people who influenced the idea of whiteness. While the author’s strong tone is a standout feature of the book, her comments and descriptions could, at times, possibly be construed as biased or colored by personal taste. For example, on page 68, Dr. John Hunter is described as an “arrogant, overbearing Scot.” Though these comments are often substantiated, such strong language may detract from perceived trustworthiness or argumentative weight, particularly for readers who do not agree with the core premises.

“The fortunate man,” Weber says, “is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others…”