The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

Author:Nell Irvin Painter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Sociology, bought-and-paid-for, Politics, History
ISBN: 9780393049343
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2010-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Sounding a note that grew louder and louder, Il Proletario reached a ringing conclusion: “Not race struggle but class struggle.”19

BUT IT was too early, and Il Proletario’s exhortation fell on ears attuned to another sort of analysis, one that interpreted class status as permanent racial difference with African Americans largely cornered in the South; the “race” in this race question was as much white as black.

18

THE DISCOVERY OF DEGENERATE FAMILIES

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, American race theory had settled into a four and a half part scheme. On top, where they had been since Emerson, were the stout, pure, and admirable Anglo-Saxons. Catholics—Irish and German—were on their way into the club of the select as northern Europeans. A separate category contained the European “beaten men of beaten races.” Swarthy and round-headed, they were easy enough to see, for recent European scholarship guided Americans into the science that found them inferior. Black people—segregated, impoverished, and disfranchised—generated a good deal of southern commentary, but for the majority, they quite obviously did not—could not—be included within the American. American Indians and Asians, largely disappeared from racial calculation.

So far, so good for the theorists, but what was to be done with the poor whites, those unsavory millions of native-born Anglo-Saxons? Many of them were drifters or hunters or hardscrabble farmers living out in the country—often in the South—or scratching a livelihood on the edges of town. Anglo-Saxon of race, but manifestly inferior in lifestyle, they did not fit into the American racial plan. They needed to be put into a racial box and theorists found one: “degenerate families.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.