David Roediger’s Whiteness and Race <\/em>brings forth the debate of what it meant to “become white” and how it pertained to the different immigrant groups within the United States.\u00a0 Reading Roediger’s work as a way to understand the racial history of the Untied States, the primary argument for this piece is the perception of the American people of the incoming immigrants.\u00a0 The question asked by Roediger is how the different ethnic groups obtain the title of “white” and how this shaped the racial identity of the arriving Europeans.\u00a0 By using Upton Sinclair’s King Coal<\/em>, Roediger brings forth a racial hierarchy that developed within the United States.\u00a0 As the Americans and the British occupied the primary rung of the hierarchical ladder, the degree of “whiteness” is diluted as it spreads from the British Isles and into Southern and Eastern Europe.\u00a0 With the allotment of “whiteness” coupled with nationalities and religion, becoming “white” in American culture was obtained through the degradation of the African American community and an assimilation into the American culture.\u00a0 Gravity21 <\/a>see Frederick Douglas’ mention of the Irish as a warning that they too will treat the African American community with the same degree as the Americans.\u00a0 However, it is in this passage that Douglas brings forth the belief that racial identities did not transcend national boundaries.\u00a0 This became an important aspect in the challenges to “becoming white.”\u00a0 As a basis for a historical\u00a0 approach to the discussion of race in the United States, the article’s focus on immigrant groups allows for race to be discussed as a social construction in response to an influx of ethnic or religious groups that do not define themselves according to the nation’s societal standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Roediger’s Whiteness and Race brings forth the debate of what it meant to “become white” and how it pertained to the different immigrant groups within the United States.\u00a0 Reading Roediger’s work as a way to understand the racial history of the Untied States, the primary argument for this piece is the perception of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1695,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist300a-spring2017\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}