Description
Tracing the long, shifting origins of “whiteness,” this landmark history follows how Western societies invented racial categories and then used them to organize power, belonging, and exclusion. From early European empires to the Enlightenment’s drive to classify human difference, the book shows how ideas about race—shaped by slavery, nation-building, and scientific authority—became tools for justifying domination and defining who counted as fully “American.” Painter’s narrative reveals the surprising contingency of racial thinking: categories that seem fixed are revealed as temporary, contested, and repeatedly reinvented to serve economic and political needs. Written with the clarity and rigor of a major historian, the book challenges readers to see racism not as an accident of history, but as a system built—and rebuilt—over centuries.
Available Editions
paperback
W.W. Norton
Published Jan 1, 2010
496 pages
ISBN: 9780393049343
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Details
First Published
2010
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter.