num_pages: 264
description: The history of Jews in the United States is one of racial change that provides useful insights on race in America. Prevailing classifications have sometimes assigned Jews to the white race and at other times have created an off-white racial designation for them. Those changes in racial assignment have shaped the ways American Jews of different eras have constructed their ethnoracial identities. Brodkin illustrates these changes through an analysis of her own family's multi-generational experience. She shows how Jews, in her opinion, experience a kind of double vision that comes from racial middleness: on the one hand, marginality with regard to whiteness; on the other, whiteness and belonging with regard to blackness.
language: English
title: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
titlecomplete: How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
genres: Social Justice, History, Judaism, Religion, Sociology, Race, Anti Racist, Jewish, Nonfiction, Anthropology
ratings_count: 250
publisher: Rutgers University Press