The invention of the white race
By: Theodore W. Allen
Edition: 2nd ed.
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9781844677696; 9781844677702
Subjects: Race relations; History; African Americans; Racism; Slavery
Description: Groundbreaking analysis of the birth of racism in America, telling the story of how America's ruling classes created the category of the "white race" as a means of social control. Since that early invention, white privileges have enforced the myth of racial superiority, and that fact has been central to maintaining ruling-class domination over ordinary working people of all colors throughout American history. Volume I draws lessons from Irish history, comparing British rule in Ireland with the "white" oppression of Native Americans and African Americans. Allen details how Irish immigrants fleeing persecution learned to spread racial oppression in their adoptive country as part of white America. Volume II explores the transformation that turned African bond-laborers into slaves and segregated them from their fellow proletarians of European origin. In response to labor unrest, where solidarities were not determined by skin color, the plantation bourgeoisie sought to construct a buffer of poor whites, whose new racial identity would protect them from the enslavement visited upon African Americans.--From publisher description.
Notes: First ed. published: Verso, 1994.

In this updated edition, Jeffrey B. Perry provides an introduction, new appendices, a select bibliography and a study guide.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: v. 1.; title: Racial oppression and social control -- -- v. 2.; title: The origin of racial oppression in Anglo-America.