512 pages
English language
Published March 14, 2010
The History of White People is a 2010 book by Nell Irvin Painter, in which the author explores the idea of whiteness throughout history, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing through the beginning of scientific racism in early modern Europe to 19th- through 21st-century America.
The history of fragile white men stroking each other's egos with pseudoscience, insisting too much. The book is drily informative with interspersals of bemusingly casual commentary, ironic speech, and belaboured listings of abuse-as-scholarship. The last chapter jumps sixty years, promotes exceptionalism, and asks naive questions for the white gaze.
DNF. sometimes interesting intellectual history, but halfway through I still don't think any differently than when I started
The overt racism in the book may seem extreme by the standards of today, especially by white people who are fed a pablum of inclusiveness while people of colour suffer daily under a system of deep racism and endless microagressions. (A contemporary example: whites who say things like “I’m not a racist, but why can’t we say all lives matter?”) The History of White People is not the kind of book you gift to your Trump-supporting uncle, but it is the kind of book for people who are looking to do a serious examination of racial hierarchy and want insight into how we have arrived at our current structure.
Full review here: chadkohalyk.com/2017/02/20/a-hypercompetitive-race-review-of-the-history-of-white-people/
I'll just quote from the review of Jpablobr: I think the importance of this book is how it raises awareness on these social constructs that are causing a social decay and drifting us into wrong paths. Racial issues (in terms of white, brown, black) generate lots of tension (rightly so) that lead to many stereotypes and taboos limiting the proper discussion and study of the subject. For example, science has to deal with these racial sensitive issues where justifying the relevance of this differentiations many times mean TROUBLE.
I guess that pretty much captures it. If you've read The Mismeasure of Man by SJ Gould you will probably find this a nice addition, as it covers some of the same material but also gives a broader context outside of the scientific debates.
