The price of whiteness : Jews, race, and American identity

Summary: Eric Goldstein traces the Jews' encounter with American racial culture from the 1870s through to World War II. At first Jews clung to the notion that they were a distinct 'race'. Latterly Jews became fully vested as part of America's white mainstream and gave up describing themselves in racial terms.

Record details

ISBN: 9780691136318 (pbk.)
Physical Description: xii, 307 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
print
Publisher: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2008]
Copyright: ©2006.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction -- Part I: The Jewish "race" in America, 1875-1895. "Different blood flows in our veins": race and Jewish self-definition in late-nineteenth-century America -- Part II: Jews in black and white, 1896-1918. The unstable other: locating Jews in progressive era American racial discourse -- "Now is the time to show your true colors": the Jewish approach to African Americans -- "What are we?": Jewishness between race and religion -- Part III: Confronting Jewish difference, 1919-1935. Race and the "Jewish problem" in interwar America -- "A white race of another kind"? -- Wrestling with racial Jewishness -- Part IV: From old challenges to new, 1936-1950. World War II and the transformation of Jewish racial identity -- Epilogue: Jews, whiteness, and "tribalism" in multicultural America.