Book Review: The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter.

Painter's The History of White People is a well-written, thoroughly-researched account of how the definition of "white people" changed though history, from ancient Greece to northern Europe to the United States. (Note that as she moves forward in time, Painter's geographic scope narrows.)  As a tall, blonde, blue-eyed (male) of northern European ancestry but born of native-born US citizens for a couple generations back (one great-grandfather served in the Union Army, 1864-1866), I was prepared for this book to annoy,  insult or belittle me, to "call me out on my privilege."  That was not Painter's goal, and instead her book helped me think some more about the role of "others" in society, particularly American society.

I will agree that the title is misleading,  to those who wish to be mislead. This is not so much a history of folks with white skin, as it is (as described right on the spine of the dust cover) an examination of race theory, as "constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others." 

Painter's tale is that of the ever-changing "other" - of European stock, but not "white" at a given time in history. Of particular interest to me was Chapter 6, "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Names White People 'Caucasian'"; how a remote group gave its tribal name to an entire "race", on account of the beauty attributed to some of its women. (I do disagree with Painter, who on the basis of one 1946 photo asserts that Georgians are (no longer) beautiful; Painter's judgment indulges the same stereotyping as Blumenbach's 18th Century generalizations.)

Painter's device of linking an era's definition of "whiteness" to its particular proponents makes her story more accessible, but at the same time weakens its validity.  The History of White People is anecdotal, not analytical. 

Notably missing from Painter's account is why the dominant peoples began to accept, in stages, other "non-white" Europeans as white, and just where the source of the push to "enlarge" "whiteness" lay. Was it with the dominant class/race, who sought to co-opt others to hold back different groups of, shall we say, inferior "others"? Was it the "new" "whites" pushing for inclusion?  She also at most only briefly examines the effects of exclusion from "whiteness," except in the case of wholesale near-exclusion of "non-whites" from immigration to the US between 1920 and 1965.

Nor does Painter give us good markers by which to distinguish "bad" science, like "race science" from good. If we want policy-makers to make good policy on the basis of good science, it would be useful to examine the history of "race science" not just for what it said, and how its proponents came to their views (both of which Painter does well), but also to look at those who disagreed with "race science," and whether and how that disagreement affected the decisions of contemporaneous policy-makers.

These are more than quibbles; they are deficiencies in the text. But as Painter herself notes, she had to limit her focus if she wanted a managable text.  In the end, her book is a valuable, readable account for anyone who wants to understand how Americans have viewed "race," particularly before the beginning of the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s.