Date sent: Mon, 21 Aug 1995
From: Doug Deal, SUNY-Oswego
<deal@Oswego.Oswego.EDU>
The first place to look, at least with reference to US history, is
David Roediger's work; his first book on the subject is entitled *The
Wages of Whiteness*; he has a more recent collection of essays on the
same topic, both published by Verso.
Verso has also published a more cantankerous, and probably less
useful, book by Theodore Allen called *The Invention of the White
Race*.
Finally, still with Verso, a recent work by Alexander Saxton, *Rise
and Fall of the White Republic* (approximate title?), should be
mentioned. Saxton is a very fine historian who worked first on
anti-Chinese prejudice on the West Coast, particularly in the labor
movement (*The Indispensable Enemy*). A different slant on racial
"Anglo-Saxonism" in Britain and America is provided by Reginald
Horsman in his *Race and Manifest Destiny*.
Going beyond my own area of specialization (race & slavery in
America), I would just mention Martin Bernal's *Black Athena*
(vol.1), which may or may not be an acceptable reinterpretation of
ancient history but definitely has interesting insights into the
scholarly construction of racial categories in the 19th and 20th
centuries. And a truly panoramic view of European attitudes of racial
supremacy in the imperial age is provided in the delightfully written
*The Lords of Human Kind* by V. G. Kiernan.