Reddit reviews The History of White People

> For example, black people and white people very obviously have different nose shapes.

This was refuted in literally my first week of Anthropology 100 in my undergrad. Which of these is the black nose?

This one?

This one?

This one?

This one?

This one?

>If it were only skin tone that influenced how we label different races, we'd find it impossible to tell the difference between, say, some Indians and some African Americans, but it actually isn't that hard at all.

Except it is, which is why a number of "African Americans" successfully posed as Indian during Jim Crow, for example Korla Pandit.

>but the one area where there is variation is in the characteristics we as a society have picked out upon to make the racial split in the first place.

You really should read the books I linked about the construction of race in America. To reiterate, those were Racial Formation in the United States, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race, The History of White People, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America.

One of the commenters who came from /r/sociology after you suggested I cross post in subs where the users have relevant academic training also added to that some Franz Boas, which I'd like to reiterate. A good introduction to biological anthropology will reiterate what I've said about white/black groupings that you're assuming and then reifying, as will all the resources here as will a good intro to sociology.

To reiterate (1) genetic populations exist, and may share some characteristics -- for instance, San people in South Africa are reliably different than Zulu people. (2) When you try to group those populations together into something like "black" it just doesn't work. The 5 or 7 or however many you want "races" do not have any basis in biological reality (3) groupings like "black" or "African American" are too diverse to make statements like "black people all share thus and such cranial shape/nasal capacity/whatever." Therefore, (4) it makes no sense to say that you can "hear" when someone is "black" because of something biological or physiological because "black" is not a biologically meaningful category, despite its incredibly high social salience. I further argued, above, that what OP does hear is likely an accent, from an ethnolect, which came about precisely because of the social construction of race. I have friends who have "black" parentage, but everyone treats them as "white" because they "look white" and "sound white." You cannot tell by listening that their parents are black, because it's not a biologically meaningful grouping that would actually affect physiology such that it had an affect on language.

A logical terminus of the inverse argument others have proposed above is that there are fundamental biological differences, directly related to race, which affect language production. We know this to be false.

Even in your aside on tone, you're still assuming "white" and "African American" are biologically meaningful groupings, when they're not.

He openly praised Jim Crow, too. He actually regarded America quite highly for that reason.

Edit: A great book to read is "The History of White People" by Nell Irvin Painter. An exhaustively researched examination of race attitudes from Roman times til today, and adds a lot of valuable context to what we're seeing now.

The trick with race is that there is no "official" definition of each one because it's all a social construct.
In the 19th and early 20th century, Italians and Italian-Americans were not considered "white" in the U.S. because "white" here has historically referred to the privileged class. Italians (like the Irish), had to wait generations to be considered "white" through increasing population and organizing civic and cultural groups.

Here's a good read on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742

some recommended reading for you, explaining how the descriptor 'white' came to carry so much baggage.

Not really-- though an expert on the period could go into more detail than I can. Both "Enlightenment" and "Romanticism" are very broad terms. Ideas from both sources mix and mingle both in their own time and in ours. The Romantic movement gave birth to Romantic Nationalism and to racism through various means. Nell Irvin Painter's History of White People is a good book on this topic.

She has expanded this to an entire book, "The History of White People" http://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742

Hm, I'm currently reading a history of artificial light, so maybe I'll eventually get around to 1493, but feel like it would be a let down after 1491, and I'm not sure I want to stay on the same topic. I also want to read "The history of white people," whose topic is probably relevant to this thread, but I haven't read it yet. Thanks for your explanation on your issues with Diamond's book. Very to-the-point explanation. My family is 2 social science professor parents, and I've got just 2 more years in my PhD, so it's a very interesting topic to me, and I appreciate your expertise.

I don't know enough to answer your question, but there's a book on my to-read list that I thought you might be interested in, called A History of White People. Written by a highly respected (black) historian, it traces the development of modern concepts of race.

>When you give a group an environment where they can flourish they seem to do a lot better when they’re solely with people of the same culture, there’s nothing inherently racist about that

Correct. There's nothing inherently racist about that. The problem is that this way of thinking is only applied to races right now. So really, it is kind of racist.

>People point to some predominantly white Scandinavian and European counties that have remarkable economies and next to no crime and tout this as a victory for white race, whilst the opposition claims this is yet another case of white people ruling the world by oppressing minorities.

European empires that dominated the world didn't do so by mining their own countries. England doesn't naturally grow tea, yet they're known for it. England and other European countries only have so many natural resources, but they got them from other countries and they drove the regions into political turmoil in gathering them. India is largely shaped by British occupation even to this day.

One book I'll recommend to you is this one: The History of White People. It does a fairly good job of breaking down, via historical agreement and evidence, how White cultures aren't what alt-right or even "light" alt-right people claim it to be. People claim Scandinavia is a great model of racial purity and a homogenous society. Save for the part where Norse and Scandinavian history largely involved moving people around and settling areas that weren't their own, and bringing many immigrants in to do work. But let's forget all that for our narrative.

The greatest civilizations on Earth learned that cultural segregation was a pretty bad idea. The Mongol Empire, Egyptian, Mali, British, Roman, Greek, Aztec, whatever: they all learned how to unite people. Albeit, depending on how far back and which ones, in bloody ways. They all reached similar conclusions, like that it's a good idea to build sewers and educate people. They all reached the same mathematical standards, like how pi can be 3.14 or 3.16. We know it to be 3.14 ad infinitum, but that other cultures got so close is amazing too. Every Greek philosopher that is seen as the bedrock of Western civilization, that's touted by people who believe that West is best? They studied in Africa. And Africans studied in Greece.

The days of expanding are (hopefully) over, but the days of people sharing ideas and moving about aren't. Only now, people are deciding to move and not being conquered. Instead of Rome coming to your doorstep, other people are arriving in Rome.

I haven't espoused my own views on immigration or multiculturalism, but the idea that we need segregation like the alt-right suggests is just stupid. There have always been people who believed we shouldn't mix. Those people are dead and died out, because they refused to do what comes naturally to humans - get along with others.

Whiteness has changed and shifted throughout history. Eastern Europeans are not always a part of whiteness in Europe but generally are at this point in the US - 'whiteness' is not an ethnicity like German or French but a socially constructed hierarchy so it changes over time. Check out the history of white people](https://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742)

> That's ignoring the middle ages and early modernity.

Early modernity certainly, but the concept of race wasn't really a thing in the middle ages and earlier. For further reading on this I recommend The History of White People.

> Is the white people book new?

https://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742"

2011

Super interesting read

> Humans (and all other animals for that matter) holding onto an inherent fear or distrust of "the other" is a biologically hardwired natural survival instinct from our caveman days

Really, you got some source for that notion with some empirical evidence for my light consumption.

The history of whiteness is being reconstructed from documentary evidence.

http://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742
This is a good book with interesting ideas that doesn't rely on BS evo psych projections of human rationality upon evolution to explain our cultural consciousnesses.