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"In this splendid book, David Roediger shows the need for political activism aimed at transforming the social and political meaning of race. "Colored White "shows that racism is a creation of culture and politics. Roediger excavates hidden histories of past anti-racist movements that hold great relevance for the present, but he also shows how failure to come to grips with the pervasive power of 'whiteness' has repeatedly doomed the efforts of historical struggles for social justice. No other writer on whiteness can match Roediger's historical breadth and depth: his grasp of the formative role played by race in the making of the nineteenth century working class, in defining the contours of twentieth-century U.S. citizenship and social membership, and in shaping the meaning of emerging social identities and cultural practices in the twenty-first century."--George Lipsitz, author of "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness"
"David Roediger has been showing us all for years how whiteness is a marked and not a neutral color in the history of the United States. "Colored White, " with its synthetic sweep and new historical investigations, marks yet another advance. In the burgeoning literature on whiteness, this book stands out for its lucid, unjargonridden, lively prose, its groundedness, its analytic clarity, and its scope."--Michael Rogin, author of "Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot"