Quote:
Originally posted by Mike33
I see what you're saying. You could probably write a similar book on the interaction and hierarchy or race and gender during the 1800's too.
Where white men made more and could opnely discriminate against white women (hierarchy based on gender) yet at the same time a white woman could discriminate against a man or woman of another color (hierarchy based on race).
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Exactly! Now, how the Irish (and Jews and Italians, and basically all other non-Wasp (white anglo saxon protestant) but European subgroups) became WHITE is when WHITE stopped being more or less about physical appearance but focused more on Social privilege.
To illustrate the point: A Catholic Sicilian Italian would get laughed at by "polite society" (as the historic WASPs would call it) if he claimed he was WHITE back in the 1800s all the way to as recent as 1940. AFTER 1940 (and the US psychic revulsion at the EXTREMES racialist Nazis took), an Italian saying he's white would still be laughed at but more at the fact that he's claiming something that is 'obvious'.