abomination which is now out in mass-market paperback and more briefly overnight this past october. >> and you also have authors that are part of threshold management, correct? >> correct. when he said threshold management, really authors that are not building media personalities are radio personalities, but just good quality books, whether it's on policy, the economy, for example, george malone was a former wall street journal columnist and he recently wrote a book for us called the great money bench. ..

>> thank you for joining us this evening and we welcome nell irvin painter to politics and prose. the history of race and of the invention contradiction and manipulation of lightness of the lighter skinned people that we call white today is the exploration of ms. painter new book. from the 20th century what has less to the 2010 census or weakened friday given definition and categorization of race and identity professor painter has written an entirely accessible and with busting

experience. joshi is a leading historian of united states and retired from teaching at princeton university and prolific and and award-winning scholar on race relations including black americans and ase second edition of armageddon and we're pleased to welcome her here this evening for "the history of white people" profess 39 wellcome. [applause] >> hello. you are a nice looking group. thanks for coming. did i hear some 1 degree? [laughter] what i would like to do is read it to you for about 70 minutes from the first part of the book and the back of the book then we will talk.

okay? i might have been titled this book construction of white americans from antiquity to the present because its six floors the concept that lies within the history of events. i have chosen this strategy because race is an idea and not a fact and a question of the conceptual rather than the factual morale. american history offers a large bounty of commentary on what it means to be in nonwhite in moving equally between alternations the meaning of racist color, from callers to negro to african-american and two black to african-american always associating the idea of blackness with slavery

but little attention has been paid to history's equally confused and the old slave trade from eastern europe. i use a white racist in the plural because for most of the past century when rates came down to matters of law, educated americans firmly believed in the existence of more than one knit european race. it is possible and important to investigate the other side of history of without trivializing the history we already know so well. let me state categorically well this is not a history of white versus black i do not buy any means underestimate or ignore the overwhelming importance of black race in america. i of familiar with the truly gigantic literature that

explains the meaning and honest to god reality of the existence of race when it meets black. in comparison with this preoccupation the statutory and biological definitions of plate race remain notoriously vague. though the beings of what is not black. but this of vagueness does not indicate a lack of interest. but lack to the contrary vast historical literature match less known today explains the meaning importance and honest to god reality of the existence of white racist. it may seem odd to begin a book on americans and antiquity a point* long before europeans discovered the western hemisphere and thousands of years before the invention of concept of race but given the prevalence of the notion that it is permanent many

believe it is possible to trace something recognizable back more than 2,000 years and not the westerners have tried to rationalize antiquity making an ancient history and to white race and classics into a little white field complete with pictures of blond ancient greeks. turning into a anglo-saxon ancestors the blonde narrative miguel longer we taught in the schools but it lives on as a myth to be confronted in these pages. before launching their trip back to ancient times a lever it may be useful to make a comment of their role of science or the science of raised. i resist the temptation to place the word science even

theories and assertions even of those of the most ridiculous kind in quotation marks because the task of deciding what is sound science and what is cultural fantasy would become all consuming better to know the qualifications of yesterday's scientist and to brand of smear a science their thoughts that have not stood the test of time. i give scholars of repute pride and place the matter some of the thinking has fallen by the wayside. today we think it is a matter of biology but a second thought reminds us the meaning of race quickly spills out of physical categories. even so circumscribed that the meanings of white race to reach into concepts of the gender and class and images of personal beauty that sell them up here and analysis of race.

work plays a central part because the people who do the work burt likely to be heherently deserving of t still assumed wrongly that slavery anywhere in the world must rest on the foundation of difference racially. time and again the better class is have concluded that those people deserve their lot and must be something within them that puts them at the bottom. in modern times to recognize this kind of reasoning as it relates to black race but at other times the same logic was applied to people who were white especially when they were impoverished immigrants seeking work. the be called for a moment. i will be something to mop my brow because it is very hot here. thank you.

>> those at the very bottom were slaves. slavery is held to concept race in two ways the first american tradition equate sent the wait is with freedom while consigning blackness to slavery. the history of white people goes into forgiveness that of white slavery moves people around with mixed up human genes on a massive scale. the important demographic role of the variously trades is too often overlooked as a historical force and in the second place the term caucasian as the designation for white people originates in concepts the beauty from the white slave trade of eastern europe and whiteness it remains embedded in visions of beauty of popular culture and art history. today most americans

envision whiteness as racial the indivisible although ethnically divided. is the scheme anthropologist laid out in the mid 20th century. by this reckoning there only three it -- three real racist want lloyd and negro. but ethnicities. today however biologist and geneticist not to mention literary critics no longer believe in the physical existence. >> thank you. >> tell me if any of this remains on my forehead with little bits of white stuff that stick to you. it is not funny. [laughter] it is true. where was i? >> they continue to recognize the power of

racism the believe that exist better than others and it took two centuries to reach this conclusion after countless schemes have spread out countless different numbers of racist even of the white races in and classification produced frustration and even science day nine ase race as an objective truth in the u.s. census faces the economic meltdown. [laughter] and. >> we shall see. >> many americans cling to raise as the hon school claimed to superstitions a long as racial discrimination remains a fact of life and statistics can be arranged, the american beef and racism will endure but confronted with the actually existing american population, the distribution of wealth, power and beauty, the notion of american and whiteness will continue to revolve as it

has since the creation of the american republic. now i think i will read you the whole block. [laughter] chapter one. were there bite people in antiquity. although some out with things although categories could re-read back words. the people with light skin certainly existed well before our own time but did anyone think they were white or that their character related to their color? no. for either the idea of race nor the idea of white people had been invented. people's skin color did not care useful meeting. what mattered is where they lived we're the lands damp or dry where they virile nor prone to a tense where they

were years through and through hurt production of civilized society? >> rather than ask white people northern europeans were no by the tribal names. but it if one said to lure the city in? it sets us that down a slippery slope because any search for the ancestors of white americans lease back to nonliterate people that left no documents describing themselves that must be the shift of intellectuals history to keep in mind a long before science and dictated the terms of cuban difference as a race come along before racial scientists began to measure heads and concoct racial theory, that ancient greeks and romans have their own means of describing the

peoples of their world as they knew it more than two millennia ago. inevitably e the earliest accounts of our stories are told from on high by rulers dominant at a particular time. four power, this is the markers of history. furthermore any attempt to trace biological adjusted -- ancestry turns into legend because human beings have multiplied so rapidly by 1,000 more in 200 years and by more than 32,000 times in 300 years. evolutionary biologist recommend the six or 7 billion people now living share the same small number of ancestor's living two or 3,000 years ago. of these circumstances make nonsense of anybody's pretensions to find a pure of racial ancestry. nor the additions of the

cultural purity any less serious threat of the sophisticated persian societies deeply influenced the classic culture of great ancient greece which still some imagined a pure and unique source but that story is still to come. the obsession with purity a rose many centuries after the demise of the ancients. now i will be very fast. and here we are at chapter 28. the fourth enlargement of american whiteness. agitating and the media dominating of those movements that helped pahang jelled the idea of one white

to raise as opposed to several. most may have doubted it had much to do with them. they might have thought they were individuals who had succeeded by themselves and race had always meant black people who had not. in fact, by the 1960's the whole race and europe discourse had fallen completely out of fashion and the races of discourse is the part to read it very fast. books such as races of europe published 18 teenine and important for a quarter of a century and once essentials reading were down remainder if useless and if you were jewish calling tuesday race would send you straight into the

anti-semitic call on. reminders that jews and italians had been able said racist one generation earlier might have prompted a rhetorical that race was used much more loosely in the past. this is true. but every use of race has always been this whether applied to black-and-white yellow read or other no consensus has ever been formed on a number of human races are even on the number of white racists. criteria costly shift with two political need. it was clear however that in the olden-- , the 20th century. [laughter] jim crow kept the colored races apart from whites largely hidden behind segregation. shortly after the end of the second world war the end of

legalized segregation began to. black people as never before. , currently other changes were soon to deeply alter americans a sense of the very meaning of race. the openness of the mid 1960's when beyond the black white-collar line. the immigration and nationality of the act of 1965 was crafted to counter revered nordic minded statutes in terms of patience. also allowed for wider immigration from the western hemisphere and africa. therein lay the seeds of democratic revolution. new immigrants of the post 1965 mirage overwhelming week outside europe were up ending america's racial conventions asia discreetly

in number were judged to be smarter and richer than the native-born whites. latinos formed a 13% of the population by 2000 edging out african-americans as the most numerous minority. the u.s. census without scoring the nation's racial makeup began to notice latin americans in the 1940's. by a counting of people with surnames and lumping them together as hispanics. so an impossibly crude measurement and survived until 19707. by that point* the federal government needed precise racial statistics to enforce civil rights legislation and to this end the omb issued statistical policy directives number 15.

here was a change worth noting. in the racially charged decades of the area of -- of the 20th century governments of all levels have passed laws to separate americans by race. all the jim crow segregation was supposed to be separate but equal but in practice it worked to discriminate by excluding on whites from public institutions from libraries or schools or swimming pools the civil-rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 65 began to change all of that so that by the late 20th century the rationale for counting had more of into a means of keeping track. statistical policy directive number 15 is set the terms for racial and ethnic classification by directing federal agencies like the u.s. census to collect data

to black white american indian native and asian-pacific islander. hawaii and was added later after the concession to protest and one ethnic category hispanic latino which is not racial. it was good for civil rights but open the way to chaos. >> the classification portended enormous turmoil and now there was a non instead equate category dither not exist hispanic white people? yes. faced with a given racial choices on the census of 200042. to percent of latinos checked some other race rather than black or white although nearly 6% of

other americans went into a ratio will go. in addition the u.s. census of 2000 had to increase a deeper and more personal recognition of multiracial identities. for the first time respondents were allowed to describe themselves as belonging to one or more of the 15 racial identities. a so often in the past added confusion and a list of races including nationalities. this expansion been allowed for 126 s no racial groups or for the pure 63 races it did not take much of analytical ability to see any notion of race was so diluted as to lose much of the plunge and also buckle much further under the

weight two of interracial sex. nothing new here. americans disorderly sexual habits have overflowed racial lines. to find the higher rates of interracial marriage including the african americans now often married to have children outside the ethnic group. by 1990 american families are so heterogeneous one-third of blacks and 4/5 of asians and 1920 s of native american indians were closely related to someone of a different racial groups that was back in 1990. 12% of young people calling themselves multiracial it is expected by a 2050 10% of whites and blacks and more than the 2 percent of

latinos and native americans will be married to someone outside their racial group. by 2050 the whole thing they have collapsed. with so many non-white and white americans marrying willy-nilly barriers between the progeny of european immigrants have largely disappeared. three out of four quite marriages have already thrust the ethnic boundaries by 1980. one generation later a few white americans have for grandparents from the same country. william c. ripley predicted this outcome in 1908 fearing above all the inharmonious, that is his word, affixing a by italian men and irish women. [laughter] but now he would have been forced to reconsider his prediction that such a racial mix would make

americans ugly. with authorities and a lowering of racial boundaries starting in the 1940's when ethnic began to replace a race with the descendants of european immigrants the use of racial groups for white people has become more than a category too partly because white people are so mixed up. finally the percoset of new whiteness account for less than the present situation of the stigma of blackness wants one drop also seems less moral. soon to be rich are middle-class or powerful or smart. george bush did away with that. [laughter] sorry.

that is not in a book. too late. stuff it back and. s. citizens and scholars they said what needed to be known and monopolize the study by the people but with themselves being scrutinized in return. for whom formal education and ancestry and connections assured authority. half a century later the people of the civil-rights era turned of the looking glass around bringing white people scrutiny think of all comebacks and james baldwin. today saxon's are anglo-saxons or whites to monopolize are also to be found elsewhere after a string of nine white miss america jennifer lopez and beyonce knows celebrated as hollywood duties and the

williams sisters dominate the league's for its robert johnson the founder of bt they have made millions and oprah winfrey is rich and famous colin powell and condoleezza rice secretary of state and the attorney general and more to the point* of view 19 power and beauty barack obama is president of united states. first lady michelle obama who skin color alone would contempt year to ugliness of the 20th century figures as an icon of beauty and intelligence on a global stage none of these individuals is white blood being white these days is not what it used to me. [laughter] it is sensible to conclude that the american is

undergoing a forced enlargement of the race may seem overweening without legal recognition it is less important than and the past. the darker skin to are also rich say people from south asia or african-american or half hispanic background and if the light of scanned from anywhere who are beautiful are now well on the way to inclusion is this the end of race in america? is this the end of race in america? >> no. >> i think we need democracy. [laughter] let's take a vote did you think yes, put your hand up. [laughter] to? of three. >> if you think no. put your hand up.