{"id":38619,"date":"2014-11-29T01:34:16","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T01:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38619"},"modified":"2015-11-06T21:43:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T21:43:57","slug":"cola-seminar-probes-shifting-identity-of-whiteness-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38619","title":{"rendered":"COLA Seminar Probes Shifting Identity of \u2018Whiteness\u2019 in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLA Seminar Probes Shifting Identity of \u2018Whiteness\u2019 in America<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Virginia
\nCollege and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
\n2014-11-17<\/p>\n

Anne Bromley<\/strong><\/a>, Associate
\nUVA Today<\/em><\/p>\n

The category of \u201cwhite\u201d as the majority race against which other groups have been described in the United States might seem well-defined, but it has been anything but that throughout American history.<\/p>\n

In the past decade, scholars digging into primary sources have found that at certain times, some ethnic groups that one might think of as being \u201cwhite\u201d today \u2013 including Irish or Scotch-Irish<\/a>, Italian, Jewish and Polish \u2013 were not considered to be white like Anglo-Saxon<\/a> whites at various times and places. These attitudes led to economic and social conditions often enforced by law.<\/p>\n

In her first-year seminar, or COLA, \u201cWhiteness: A Racial Category,\u201d assistant professor of religious studies Jalane Schmidt<\/a> aims to show how whiteness, not just blackness, has been a shifting category and has served to exclude or include certain ethnic groups or races over time and in different parts of the country. Legal and social conditions defining who was considered black or white also demonstrate that being white has not been a hard-and-fast identity…<\/p>\n

…\u201cWhiteness is the elephant in the room that needs to be examined,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cWe\u2019re used to studying racism as the exclusion of \u2018others.\u2019 But we\u2019re not used to framing racism as, in part, an anxious effort (legal, social, cultural, etc.) to protect and prop up the perennially unstable racial category known as whiteness.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Instead of fighting injustices under which both groups suffered, the Irish chose to join the privileged category, and this happened with other ethnic groups, too, Schmidt said. Just as children who go to a different school when their families move have to learn what the social scene is like, new immigrants in America had to learn a new set of social codes eventually, she said, giving up Gaelic language<\/a> and ceasing to mix with black people.<\/p>\n

The class is also studying how the definition of \u201cwhite\u201d changed over time in Virginia<\/a>. Thomas Jefferson<\/a> defined \u201cthe American\u201d as \u201cAnglo Saxon\u201d and had a low opinion of the Scotch-Irish settlers of Appalachia<\/a>, whose proximity to Indians, he wrote, had allegedly rendered them \u201cwild,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

A recent guest speaker to the class, Cinder Stanton<\/a>, former head historian at Monticello<\/a>, talked about her research on slavery at Jefferson\u2019s plantation home and on the progeny of Jefferson and the slave Sally Hemings<\/a>, the topics of her book, \u201cThose Who Labor for My Happiness<\/a>.\u201d The descendants who defined themselves as black knew about and embraced their heritage. Those who passed<\/a> as white, however, such as Eston<\/a> and Julia Hemings, left behind their mixed ancestry and changed their name; their white descendants didn\u2019t know they were related to Jefferson and Hemings until they found out from Stanton during her fieldwork…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLA Seminar Probes Shifting Identity of \u2018Whiteness\u2019 in America University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences 2014-11-17 Anne Bromley, Associate UVA Today The category of \u201cwhite\u201d as the majority race against which other groups have been described in the United States might seem well-defined, but it has been anything but that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,820,20,693],"tags":[18570,19155,18571,21799,18569,18577,1225,4702],"class_list":["post-38619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-anne-bromley","tag-anne-e-bromley","tag-cinder-stanton","tag-jalane-d-schmidt","tag-jalane-schmidt","tag-lucia-cinder-stanton","tag-lucia-stanton","tag-university-of-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43798,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38619\/revisions\/43798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}