REINVENTING "RACE"

The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940. By Matthew Pratt Guterl. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. ix + 234 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes and index. $39.95.

The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. Edited by Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Eric Klinenberg, Irene J. Nexica, & Matt Wray. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2001. viii + 344 pp. Bibliography and index. $59.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Nancy Gentile Ford
Bloomsburg University

The recent emergence of critical whiteness studies brings with it a proliferation of writings from various disciplines analyzing "race" in the United States. In monographs, essays, and H-net debates, academics attempt to explain the social construction of "race" and its ramifications on both the past and present. A growing number of scholars demonstrate that prior to the development of a "biracial" construction, the term "race" went beyond skin color to include such things as national origin, language, religion, and class. By the late nineteenth century, scientists had identified over fifty different "races" (the majority from what scholars today call ethnic groups). Exactly when and why "race" became cast in terms of "white" and "black" and the impact of such reinvention is the subject of many new scholarly studies.