The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity
Eric L. Goldstein, . . Princeton Univ., $29.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-691-12105-5
Relationships between American Jews and African-Americans have a long, complicated history. Jews engaged in African-American civil rights work as early as the 1910s. Yet Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin felt a strong need to repudiate the indisputable influence of African-American music on his work. In this original, boldly conceptualized and well-researched inquiry into the complicated intersections of "race" and Jewish-American identity, Emory University's Goldstein explores how Jewish immigrants gradually began to understand themselves as "white" (i.e., fully European) when most of America did not. Goldstein writes that he has framed this book not "as a study of how Jews
Reviewed on: 01/09/2006
Genre: Nonfiction
Other - 978-0-691-20728-5
Paperback - 320 pages - 978-0-691-13631-8