NATO Bomb Kills Two Peacekeepers

[Michael Hoover]

> Kirsten Neilsen:
> Charles Brown wrote:
> > Starting about 500 years ago, the overgeneralized distinction between 
> > whites and coloreds originated with Europeans, who referred to 
> > themselves as whites. Before the 1960's in the U.S. the overwhelming 
> > majority of whites of all classes used this generalization, quite 
> > freely and casually considering themselves superior to coloreds. The 
> > cohesiveness of the group "whites" came from this internal social , 
> > political and economic construction of self or identity.
> 
> gee, tell that to the irish, who, along side the chinese, built the
> railroads in the u.s. or the poles, the italians, european jews ... all
> of these groups, and more, were racialied, considered of inferior races,
> etc. 
> [don't even try assuming that i'm arguing that these groups were more
> oppressed, or even as oppressed than "non-whitees." i'm simply
> challanging the notion that whites formed a cohesive group in the u.s.]

19th century nativist anti-immigrant movement in US did racialize
Europeans, particularly those from eastern and southern Europe who
were of darker skin than earlier immigrants from northern Europe...
as John Higham writes in _Stangers in the Land: Patterns of American
Nativism, 1860-1925_ (1988), they were attacked as 'races of...the
very lowest degradation' (p. 95)...

but despite the often virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and eventual
restrictions imposed on immigration, the political rights of white
ethnics (term encompassing wide range of groups who for much of US
history did not identify as single 'white' group) were never in 
serious peril...they were eligible, for example, to become naturalized 
citizens after 5 yrs and some states granted them voting rights as 
non-citizens (with regard to politics, ethnic/national identity was
important to 'political machines' that appealed to voters and offered
patronage along such lines)...

very different experience/history for Chinese who were prohibited from
entering US by racist congressional legislation in 1882 (such laws
were kept on books until 1943) and were denied opportunity to become 
eligible for naturalization until 1952...   Michael Hoover