Chapter 5 of From Ellis Island to JFK really opened my eyes to the fact that race is a “changeable perception” mainly because it is what Foner calls, “ a social and cultural construction.”
Foner does a great job of outlining how drastically the conception of race has changed. She uses the Jews and Italians as a perfect example by describing how they were once thought to be of an inferior race, less efficient and “moral cripples.” Yet, the fact that today both Italians and Jews are, what Foner explains as, “fully and unquestionably white” is unbelievable if you think about it. This chapter truly emphasizes how what was once accepted as commonplace would be “considered unthinkable today.”
I also think it is so interesting that as ideas of race and ethnicity have changed, blacks have more or less been stuck in their own static and segregated group. Because so much of the prejudice and bias against blacks has stemmed from their former slave status, one would think that in due time, their status would have evolved by now like so many of the other ethnic groups. At the same time however, they have remained very separate from the white community. Something that I also found interesting was the idea that some blacks can be seen as “whiter.” Foner writes that “as individuals improve their income, education, lifestyle and financial status, they seem progressively whiter. What matters, above all, is having education, wealth, manners, and well-placed associates, not race.” Is she arguing, then, that what has prevented blacks from progressing from their own inferior category is just wealth and status? Then what about the whites who are uneducated and poor – are they so to speak “blacker?”
At the end of the chapter, Foner discusses how racism has become increasingly less acceptable in public. She discusses how the politically correct concerned culture and other factors have shaped political and public rhetoric regarding race today. After reading this section I wondered how and if this discretion and etiquette about race has affected the “whitening” of certain ethnicities. Perhaps because racist language and overt racism has been curbed, the public has become more open to accepting certain ethnicities into the “white group.”
After reading this chapter, I was left wondering how the world will perceive race in the next couple of decades. Will Asians finally be considered fully “white?” Will the black-white dichotomy still exist? Or will the word “race” mean absolutely nothing?
