David Roediger Working Towards Whiteness Summary

David R. Roediger’s, Working Towards Whiteness is a book examining how the “new immigrants” to America became white during what he called the “long early twentieth century”. The book is divided into three parts, part one talking about what was classed as whiteness and where American’s placed new immigrants on a social level. Part two talks about the “in between” stage, what it was like to live in between the racial binaries which were around in the early twentieth century. Lastly part three talks about the new immigrants wanting and winning their white identities.
Roediger’s, starts of by talking about the wave of immigrants entering the United States from Southern Eastern Europe between the years of 1890 and 1924. The immigrants from this