Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-twqc4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-09T16:50:07.672Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Whitening” and the Changing American Racial Hierarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2012

Herbert J. Gans
Herbert J. Gans*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Columbia University
*
*Herbert J. Gans, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, Knox Hall, 606 W. 122nd Street, MC9649, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As a result of the increasing number of biracials and multiracials, and White reconstructions of previously non-White skin colors, the Whitening of selected immigrants and especially their children appears to be proceeding. Although there are many studies on the racial identity of biracials, too little research exists on how Whites identify them and light-skinned monoracials, which of these they Whiten, how, and why. Enough is known to suggest that if current trends continue, our picture of the country's racial hierarchy has to be revised. While Whites will likely remain on top and poor African Americans and other Blacks at the bottom, what happens in the middle cannot now even be guessed at with any hope of accuracy. For that reason alone, empirical and policy-oriented research on White identification patterns is badly needed.

Keywords

Racial HierarchyRacial IntermarriageDeracializationBiracialsMultiracialsWhitening
Type
State of the Discipline
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 2012 , pp. 267 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Alba, Richard (2009). Blurring the Color Line:The New Chance for a More Integrated America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alba, Richard, Jimenez, Tomas R., and Marrow, Helen B. (2011). Mexican-Americans as a Paradigm for Contemporary Intragroup Heterogeneity. Unpublished working paper.Google Scholar
Barot, Rohit and Bird, John (2001). Racialization: The Genealogy and Critique of a Concept. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4): 601–618.Google Scholar
Batson, Christie D., Quian, Zhenchao, and Lichter, Daniel T. (2006). Interracial and Intraracial Patterns of Mate Selection Among America's Diverse Black Populations. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(3): 658–672.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. (Ed.) (2011a). Race, Inequality and Culture, vol. 2. Daedalus, 140(2): 11–36.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. (2011b). Somewhere Between Jim Crow and Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in America Today. Daedalus, 140(2): 11–36.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2002). We Are All Americans: The Latin Americanization of Racial Stratification in the USA. Race and Society, 5: 3–16.Google Scholar
Brodkin, Karen (1998). How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Cathy J. (2011). Millenials and the Myth of the Post-Racial Society: Black Youth, Intra-generational Divisions, and the Continuing Racial Divide in American Politics, Daedalus 140(2): 197–205.Google Scholar
Davila, Arlene M. (2008). Latino Spin: Public Image and the Whitewashing of Race. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Feagin, Joe R. and Sikes, Melvin P (1994). Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Fields, Barbara J. (1990). Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America. New Left Review, 181: 95–118.Google Scholar
Franklin, Raymond S. (1991). Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. (1999). The Possibility of a New Racial Hierarchy in the Twenty-First Century United States. In Lamont, Michele (Ed.), The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries, pp. 371–390. Chicago, IL and New York: University of Chicago Press and Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. (2005). Race as Class. Contexts, 4(4): 17–21.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. (2012). Superfluous Workers: The Labor Market's Invisible Discards. Challenge, 55(4): 94–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, Melissa R. (2010). Do You See What I Am: How Observers' Backgrounds Affect their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73(1): 58–78.Google Scholar
Harris, David R. (2002). In the Eyes of the Beholder: Observed Race and Observer Characteristics. PSC Research Report No. 02-522. Ann Arbor, MI: Population Studies Center, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer L., Weaver, Vesla M., and Burch, Traci (2011). Destabilizing the Racial Order, Daedalus, 140(2): 151–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ignatiev, Noel (1995). How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Khanna, Nikki (2011). Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Kim, Nadia (2007). Critical Thoughts on Asian American Assimilation in the Whitening Literature. Social Forces, 86(2): 53–66.Google Scholar
Lacy, Karyn R. (2007). Blue Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Jennifer and Bean, Frank D. (2004). America's Changing Color Line: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, and Multiracial Identification. Annual Review of Sociology, 30: 221–242.Google Scholar
Lee, Jennifer and Bean, Frank D. (2010). The Diversity Paradox: Immigration and the Color Line in Twenty-First Century America. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Lee, Sara S. (2005). Class Matters: Racial and Ethnic Identities of Working- and Middle-Class Second-Generation Korean-Americans in New York City. In Kasinitz, Philip, Mollenkopf, John H., and Waters, Mary C. (Eds.), Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation, pp. 313–338. New York: Russell SageGoogle Scholar
Loewen, James W. (1971). The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Marrow, Helen B. (2011). New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
McDermott, Monica and Samson, Frank L. (2005). White Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 31: 245–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar (1963). Challenge to Affluence. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Eileen (2008). The Racial Middle: Latinos and Asian Americans Living Beyond the Racial Divide. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Park, Robert (1928). Human Migration and the Marginal Man. American Journal of Sociology, 33(6): 881–893.Google Scholar
Prewitt, Kenneth (Forthcoming). What's Your Race: The Census and the Flawed Effort to Classify Americans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Richeson, Jennifer A. and Craig, Maureen A. (2011). Intra-minority Intergroup Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Daedalus, 140(2): 166–175.Google Scholar
Roediger, David (1991). The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Roth, Wendy D. (2012). Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanjek, Roger (1994). Intermarriage and the Future of the Races. In Gregory, Steven and Sanjek, Roger (Eds.), Race, pp. 103–130. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Twine, France Windance (1996). Brown-Skinned White Girls: Class, Culture, and the Construction of White Identities in Suburban Communities. Gender, Place, and Culture, 3(2): 205–224.Google Scholar
Twine, France Windance and Gallagher, Charles (2008). The Future of Whiteness: A Map of the Third Wave. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1): 4–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Wendy (2012). The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates Vary by Race and Gender. Washington DC: Pew Research Center. ⟨http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/⟩ (accessed September 13, 2012).Google Scholar
Warren, Jonathan W. and Twine, France Windance (1997). White Americans: The New Minority? Non-Blacks and the Ever-Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness. Journal of Black Studies, 28(2): 200–218.Google Scholar
Yancey, George (2003). Who Is White? Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar