African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ida B. Wells have regarded “whiteness” as a problem for a long time. However, it is only fairly recently that white historians have taken seriously the importance of de-naturalizing “whiteness,” and critically examining its privileges. “Defining Whiteness: Race, Class, and Gender Perspectives in North American History,” was sponsored by the University of Toronto and York History Departments, the Centre for the Study of the United States, and the Centre for Ethnic and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto, with the cooperation of International Labor and Working-Class History and the Canadian Committee on Labour History and its journal Labour/Le Travail. Conference organizers invited several leading American scholars of “whiteness” to Toronto, where they, along with a number of Canadian scholars, presented papers on the ways that whiteness has been constructed in North America. The conference contained much to interest labor historians and those interested in class/race/gender analytical frameworks.