Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies

Radical History Review
Issue 87, Fall 2003
E-ISSN: 1534-1453 Print ISSN: 0163-6545

Gaines, Kevin Kelly.
Race at the End of the "American Century"
Radical History Review - Issue 87, Fall 2003, pp. 207-225

Duke University Press

Kevin Kelly Gaines - Race at the End of the "American Century" - Radical History Review 87 Radical History Review 87 (2003) 207-225 Race at the End of the "American Century" Kevin Gaines Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. New York: Henry Holt, 2000. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. In its September 2001 issue, National Geographic surveyed the profound changes wrought by post-1965 immigration to the United States. For his article, journalist Joel Swerdlow visited J. E. B. Stuart High School in suburban Virginia, whose multihued student population would have been unthinkable for the confederate general for whom the school is named. Swerdlow informs us that however much they lament their vanishing national or cultural heritage, all the students of various Middle Eastern, Asian, Spanish-speaking, European, and African backgrounds really want to do is "chill," flirt, and go cruising to the mall like other American teenagers. The students' ordinary Americanness finds expression in racial terms as well. "I don't want to be white," opines a Polish-born student, as some fellow students nod in assent. A young woman from Russia adds, "I don't consider myself white... . Whites act white and do white...