White Americans (1676- ) are those people in the US who seem to be pure European by blood. Whether Jews, Muslims or Whites from Latin America (White Hispanics) count as White is a matter of debate. This blog counts Jews but not the others, roughly what the US Census Bureau calls non-Hispanic Whites.
Enlargements: Who counts as a Regular White Person has changed over time:
- First Enlargement (late 1600s): Wasps. The English people in North America begin to see themselves as “Whites”, as a race, and not just, say, as English or Christian. This becomes clear-cut in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676). Laws are passed that favour pure-blooded Europeans, regardless of wealth, over everyone else.
- Second Enlargement (late 1800s): Nordics. After the Civil War (1861-1865) German and Irish Catholics become unquestionably White. In fact anyone who was Nordic, who was northern European by race, counts.
- Third Enlargement (late 1900s): Europeans. After the Second World War (1939-1945), Whiteness is extended to Jews, Italians and anyone from eastern or southern Europe. They go from being “alien races” (1910s) to “ethnics” (1920s) to just White (1980s). This was helped along by the GI Bill and cheap FHA loans. Now being from anywhere in Europe is good enough.
Each wave of immigrants threatened to Destroy America As We Know It. In the 1850s, it was the Irish. In the 1920s it was Jews and Italians. Now in the 2010s it is Mexicans. But the children of each wave grow up speaking Perfect English and seem less “alien” and threatening, while politicians need their vote to put together a democratic majority.
Likely there will be a Fourth Enlargement that will bring in White Hispanics. Some, though, argue that they are not being assimilated like older waves, that they and Asians will become at best “honorary Whites”. Time will tell.
The White Club: To become a White in good standing (or an honorary White if you do not look European enough):
- Assimilate – take on Anglo American ways.
- Do not rock the boat. In particular, do not make common cause with Blacks or, since 2001, Muslims. They are the Despised Other against which Whites see themselves.
Remember: “White is right!”
If you do #1 well enough, #2 will come automatically: Islamophobia and anti-Black racism are built in to Anglo American culture (see below).
Cultural tip: Be careful: some parts of Black culture are “cool”, having the White Club Seal of Approval, while other parts are “ghetto”. Know the difference!
The three pillars: White wealth and identity are built on three pillars:
- genocide, which led to free land and anti-Native racism.
- slavery, which led to free labour and anti-Black racism.
- imperialism, which led to world power and anti-Brown racism.
Moral blindness: Their wealth and power does not prove to them that they are well-armed robbers. Instead it shows them that they are a better race of people, indeed the moral centre of history, that others stand in need of their White paternalism. Those who do not share their moral blindness are seen as hateful or ungrateful.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- also in this series
- Anglo American – the English-speaking White people of North America, both US and Canadian.
- Bacon’s Rebellion
- The White Club
- The Third Enlargement
- The three pillars
- White paternalism
- Jews
- White Hispanics
- Islamophobia
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Have you read Andrea Smith’s “Three Pillars of White Supremacy”? She does a really good job of working through genocide, slavery, and imperialism.
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@ nicole Hylton-Patterson
That is where I got the three pillars from.
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my wife is talking about them cutting off obamacare and also how bout the obamaphones
and rightnow tell me trump doesnt hire illegal mexicans et al in his hotels and casinos
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Correction: illegal foreign nationals working illegaly with valid drivers licenses in some cases untaxed in the us
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” In particular, do not make common cause with Blacks”
This is a generally good post, but this statement does not go far enough. In each and every “enlargement” these new whites chose not just to “not make common cause with Blacks” but to trounce over blacks. Irish were by far the worst among immigrant groups with their myriad bloody riots against blacks in various cities throughout the 19th century, particularly Cincinnati and New York.
“Likely there will be a Fourth Enlargement that will bring in White Hispanics”
That ship has sailed.
The US Census Bureau already counts most Hispanics as white and accordingly considers the total white population to be increasing. Most Hispanics consider themselves whites, even if others don’t, and whites increasingly consider many assimilated Hispanics to be white. Especially the bleached blond ones.
If the Census takes its new approach (which blurs race and nationality, when they are often extricable), it will be interesting to see how many Hispanics will choose “white” over “Hispanic”. My guess is most.
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Where do White Hispanics find a place in the US census when asking for one’s race?
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@resw
“That ship has sailed. “
Too true. The Cuban exiles were the first on board.
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@Resw
Couldn’t agree more. Most hispanics do see themselves as white. While I met some that have a problem with it the common excuse is they choose what closely relates to them in the census.
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What are aliens supposed to tick off being from outer space? They’re here folks!
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Hispanic is not a race. Hispanic/Latino category is a culture of people that speak a Latin based language such as Spanish and Portuguese( in the case of Brazilians) and reside in countries such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republican, Mexico, Central American countries like Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama etc and South American countries like Colombia, Peru, Brazil etc. In Latin American countries, people tend to go more by nationality not race. Unfortunately, here in America, everything is racialized to the point that people don’t realize that Hispanic isn’t a race but a culture.
There are Black Hispanics out there as well as White Hispanics. But I do believe that the majority of Hispanics are mestizo(mixture of Spanish and Indigenous roots), biracial(mixture of Spanish and African roots) and triracial(mixture of Spanish, African and Indigenous roots). Here is a link from Pew Research about this topic:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/10/mestizo-and-mulatto-mixed-race-identities-unique-to-hispanics/
There will be a possibility that Hispanics can be included in the White racial category in the future as their numbers increase. After all, the Irish, Italians and other ”ethnic Whites” were included in the White racial category after their numbers increased and integrated into dominant society. Who knows if this will happen with Hispanics? Only time will tell.
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@sharinalr
“While I met some that have a problem with it the common excuse is they choose what closely relates to them in the census”
I’ve heard that too. But if the proposed census questionnaire goes through, we’ll see if they really mean it.
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Well, one must admit, they’ve done a good job of doing what they do. They’ve accomplished a global empire, having drawn the map of almost every country in existence all of which operate within the Euro-American global economic framework. People of all colors are born daily into their languages, religions, and political structures. From the standpoint of being a group strategy to achieve power, whiteness has been successful and successful strategies are not discarded.
Most people don’t seem to have a problem with the global empire just their relative position within its hierarchy. Therefore a way to keep it going while minimizing social strife is to allow for a certain amount of social mobility on a personal or even group level. So Obama became president and formerly marginalized groups can become honorary or even bonafide whites.
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@Origin
“Most people don’t seem to have a problem with the global empire just their relative position within its hierarchy.”
A good point that highlights the essence of the subject.
While Whiteness has enjoyed a spectacular period of success, it carries the seeds of its own destruction:
A. The economic framework is literally killing the planet that we all depend upon for survival.
B. The political structures have been captured by the few and threaten the lives and livelihoods of the many.
C. Their religions are a source of constant strife and threaten to smother indigenous faiths globally.
D. Their languages erode many native languages that offer alternative views of life and how humans view the universe.
E. The way Whiteness defines itself in terms of “purity” could erase White identity in the future.
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White if they want to live longer.
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@Afrofem
It’s unsustainability, especially as demonstrated by points A and E, really does portend its unravelling. Points B through D guarantee that we’ll all be in big trouble as it does since we’ve all been forced to depend on it on some level and we’ll have nothing to replace it.
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*Its
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it wasn’t just africa?
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“There’s also global warming, which, with its attendant droughts and water access problems”
I know this is science fiction; something way off into the future, but if a government had the power to create droughts, do you think they would use it for geopolitical purposes, to , say, soften up a target nation before sending in proxy armies, even though such actions would exacerbate global warming? Would it be worth it to do so? This is just hypothesis, of course. Not suggesting that a government as environment conscious and life respecting as ours would do such a thing.
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@nomad
“Not suggesting that a government as environment conscious and life respecting as ours would do such a thing.”
ROTFL!
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@Origin
“…we’ll all be in big trouble as it does since we’ve all been forced to depend on it on some level and we’ll have nothing to replace it.”
True, the short term doesn’t look good. However, humans have two things going for them in the medium and long terms:
1. Supreme adaptability to changed conditions. As a species, we have adapted to environments as different as polar snow fields, nearly barren deserts and tropical rainforests.
2. Accelerated rates of change. Changes in technology, scientific understanding and social mores are accelerating at ever increasing pace. Changes that took centuries in the past now occur in decades.
These might not save humanity from a major collapse or an extinction event, but then again….
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Remember, history is cyclical, what goes around comes around.
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Hmmmm….
Why isn’t this post called “US Whites”?
“America, American – use “US” if that is what is meant. For example, use US Whites”
just wondering.
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Also important. At what point does a family line transition from white to black? Feel it in the one drop. When does the one drop become a fraction of a drop thus making the family line white. J Edgar Hoover, for example is rumored to have black blood in his ancestry. At what point did it become filtered out so that he and his descendants could be classified white?
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“At what point does a family line transition from white to black?”
Chuckle. Quite possible. But I meant
“At what point does a family line transition from black to white?”
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They’ll have to change what white means in order to accept the majority of so-called “Hispanics” as white. Not that it hasn’t happened before. I suspect that Hispanics with larger amounts of melanin will never be counted as white, while hispanics who are not necessarily “white” in color but have lower degrees of melanin and straighter hair will be classified as “white” on not only a case by case basis, and maybe a situational basis. At a given time, my conclusion 40-50% of Hispanics here, “assimilated” or not will be classified as white. This is happening already to some degree.
Asians have been around in some numbers for a LONG time in the US, and there are court cases around their racial classification saying that they are not white no matter what their skin tone is, and I suspect that will continue…although one of the decisions did say something to the effect of “white is whatever whites say is white”. I wouldn’t hedge my bets on the majority of South and East Asians ever being classified as white though. They’re the convenient established immigrant buffer class anyway between whites and those of African or American lineage born in the Western Hemisphere.
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@nomad
“Why isn’t this post called “US Whites”?
+1000
Excellent question.
” At what point did it become filtered out so that he and his descendants could be classified white?”
It’s only about appearances (and often beauty or talent). It has nothing to do with blood, despite the name “one drop rule”. Look at how many white people claim Blake Griffin and Mariah Carey.
@MrTekKnowledge
“I suspect that Hispanics with larger amounts of melanin will never be counted as white”
I agree, in real life, but on paper, white supremacists happy counting Hispanics among their ranks when they want to bolster their numbers to hide the fact that the white non-Hispanic population has fallen to 63% of the population (according to the Census).
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@ nomad
Because no one is going to search on that.
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@resw
“It’s only about appearances (and often beauty or talent). It has nothing to do with blood, despite the name “one drop rule”.”
That would indeed be funny if it did. People could have their blood drawn to see what percentage of it is black. Black people who are tired of discrimination and were able to afford the procedure could have complete blood transfusions. Take all of the black blood out and replace it with white blood. They would then be white. Of course that wouldn’t stop cops from gunning them down in the street. Because, and I’m just guessing here, they’d probably still be kind of dark. But at least they’d be white inside. Then again, who knows? Maybe the white blood would bleach their skin.
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@abagond
““Why isn’t this post called “US Whites”?”
Because no one is going to search on that.”
Good point. That’s why it’s not feasible to use it. And why your intention to use it puzzled me.
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“Because no one is going to search on that.”
Right, we should not expect abagond to abide by his own word, i.e., “use ‘US’ if that is what is meant. For example, use US Whites”.
By his own admission, it’s all about how many readers he can bait.
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@resw
You’re absolutely right about “counting” people in the census. They play games already with the numbers of the white population, with both Latinos and North Africans. Technically Yemenis, Moroccans, Palestinians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Libyans, etc are classified as “white” according to the US Census definition of who is classified as white, when we all know that 80-90% of these people are people of color, and a large number of them would have been sitting in the back of the bus in the ’50s. Perhaps I should have clarified that in the “real world”, the population we mentioned is never going to function or be classified as white by other white people, regardless of what the census numbers indicate.
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@ nomad
I am not happy with “White Americans” or “US Whites”. They both have issues.
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@Herneith
“Remember, history is cyclical, what goes around comes around.”
The frustrating part about history is how slowly things unfold. None of us alive today will have the satisfaction of standing by, arms folded saying to groups of people who mistreat us: “hmmm, finally got what you deserved!”
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@MrTekKnowledge
“Technically Yemenis, Moroccans, Palestinians, Egyptians, Sudanese, Libyans, etc are classified as “white” according to the US Census definition of who is classified as white, when we all know that 80-90% of these people are people of color, and a large number of them would have been sitting in the back of the bus in the ’50s.“
Yes. Black folk get lots of negative attitude from those groups to boot. The same could be said of African immigrants from south of the Sahara.
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Isn’t it strange that every nation has an appellation that is a modification of that nation’s name. Except us. Except US, ironically. Folks in Germany are German, for example. France French. Russia Russian. Even the USSR were Soviets. China Chinese. Cuba Cubans. Canada Canadians. Ad infinitum. But the United States. Would that make us United Statesians? Or maybe we would shorten it as with the Soviets. Statesians. Unitians? That has a nice pretentious sound to it. We could call ourselves U-ni-tians. Short sound “I”.
“Americans” is so presumptuous. As if we claim two continents as our own. We are American. But so are Canadians, Mexicans, Chileans, Brazilians, etc. We cannot identify ourselves more precisely than that? Citizen of the United States doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.
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The school district in Southern California count Armenians, Persians and Arabs as white.
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The frustrating part about history is how slowly things unfold. None of us alive today will have the satisfaction of standing by, arms folded saying to groups of people who mistreat us: “hmmm, finally got what you deserved!”
It’s not a matter of getting one’s comeuppance. The fear for white is that the oppressed will become the oppressor. Hence, they cling to white supremacy at even costs to themselves. Dear, you’ll be in heaven looking down!
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@Herneith
Yes.
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@ Sharina
If you are comfortable with sharing this, I was wondering how your in-laws see themselves? Do they identify only as Hispanic/Mexican?
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Did others bribe their way into whiteness? It is ridiculous but at the same time very human.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itNF2hinnJ8)
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portrait of a racist
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pushing a white woman?
this guy is lucky he didn’t get arrested
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nomad,
I believe there are people who regularly use “Usians” to refer to people in the USA. It might not be the perfect solution but I do think it would be worth to move on from “Americans”, unless one wants to refer to all people in North, Central, South (and any other) America as continents.
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@ Mira
How do you pronounce US-ians (and/or Usians)?
I’ve noticed for a long time that you use US-ians, but I just kind of blip over it when reading because I don’t know how to say it!
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Solitaire,
I am not entirely sure how it’s supposed to be pronounced, to be honest. I am not a native English speaker. I wonder if anyone has a better idea on how to pronounce it correctly. This (“USians”) is something I’ve seen many people use though I doubt it will catch on.
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@ Mira
I’ve seen it elsewhere on the internet, too. I just wondered if you had a way of pronouncing it, even if it was idiosyncratic to yourself. I’ve never heard anyone use it in speech, and I wonder if it only exists in written form online.
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I pronounce it the way I’d pronounce it in Serbo-Croatian. Unfortunately, I don’t know how how to explain it because I don’t know how to write pronunciation. My language is written phonetically so we don’t have to use these things.
Maybe it’s something close to “u-sians”. How would you pronounce that?
(I am not explaining this well. 😦 I apologize). Again, this is just my way to see it. I guess one way to go is to see “US” in the beggining as just regular letters and not an acronym. So it’s just “Usians”. How one might pronounce that?
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An Scríbhneoir Gael-Mheiriceánach,
“You-ess-ee-ins”
This might be it. Or something like “you-see-ans” ?
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@Solitaire
I did not see your question above until now. I will respond to it very soon. For some reason I really thought I had responded to it before.
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@ Mira
“I pronounce it the way I’d pronounce it in Serbo-Croatian.”
Oh, duh. Yeah, that could make a big difference. Like in German when they say USA, it sounds very different because they don’t have the “y” sound as part of the “u” and it’s not a long “a” like in English. Sounds more like “ew es ah.”
I guess if USian has any hope of catching on in the US, it will need to have a pronounciation that sounds good to the majority of speakers of U.S. English.
“My language is written phonetically so we don’t have to use these things.
I blame the French. English was pronounced phonetically (or at least so scholars believe) until the Norman invasion.
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https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/US-ian
“/ˌjuːˈɛsi.ən/”
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@ Sharina
Not a problem, whenever you get to it.
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@ v8driver
Well, d@mn. Why didn’t I just think to look it up? Thanks!
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@ Sharina
“For some reason I really thought I had responded to it before.”
I think we touched on it briefly a long time ago, but not enough for me to have a sense of how, for example, they might answer the census question above.
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Mira
‘I believe there are people who regularly use “Usians” to refer to people in the USA.’
interesting. i’m going to pronounce it U-ass-ians.
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@ Solitaire,
My in-laws see themselves as Mexican. They are very proud in that regard and I see them as not struggling to identify as such on the census.
As a side note to something I have observed, black Hispanics will more likely identify as Hispanic as well, but mainly due to a hint of colorism (this may be the wrong term to apply). I notice that a great deal of black Hispanics take offense to being called black. I understand why as they were raised as Hispanics and the idea of being a race (Black, White, Asian) isn’t a primary thought. They may indeed see being Hispanic (Mexican etc.) as a race. However in the scope of things it is not and they take offense to being called black as if it is a bad thing or wrong.
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@ Sharina
Thank you, that’s very interesting. The whole Hispanic/Latin@ designation in the U.S. causes a lot of confusion. It isn’t a race but until very recently even the government forms have listed it as a racial category.
Also, I’m not 100 percent sure of this, but from reading older works of the 1800s and early 1900s, it seems like back then, white Anglo Americans used the term Hispanic to refer only to white people of Spanish/Latin origin. People who were indigenous or mixed race would be called Indians or Mestizo (or worse) but not Hispanic/Latin. I don’t know exactly when this changed.
“I notice that a great deal of black Hispanics take offense to being called black.”
That’s unfortunate and sad. Do you see this more in certain generations? I’m wondering if maybe the kids and grandkids who are raised in the U.S. might be more likely to equally embrace their black heritage.
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@Solitaire
” Do you see this more in certain generations?”—At first thought I did not see it as a generational thing, but after giving this a bit more I do believe in may indeed be. This younger generation is more likely to sing the praise of kumbaya. Blacks raise their kids to see themselves as the same as everyone else. Nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that obvious black features and pride in them got ignored too. That coupled with whites praising the “mixed” race blacks has lead a lot of blacks to want to take pride in having that something else.
On the flip side, as more people seek the truth and embrace their culture, then the love of being black or whatever one is bound to increase.
Before closing I want to share a recent experience. Hispanics were trying to claim cultural appropriation against beyonce for her depiction of Oshun. Many Blacks educated the Hispanics on the origins of Oshun. However, one female noted that as much as Hispanics try to deny their black roots, it is always a pleasure awakening to the reality that they can’t escape them.
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This looks like it might be an interesting read:
Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs
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not sure why the prior link is not showing up
(https://www.amazon.com/Working-Toward-Whiteness-Americas-Immigrants/dp/0465070744/)
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