| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness. Ed. by Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Eric Klinenberg, Irene J. Nexica, and Matt Wray. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. viii, 343 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-2730-9. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8223-2740-6.)

This collection of essays had its origins in an era of political outrage and sorrow for antiracists in California. In 1992 three police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted by an all-white jury. The next several years saw rising agitation against undocumented workers. In 1996 Proposition 209 ended affirmative action programs in all state agencies, including the University of California system. A reading group of University of California graduate students responded by exploring the rhetoric that had made 209 seem reasonable to a majority of voting citizens. They determined, as they explain, "that there was little space . . . for discussing the impact of white privileges" on the life of the polity; in the absence of a developed language for speaking of the power of whiteness, it was comparatively easy for conservatives to frame white Californians as the victims of discriminatory racial policies. And so was conceived a 1997 conference at Berkeley, "the first major academic forum" on whiteness and the venue for which most of the essays in this collection were written. . . .

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