The History of White People is a 2010 book by Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter is an American historian notable for her works on southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University, and served as president of the Organization of American Historians. She also served as president of the Southern Historical...

. In it, Painter explores the idea of whiteness

Whiteness studies

Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status...

 throughout history, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing through the beginning of racial pseudo-science in early modern Europe to 19th- through 21st-century America. Among the topics Painter discusses are the way in which formerly "non-white" groups were designated as "white" in order to work against black people and other "ethnic minorities," the racialization of intelligence and of political beliefs, and the relationship between race and conceptions of female beauty. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

is one figure whose belief in some of these racial theories is discussed.

External links

• Excerpt from chapter Greeks and Scythians