Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White

Working Toward Whiteness explores how various European immigrant groups in the United States—such as Italian, Jewish, and Polish Americans—gradually came to be regarded as “white” during the early twentieth century. Historian David R. Roediger argues that these communities were not always fully accepted as white by the dominant Anglo-American society and often occupied an ambiguous racial status upon their arrival.

Drawing on labor history, immigration policy, and social change, Roediger traces how factors such as the labor movement, New Deal reforms, suburban homeownership, and restrictive immigration laws reshaped racial categories in the United States. Over time, many European immigrants gained social and economic advantages associated with whiteness and became integrated into mainstream American identity.

The book examines the complex process by which racial identities were constructed and redefined in modern America, revealing how shifting definitions of race influenced class relations, housing patterns, and social attitudes. By charting the transformation of immigrant communities into “white ethnics,” Roediger offers a historical perspective on the relationship between immigration, race, and privilege in twentieth-century America.