Finishing Working Toward Whiteness.

 I am finishing up Working Toward Whiteness. I have about 10 pages to go. It concludes discussing how workplace unions and The New Deal actually were practiced in such a way that European immigrants were incentivized to want to gain title or status of whiteness. It discusses neighborhood coveneants of the 1920s and churches and how they segregated or tried to keep segregated neighborhoods and how southern and eastern europeans were considered not white but were then moved into whiteness project. Still it discusses how during the New Deal how organizations practicing redlining would exclude african americans, and incentivize immigrants to become racist and adopt american style racism, but then also discussed how in some instances they would exclude Italians and Jews because the quote was that if you bring in newly arriving immigrants the racists thought this is one step toward black people moving in which they didn't want. So as Southern and Eastern Europeans were moving into whiteness they were considered as potentially forebearers of blackness multiracial suburbs or neighborhoods, so racists were against this. I guess in the 40s Scandinavians were considered part of "inharmonious racial and nationality groups" with Italians Jews and Polish people and were redlined sometimes. 

All in all it is an interesting read. I'm glad I read it. 

-update I finished the last 10 pages it finishes with a discussion of Frank Sinatra and sort of uses his play as an 'ethnic' figure used to try to create national or racial unity with his short film The House I Live In to combat youth racist violence. When Sinatra toured the country he was lambasted by other Italians who had left him behind and their remembrance non white status. Sinatra said that he remembered being called racial slurs in school and teamed with an independent leftist congressman Vito Marcantonio. Sinatra according to Roediger (the author of the book) is symbolic of an effort by some Italians to remember being considered non white or having that history present in their political attitudes. He gets his special edited to appeal more to white audiences and then gets left behind and crowded by other Italians who moved into whiteness and racism. He was chastised for working closely with communists on lots of projects among the right in America.