BREHON LAW PROJECT
Symposium

Mansion House, Kings Inns
& Glendalough

JANUARY 11TH - 12TH - 13TH 2002


FRIDAY 11th JANUARY
Oak Room
Mansion House

6.00 PM Registration

7.00 PM VINCENT SALAFIA
Brehon Law Project
An introduction to the Brehon Law Project,
and the Brehon Law Review.

THE HON. MRS. JUSTICE SUSAN DENHAM
Supreme Court of Ireland
Topic T.B.A.

8.00 PM Presentation of Brehon Law Review

THE RT. HON. MR. MICHAEL MULCAHY,
LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN

Brehon Law Review is a new electronic law journal,
published by Brehon Law Project and hosted by the
University College Cork web site. The first volume of
the Review will be presented to Professor W.N.
Osborough of University College Dublin, in recognition
of his enormous contributions to the field of Irish
legal history, as Legal History/Jurisprudence Chair of
the Faculty of Law, University College Dublin;
President of The Irish Legal History Society, as well
as author and editor of many fine books and articles.

Professor W.N. OSBOROUGH
Faculty of Law, University College Dublin
Return to the challenge: energising enthusiasm for
the study of early Irish law.
_______________________________________________________

SATURDAY 12th JANUARY
Dining Hall
King's Inns

10.00 AM FERGUS KELLY
School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies
Hidden crimes: early Irish law on circumstantial
evidence.
10.30 AM DAIBHM S CRSINMN
Department of History, University College Galway
To catch a thief: the detection of crime in early
Ireland.

11.00 AM Discussion

11.10 AM NEIL MCLEOD
School of Law, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
Compensation for bloodshed?

11.40 AM JACK ANDERSON
Faculty of Law, University of Limerick
Boxing and Brehon Law.

12.10 PM Discussion

12.20 PM Lunch

1.30 PM DONNCHADH S CORRAIN
Department of History, University College Cork
Brehon law and canon law: Synodus II Patricii.

2.00 PM JONATHAN M WOODING
Department of Theology and Religious Studies,
University of Wales
Taxonomies of exile and peregrinatio in early Irish
law.

2.30 PM Discussion

2.40 PM MATTHEW STOUT
Department of History, St. Patricks College,
Drumcondra
Settlement in early Irish law.

3.10 PM RAIMUND KARL
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
'My home is my castle': tracing the history of legal
concepts in the archaeological record.

3.40 PM Discussion

3.50 PM Break

4.00 PM BART JASKI
School of Celtic Studies, University of Utrecht,
Holland
The Irish versus the English regulation of succession
in the sixteenth century.

4.30 PM Discussion

4.35 PM SHAUNNAGH DORSETT
Faculty of Law, Griffith University, Queensland,
Australia
Since time immemorial: native title, common law and
the Case of Tanistry.

5.05 PM JIM ZION
Chief Solicitor, Navajo Nation
How the infidels can save the law.

5.35 PM Discussion
5.45 PM Close
_______

8.00 PM Symposium Dinner, (location TBA)

SEAN MURPHY
Centre for Irish Genealogical and Historical Studies,
Wicklow
Tanistry and succession to Gaelic chiefship today.

___________________

SUNDAY 13th JANUARY
Glendalough, County Wicklow

10.30 AM Bus departs from Mansion House

12.00 AM ECUMENICAL SERVICE

1.00 PM Lunch in Glendalough Hotel

2.30 PM TOUR OF GLENDALOUGH AND HIKE TO REEFERT
CHURCH, UPPER LAKE

5.00 PM Bus departs from Glendalough Hotel

______________________________________________________
#80.00 advance/#100.00 door. Students #20.00 / #30.00
Contact: Vincent Salafia (087) 996-3098 -
uatuathal[at]yahoo.com
Mail payment to: Vincent Salafia, 3 Haddington
Terrace, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin.



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Welcome, to The Roma Education Network, or Romanet for short, and thank you
for choosing what we hope will be a rewarding and educational experience for
yourself and for your Students.

http://www.romaedu.org.uk

As you have probably gathered from the graphics, images and title, this
website is dedicated to exploring a number of key issues linked to
theexperience of Roma/Romany/Romani/Gypsy identity through the medium of
musicand the arts in general.

The Website has been designed specifically for secondary school teachers and
does include a range of interesting activities, ideas and resources which
may be freely used in a range of teaching and learning contexts. The wheel
with 16 spokes is the symbol of the Roma nation itself and will act as the
navigational index for your journey through all of the different layers
contained within this website.

The site will also act as a gateway into other Roma websites, as well as
providing a number of tailor made lesson plans which cross and traverse
curriculum areas of interest and may be used for RE, PSHE, History, and for
the new Citizenship statutory requirements for September 2002. The lesson
plans may also be used for Drama, English, General Studies, Assembly themes
as well as Music in the countering of prejudice and racism.
The site evolved from a musical project funded by The Princes' Trust,
culminating in the completion of a CD album entitled Asylum, which is an
attempt to open up channels of communication in the dialogue against Racism
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The Romanet site is completely new and original, and we hope you will find
its focus and contents useful as a way of fulfilling a number of different
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http://www.romaedu.org.uk

From: "Richard Jensen"
Subject: whites
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 02:30:01 -0500

from Richard Jensen, U of Illinois rjensen[at]uic.edu

When were Mexicans treated as "white" is the excellent topic
of Mr Buitron's research. That's a good question (and a
live one in politics in Central America.) But he asks when
Italians and Jews were considered white. The answer is
"always." This ethnics as non-white theory is an
unsubstandiated myth based on surmise and no documentation.

Here's my evidence in a nutshell:

1. Before the 1990s no historian ever noticed that the Irish,
Jews etc were ever considered as non-white. The theory is a
recent invention (with virtually no footnoting.) The "best"
source is Matthew Frye Jacobson's Whiteness of a Different
Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998),
which has a lot of theory and no concrete evidence that
anyone considered these groups non-white at any time.

a) You get arguments that the Irish wanted to be more American
so they deliberately became anti-Black. They did this
supposedly in Boston where they engaged in pitched battles
over fugitive slaves, fighting the anti-slavery Yankees they
were trying to emulate!
2. Southern whites were very keen on racial distinctions. Did
they ever considered Irish, Jews or Italians to be
non-white? No. Before and during the Civil War they
selected highly visible Irishmen (like General Patrick
Cleburne and editor John Mitchel) and Jews (Judah Benjamin)
to senior roles as general, governor, senator, even
Secretary of State of the Confederacy. These people were
occasional targets of anti-Irish and anti-Jewish sentiment
(which, obviously, they overcame), but were never accused of
being non-white.
3. Nativists before the Civil War were very keen on stopping
easy access to citizenship & voting rights, especially on
the part of the Irish. Federal law (1790) said only "whites"
could become citizens. Yet the nativists never argued in
press or in court or speeches that this provision applied to
the Irish.
4. In the last couple years we have electronic search access to
hundreds of thousands of pages of popular magazines and
newspapers (including NY Times, The Nation, Harpers Monthly
etc etc), especially via www.newspaperarchive.com and the
Making of America project at Cornell and Michigan
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/
In one minute you can find over 30,000+ text references to
"Irish" in the Cornell website, 40,000+ to "Italians" and
50,000+ to "Jews.". I found no references calling them
non-white. (I found one reference to Irish as Simian, dated
1890). The fact is that the press did NOT identify these
ethnics as non-white. Try Boolean searches and see what you
find.
5. Looking again at the purported evidence you come up with
minstrel ("blackface") shows and editorial cartoons, and
unfounded assumptions about the linkages that people "must
have made." (Irish and Jewish entertainers were famous for
blackface--Al Jolson in the 1920s for example, or Amos and
Andy in 1930s.) There is zero support in the actual popular
or scholarly or legal literature of the 19th century for
assuming anyone therefore said Irish = nonwhite.
6. Re the cartoons: the London Press had many violently
anti-Irish cartoons and they depicted the Irish in very
negative images (as Lewis Curtis has shown). In the US some
very talented German Protestant cartoonists (Thomas Nast and
also Keppler and Opper) AFTER 1860 picked up the stereotypes
and softened them a bit. There is no doubt these
German-Americans were very anti-Irish (and anti-Catholic and
anti-Democratic party, all of which these merged together in
1860s and 1870s.) When they *really* wanted to be nasty they
depicted Tammany Hall (Irish pols) as a ferocious tiger
killing democracy. The Germans did not like the Irish but
they never called them non-white.
a) A note on animal metaphors in cartoons, as introduced
especially by Nast (who invented the GOP elephant and
Democratic donkey and Tammany tiger. I have not seen him
treat Irish as animals, except the tiger. Nor did he draw
them as subhuman. The idea of evolution had not caught on
yet. Metaphors of political opponents as sub-human apes,
monkeys, cavemen, Neanderthals and cannibals can be found in
20c cartoons, but not 19th. (we still have metaphors like
that in 21st century commentary--calling an opponent
"Neanderthal" for example.)
7. As for the Jews, it's a bit more interesting issue. No one
ever considered them non-white or sub-human; the
anti-Semitic stereotypes and graphics do not do this.
(Though you do see it in Nazi cartoons of 1930s.) However
the question is whether they were Caucasians. The race
thinking of the 19th century was not based on biology, it
was based on language. Philology was the secret key to
unlock the history of race, by looking at the resemblances
among languages. Thus the French and Italians were similar
("Latins" and thus the concept "Latin America" was invented
in 1860s.) Philologists deduced there was an original Aryan
language from which all European languages stemmed (and also
Sanskrit in India). They figured it probably originated in
the Caucasian mountain region and called it "Caucasian."
However, Hebrew (and Arabic) were quite different languages
-- called Semitic. (Hungarian and Finnish were also
different, as were Asian American Indian languages.) So the
Jews were white but not Caucasian, in terms of the race
science of the day.
----------------------------

Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 12:54:11 -0600
From: bartlesm


Ellen,
I've actually had better luck on the Ref. side than the Ren.
I think we can get most of the Ref. info off of a sourcebook
cite at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook02.html

Great site for Luther, Calvin, English and Scottish ref.,
etc.

For Ren Humanism, I have found the following decent site:

http://history.hanover.edu/early/italren.html

I'll keep looking.
Buon Natale!
Stephen

The current Irish Studies Review (Dec 2001) has a paper by Ralph Pordzik
from
Munich which links in with the postcolonial paradigm in deep-rooted
scholarly
mode. I would be interested in picking up any transatlantic echoes, should
list
members go into its implications.

The Home Rule movement generated a significant amount of utopian and
dystopian
literature, to which my father Joe Johnston contributed peripherally, via
newspaper articles written during the 'Great War' entitled 'If the French
Ruled
Ireland', in which he adumbrated in effect a French republican model, which
he
admired. He subsequently became a promoter of the case for the Irish
independence movement in the French media, from 1917 in support of the
Convention, up to the Treaty and later, when he attempted to explain the
Civil
war, with some critical analysis of de Valera's vision.

To return to Pordzik: he mentions, among many others in the Home Rule
context,
Donovan's 'Irish Rebellion of 1898' and O'Flannagan's 'Ireland a Nation!
Diary
of an Irish Cabinet Minister' as representative of the 1890s period.
McManus's
'The Professor in Erin' (1918) is based on Douglas Hyde's vision. The 1920s
generated dystopias such as O'Duffy's 'King Goshawk and the Birds'. De
Valera's
1930s generated O'Neill's 'Land Under England', a sinister dystopia which
was a
veiled critique of 'self-sufficiency'. Joseph O'Neill at the time was
Secretary
of the Department of Education and unable to voice criticism except
obliquely.
He goes on to analyse contemporary offerings, lile Moore's 'Catholics', of
which I recollect seeing a TV version: a curious inversion of the Pope John
XXIII reform consequences. Frank Herbert in 1982 goes into sci-fi mode with
'The White Plague' which foreshadows current genetic engineering issues.

I have alas encountered few of these at first hand, and feel I should do so
in
the context of trying to understand my father's vision. I would welcome
guidance from any in the Irish Studies community who may take up any of the
lines of enquiry suggested in this paper, which I feel may prove to be
seminal.

RoyJ


Dr Roy H W Johnston & Janice G M Williams
Techne Associates (Consultants on Techno-economic, Socio-technical,
Socio-linguistic, Political and Environmental Issues)
P O Box 1881, Rathmines, Dublin 6, Ireland
Phone +353-1-497-5027; website http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne
see also http://www.tyndallpublications.com
Please note that any attached file should be
SAVEd AS 'rich text format' .RTF for it to be legible.

Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 16:23:32 -0600 (CST)
From: TS Kim
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

In the context of this thread, how is "whiteness" being defined? Are we
talking about race as skin color or race as a cultural marker?

In regards to Professor Jensen's assertion that "before the 1990s no
historian ever noticed that the Irish, Jews, etc. were ever considered
non-white," I would like to offer the following brief passages from
W.E.B. DuBois's autobiography, DUSK OF DAWN (originally published in
1940). Granted, DuBois was not a historian but I do think his observations
lend credence to the "non-white" argument.

"Later, in the high school, there came some rather puzzling distinctions
which I can see now were social and racial; but the racial angle was more
clearly defined against the Irish than against me. It was a matter of
income and ancestry more than color."

"I had little contact with crime and degradation. The slums in the town
were bad and repelled me, partly because they were inhabited by the
foreign-born."

"Later Morgan [a black classmate of DuBois's at Harvard] became the center
of revolt within the college. By unwritten rule, all of the honorary
offices of the class went to Bostonians of Back Bay. No Westerner,
Southerner, Jew, nor Irishman, much less a Negro, had thought of aspiring
to the honor of being class day official."


Tommy S Kim
University of Minnesota
Department of English

Delivered-To: H-ETHNIC[at]H-NET.MSU.EDU
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 15:35:17 -0500
From: Lauren Ann Kattner
Subject: H-ETHNIC: whites

I have read the recent discussion of "whites" as a perceived ethnic v.
racial identity question. I found interesting and contradictory
perceptions held by select slave owners and by census takers. Depositions
and visual biases expressed in the Lower South, including Texas, show
something different than what we may see in the public sector for the upper
South and New England. I found contrasting evidence in Louisiana court
records abt 1805 to abt 1830 and in Louisiana and Texas census records from
1850 to 1870. Therein we see that some dark-skinned German immigrants and
their children were labeled as mulattoes though church and family records
document that they were not. In particular, I found German-American women
and children to have such labels. In one instance, a German-American woman
was sold and resold several times as a slave as if she were of African
descent when again, she had no such descent.

Lauren Ann Kattner, Ph.D.
U. S. & World History Teacher
Clintonville Academy
Columbus, Ohio
LaKatt[at]compuserve.com

Original Message Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 11:08:42 PST
From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Happy Christmas

From: Patrick Maume
I'm just off to Cork for Christmas. Happy Christmas and New Year to
all on the Ir-D list.
Patrick

From: steve.mccabe[at]uce.ac.uk

Dr. Steve McCabe
Faculty of Built Environment
University of Central England in Birmingham
England

Researching the Contribution of the Irish to Construction in England

The role of Irish labour in the building of the infrastructure and urban
aspects of England is well known. The term ?navvy? has, arguably, become a
term synonymous with the hard-living Irishmen who were recruited from
Ireland to build the railway and canal network. The
post-second world war construction boom meant that a ready supply of young
men willing to work for long hours in frequently hostile conditions meant
that there was a ready market for those whose prospects in Ireland were
bleak. More recently, that on any construction site there will be a large
element of Irish labour (first, second and third generation), is something
that most would find unsurprising. However, in sociological studies have
largely been uninterested in the reasons that this occurred and the patterns
that may have emerged of, for example, those of particular backgrounds being
attracted to certain trades.

It may have come to your attention that Ultan Cowley has recently published
a book which provides exactly the sort of information that I am seeking to
elicit. For those interested in such matters, this text provides a wonderful
appreciation of those souls whose contribution has, hitherto, been ignored
or, perhaps, considered inconsequential. The potential study that is being
described here would seek to develop the work carried out by Ultan and to
provide a level of academic analysis that allows outsiders (particularly
from academia) to understand what it was like to be an Irish immigrant ?on
the buildings?. I have been in contact with Ultan to seek to explore ways
that I could initiate such a study. Most especially, by using ethnographic
approach, I would like to prepare a socio-historical study of the Irish in
construction in England since the second world war. Consistent to the
principles of using such an approach and, similarly to Ultan?s work, I wish
to provide a medium through which the voices of the forgotten can ?emerge
from the data?.

Therefore, should any who are part of the Ir-D network be able to provide
any useful advice, guidance or links then I would be extremely grateful. The
easiest method of contacting me would be either via the Ir-D network or to
email me directly at the following address: steve.mccabe[at]uce.ac.uk

Dr. Steve McCabe
Faculty of Built Environment
University of Central England in Birmingham
England

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

Irish-Diaspora list TEST 3.

Please ignore...

P.O'S.

Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"


From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Amongst my many character flaws is an inability to recognise a hopeless
cause - an inability to recognise a dead horse, to modify the English
proverb...

There is something seriously wrong with my computer, and so far I have not
been able to get to the bottom of the problems. Just what you do not need
in the run-up to the holiday season.

Plus, of course, the University of Bradford Computer Centre decided that
this was an appropriate time to modify and interrupt its services...

I have now moved the Irish-Diaspora list work to another computer. And
after a bit of fiddling have got everything working again.

Sorry about that...

P.O'S.

Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: cartoons re Irish politics on ebay

from ebay.com excellent images

Item #: 1051437428
Title: IRISH OCONNELL & PEEL 1843 PRINT REBECCA LAW
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1051437428

Item #: 1498826926
Title: IRISH J REDMOND & HOME RULE PIGS 1913 PRINT
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1498826926

Item #: 1498826836
Title: IRISH PIG FED UP 1919 L GEORGE IRELAND GOVT
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1498826836

Item #: 1498826766
Title: IRISH PIG POLICE 1881 PRINT GUNS IRELAND
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1498826766

Item #: 1498826758
Title: IRISH ROBT PEEL ST PATRICK 1849 IRELAND PRINT
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1498826758

Item #: 1498826746
Title: IRISH SINN FEIN DEVALERA 1927 PRINT PIGS IRE
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1498826746

Item #: 1051436738
Title: IRISH TEMPEST GLADSTONE 1870 PRINT IRELAND
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1051436738

Item #: 1051436624
Title: PARNELL SINN FEIN IRISH 1891 PRINT PIGS IRELA
URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1051436624

Forwarded on behalf of...

Community Care Development Coordinator
Federation of Irish Societies
London

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Ireland, has issued the
following notice in connection with a consultation on 'The Task Force
regarding Emigrants'.

It is important that organisations and individuals in Britain respond to the
consultation.

Please draw the attention of appropriate organisations/individuals among
your contacts to this call for submissions.

(Please note that the deadline on the notice is different from that given in
the Irish Post.)

Sean Hutton
20 December 2001



Task Force on Policy regarding Emigrants

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Brian Cowen, T.D, has established the
Task Force on Policy regarding Emigrants with a mandate to develop a
coherent long-term policy approach to meeting the needs of Irish emigrants.
The terms of reference cover all aspects of emigration including
pre-departure services for emigrants, services overseas, and services for
returning emigrants.

The Task Force is undertaking a public consultation process and, in that
context, wishes to invite submissions from interested organisations or
individuals on any aspect of its terms of reference.

Written submissions should be addressed to:

The Executive Secretary
Task Force on Policy regarding Emigrants
Department of Foreign Affairs
69-71 St. Stephen's Green
Dublin 2

Submissions should be forwarded as quickly as possible and should arrive not
later than 15th February 2002.

Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 09:23:25 -0800
From: Melvin Holli
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: Ethnic Americans as Whites



Richard Buitron:

For some urban comparisons you might look at Irving Cutler's THE
JEWS OF CHICAGO: FROM SHTETL TO SUBURB (Urbana, 1996); Humbert Nelli
on the Italians of Chicago and ETHNIC CHICAGO:MULTICULTURAL PORTRAIT
eds. M. Holli & P. Jones (Eerdmans 1996).

Good luck on your project.

Melvin Holli

From: Lindwyer5[at]aol.com
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 12:42:48 EST
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

I am an Asianist, not a student of ethnicity in the US, except where that
overlaps with my own rather narrow research interests, so please pardon the
personal focus of this response.

This is not published. But I remember that my father spoke of being equated
with Africans as a member of an Italian immigrant family in the New England
mill town where he was raised. The term "nigger" was sometimes used by
whites to refer to those of Southern European heritage as well during his
childhood.

"White" was one of those funny labels, therefore. It was most important to
my dad to be accepted as fully "American." "Italians" were sometimes
considered aliens whose cultural practices, reliance on Italian, and
Catholicism (with loyalty to the Pope, we were told) made Italian-Americans
unable to be integrated in a society founded in democracy. (Now a
nonsensical statement, given the numbers of Catholics and Italian Americans
who serve in public office). This was the topic of conversation at home
more
than being sometimes considered of a type with African Americans.

It may have been the cross-ethnic bonding that occurred among the WWII and
Korean War servicemen, and perhaps the upward mobility permitted by the GI
Bill, that lessened the intensity of ethnic prejudice in small town New
England.

As evident in Asian American history, where race has been redefined over
time
to suit economic and political need, whiteness is perhaps always a moving
target. In the early twentieth century, Indians from South Asia were
defined legally as white. They were redefined in law as non-white only
after
their numbers in the United States became problematic to the interests of
those Americans of European descent among whom these new immigrants lived
and
worked, for example. Indians had originally been sought out by U.S.
employers seeking inexpensive labor. There are many more such examples
throughout history.

Linda Dwyer

From: Richardjjensen[at]aol.com
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 09:53:56 EST
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

Tommy Kim asks a good question about "whiteness."

"Race" has changed meanings. In the 19th century--and down to about WW2,
the
primary meaning was in terms of language or culture group. Both ordinary
and
scholarly language would refer to the"Irish race" or "German race" or
(Theodore Roosevelt) "The American race." Thus the DuBois quote from 1940
that refers to the Irish as a racial group. A synonym would be "people" (as
in Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples. The term
"Anglo-Saxon" after about 1900 was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons outside the
South, and much more likely to be used by Irish or French critics of
British-American life. "WASP" seems to be a post WW2 invention.

After about WW2 this older usage for "race" died away, replaced by
"ethnicity".
Hence we have H-ETHNIC not H-RACE

However, I don't think "white" and "black" have changed meanings greatly
over
the last 200 years. (There's a Supreme Court decision that says "white" in
the law refers to popular usage rather than biology or anthropology.)

Richard Jensen
rjensen[at]uic.edu

From: Margo J Anderson
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:48:15 -0600 (CST)




Since this discussion has broadened considerably, I might suggest Joel
Perlmann's superb essay, "'Race or People': Federal Race Classifications
for Europeans in America, 1898-1913, " available at Working Paper no. 320,
THE JEROME LEVY ECONOMICS INSTITUTE.

abstract: http://www.levy.org/docs/wrkpap/abstract/320ab.html
full text: http://www.levy.org/docs/wrkpap/papers/320.html.

I will let the essay speak for itself.

Margo Anderson
History
UW-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 12:09:53 -0700
From: Anthony Brundage

Also interesting on Anglo-Southern cultural connections is an essay by
Gregory A. VanHoosier-Carey titled "Byrhtnoth in Dixie:The Emergence of
Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Postbellum South." It is a chapter in
_Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity_, ed. Allen J.
Frantzen and John D. Niles (Univ. Press of Florida, 1997).

Anthony Brundage
History Department
Cal Poly University
Pomona, CA 91788
http://www.class.csupomona.edu/his/tonyb.htm

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 19:36:11 -0600
From: David Beriss
Subject: Re: H-ETHNIC: whites

This is a fascinating discussion. It might be of interest to note that
a number of anthropologists have also asserted that some groups (Jews,
Italians and Irish immigrants, for instance) have gone from being
considered non-white to white in the US.

Well before the 1990s interest in whiteness, Franz Boas, writing early
in the 20th century, felt it necessary to argue against popular and
scientific belief in racial differences among populations of European
descent. His focus was clearly on notions of biological, not
linguistic, race. I refer readers to articles such as "Race and
Progress" (1931), "Modern Populations of America" (1915), "Changes in
Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants" (1910-1913, originally written
as part of a report to the US Immigration Commission) and "New Evidence
in Regard to the Instability of Human Types" (1916). All of these can
be found in Boas' "Race, Language and Culture" (1940, University of
Chicago Press). Boas also provides references to people who disagree
with him, lest anyone think he was merely fantasizing about beliefs in
European racial differences.

Of course, Boas actually wrote a great deal more on race, focusing on
African-American populations, Native Americans and people of European
descent. His work for the US Immigration Commission, asserting that
there were not racial differences among European descendants in America
was rejected at the time by the Commission, Congress and other social
scientists precisely because of those assertions. Lee Baker has
examined this particular history in his book "From Savage to Negro:
Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954." (1998, University
of California Press). Baker's book actually goes back quite a bit
further in the examination of the development of race concepts in
America, is well-documented and a good read. While Boas' work does not
show when Southern and Eastern European immigrants became white, it does
demonstrate that they were not considered to be of the same race as
previous European immigrants earlier in the 20th century. So there is
some concrete evidence for Professor Jensen. (Baker, by the way, also
looks into the history of the race concept in the US and demonstrates,
as many others have, that biological thinking along these lines emerged
in the second half of the 19th century. Race thinking in the US was not
mostly linguistic by that time, it was biological. This emphasis on
biology grew significantly in the early 20th century.)

Virginia Dominguez has written a great deal about the transformation of
racial categories in the US, focusing especially on Louisiana and, more
recently, on Hawaii. Her book "White By Definition: Social
Classification in Creole Louisiana" (1994, Rutgers University Press)
uses census data, legal research, genealogical data, interviews and
other methods to get at the development of both the categories and of
who fit in them. While not focusing specifically on 20th century
European immigrants, the book does provide a great deal of insight into
the kinds of processes involved. The collection "Creole New Orleans:
Race and Americanization," (1992, LSU Press), edited by Arnold Hirsch
and Joseph Logsdon, provides similar insights. Dominguez has written a
thought-provoking article on the imposition of US racial categories in
Hawaii (which categories made sense, who got to be in them, how that
changed over time). See "Exporting U.S. concepts of race: are there
limits to the U.S. model?" in Social Research, 1998, 65(2). All of
these go to the point that the categories used to define the various
ways of being non-white have changed a great deal over the past 200
years and the definition of who belongs in the white category has
changed as well.

Karen Brodkin's book, "How Jews became white folks" (1998, Rutgers
University Press) grew out of an article of the same name and is
directly about the issues initially raised in this thread. I have only
read the article, however, and cannot address the quality of the data in
the longer version. The article is convincing, I think.

Finally, the original query, if I remember correctly, was about Mexican
immigrants. If the author is interested in how these processes of
racialization continue to work in the US, Aihwa Ong's article "Cultural
Citizenship as subject-making: immigrants negotiate racial and cultural
boundaries in the United States," which appeared in Current Anthropology
in 1996 (37:737-751) may be of interest.

David Beriss

--
Department of Anthropology
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA 70148

tel: (504) 280-6306
fax: (504) 280-1123
email: dberiss[at]uno.edu
http://www.uno.edu/~dberiss/

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:07:31 -0500
From: Ward Harkavy
Subject: RE: H-ETHNIC: whites

OED says the origin of Wasp was actually in '62. Here's the cite:

A member of the American white Protestant middle or upper class descended
from early European settlers in the U.S. Freq. derog. Also attrib. or as
adj.
1962 E. B. Palmore in Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. LXVII. 442/2 For the sake of
brevity we will use the nickname 'Wasp' for this group, from the initial
letters
of 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestants'. 1963 Times 2 May 15/5 There is such a
thing
as a 'Human Engineering Laboratory'; whether a man is a Wasp (white
Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) can decide his career. 1963 New Statesman 10 May 716/2 This
year's
executive model will be over six feet tall, clean-shaven, lean, and with
large
fleshy ears.+ He should try to be or pretend to be a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) and ought to have gone to an Ivy League college, preferably
Princeton. 1964 E. D. Baltzell Protestant Establishment (1965) i. 9, I
should
first like to show how the aristocratic process still worked quite well in
the
case of the family of Abraham Lincoln, and especially how the WASP
establishment
authoritatively retained the leadership of American society in the
generation of
Robert Todd Lincoln. 1968 Times Lit. Suppl. 4 Apr. 329/1 The Jew can choose
to
leave his ghetto by 'passing' or by breaking the more and more flimsy
barriers
put up by Wasp (and non-Wasp) anti-Semitism, but the Negro cannot. 1971 M.
McCarthy Birds of Amer. 71 He was the only older WASP Peter knew. 1977 Time
19
Dec. 66/2 United States Secretary of State Felix John Vandenberg-slim,
silver-haired, tallish, Wasp-speaks with 'the lingering trace of a British
accent, which had been acquired at Eton and Oxford'. 1978 Jrnl. R. Soc.
Arts
CXXVI. 276/1 Can what one calls a WASP properly and without any
discrimination
select an Asian? 1979 R. Jaffe Class Reunion (1980) i. i. 37 Daphne's
father
was the senior partner of the leading prestigious Wasp law firm in New York.

Regards,
Ward Harkavy