aug 26 group activities

• Karen Brodkin  describes her “surprise” that immigrant workers, such as Jews, were not always considered “white,” since she grew up in a community that did not mark her as “ethnic”. What do you make of her generational discussion of the ways immigrants became “white”? What does this essay say about whiteness? About the racialization of immigration? Why are contemporary immigrants seen as “dark,” when many, in fact, are “white”?
• How do Wright’s  piece illustrate what Omi and Winant are writing about? For example, how does Wright describe his early process of “racialization” (Omi and Winant 18–19) as a boy living in Arkansas? What does Brodkin say about the linkage of whiteness and middle class- ness? How does Wright describe his racial consciousness as a “sociohistorical concept” (Omi and Winant 15)?