Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America

By Matthew Frye Jacobson

Book Overview

In the 1950s, America was seen as a vast melting pot in which whiteethnic affiliations were on the wane and a common American identitywas the norm. Yet by the 1970s, these white ethnics mobilised arounda new version of the epic tale of plucky immigrants making their way inthe New World through the sweat of their brow. Although this turn toethnicity was for many an individual search for familial andpsychological identity, Roots Too establishes a broader white socialand political consensus arising in response to the political language ofthe Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In the wake of the CivilRights movement, whites sought renewed status in the romance of OldWorld travails and New World fortunes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674018982
• ISBN13: 9780674018983
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.5" x 5.8"