The social construct theory of race is alive and well at Brown University. The college recently hosted a Princeton professor who’s head-scratcher of a question was ‘What is whiteness?’ Not surprisingly, it is something that evolves over time. According to the speaker, Nell Painter, ‘whiteness’ accounts for everything expansion of voting rights in the Jacksonian era and the assimilation of Irish immigrants to the development of suburbs in post-war America—it explains so much without enhancing our understanding of any of it. Click here for more commentary and here for the original story in the Brown Daily Herald.
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