History of White People

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Exploring the origins of racial concepts, the narrative delves into Greek and Roman antiquity, where geography, not race, defined identity. The eighteenth century saw the rise of whiteness, particularly through the German notion of Caucasian beauty, which shaped northern European superiority. Intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson propagated these ideas in America, creating an exclusionary definition of "true Americans." The book examines how power, science, and politics intertwined to reinforce these racial hierarchies, revealing that the idea of a singular white race is a recent construct.