Racial history has always been the thorn in America's side, with a swath of injustices--slavery, lynching, segregation, and many other ills--perpetrated against black people. This very history is complicated by, and also dependent on, what constitutes a white person in this country. Many of the European immigrant groups now considered white also had to struggle with their own racial identities.

In A Great Conspiracy against Our Race, Peter Vellon explores how Italian immigrants, a once undesirable and -swarthy- race, assimilated into dominant white culture through the...

Racial history has always been the thorn in America's side, with a swath of injustices--slavery, lynching, segregation, and many other ills--perpetrated against black people. This very history is complicated by, and also dependent on, what constitutes a white person in this country. Many of the European immigrant groups now considered white also had to struggle with their own racial identities.

In A Great Conspiracy against Our Race, Peter Vellon explores how Italian immigrants, a once undesirable and -swarthy- race, assimilated into dominant white culture through the...