"White has stopped meaning Caucasian, imprecise as this term has always been, and has started to mean “those racial groups that have made it.”"
I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white." Even Germans were once considered not-white: as recently as WW1, much of the anti-German propaganda up-played the idea that they were somehow more Asiatic than good Anglo-Saxons and Frenchmen.
Before a strong sense of minority ethnicities was forged in the mid-20th century, whiteness was the word applied to the demographic categories that had made it; if they hadn't, they simply wouldn't be considered white. Now we feel it's pretty ridiculous to say that Asians are white, and for good reason. But it's silly for Volokh to pretend that whiteness-as-pale-skin is anything but a pretty recent innovation; in a way, pulling Asians (at least, the successful subgroups, the Chinese and Japanese, and to a lesser extent Koreans) into whiteness is the conservative, traditional approach, and his idea that there's a real "whiteness" that people either do or don't fall into is the kind of ethnic studies navel gazing he'd usually vociferously denounce.
> I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white."
Why would that shock him? That's perfectly in line with his claim.
Indeed, this is referenced explicitly in the piece that he quotes:
As with the experience of the American Irish, Italians, Jews, and many other groups, the Asian experience shows that racial divisions and hostilities can subside over time.
But regarding that piece, I found the following passage problematic:
And it’s evidence of the essential fairness of the American capitalist system, which has rewarded this hard work even though many people, including many government officials, tried to penalize it.
I submit that the phenomenon in question describes the essential unfairness of the American system, capitalist or otherwise. If people can be "rewarded" for their "hard work" in spite of their race only when that racial identity is subsumed by whiteness, it only reinforces the existing power structure. Or, the author might argue, it was this success and recognition that led to the change in racial perception. Either way, it's not what I call fair.
Probably not at all - his article is a play on the title of a fairly recent book, How the Irish became white. As an Irish person (from Ireland) I was amused when I arrived in the US 20 years ago that people were still asking questions like whether I had grown up with electricity.
He seems to think that white has always meant Caucasian; that's incompatible with the idea that Irishmen, Italians, and Germans were once not-white. Although he nods to the fact that Caucasian has always had rather fluid boundaries, it never has excluded any of those groups: historically it was a pseudo-scientific concept invented by a German philosopher, and included everyone from Norsemen to Indians to Libyans.
Whiteness in American racial discourse has never mapped to this idea, as it has at various points excluded most European groups. And many groups that would have been considered Caucasian in the 19th century Americans would never naturally consider white, even today--Arabs and Indians, for instance.
> I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white."
The title of his article is "How the Asians became white" which as Eugene pointed out in the comments, is an allusion to "How the Irish Became White," by Noel Ignatiev.
So it wouldn't shock him at all, that's his point.
> I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white."
The title of his piece is almost certainly a reference to "How the Irish Became White" [1], so presumably not so much. I'm with you on the broader point, though, that the hand-wringing about who is and isn't white is silly, and that if it serves as shorthand for racially privileged people, that's pretty much fine.
He thinks it's something new that white means "an ethnic group that has made it," and in fact goes on to bemoan how "this new division is as likely as the old to create nasty, corrosive, sometimes fatal battles over which racial groups get the spoils."
I'm annoyed that he seemingly doesn't get that for centuries white always meant "an ethnic group that has made it." Despite his allusion to the title of a work showing exactly that, he obviously didn't pick up on the point.
I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white." Even Germans were once considered not-white: as recently as WW1, much of the anti-German propaganda up-played the idea that they were somehow more Asiatic than good Anglo-Saxons and Frenchmen.
Before a strong sense of minority ethnicities was forged in the mid-20th century, whiteness was the word applied to the demographic categories that had made it; if they hadn't, they simply wouldn't be considered white. Now we feel it's pretty ridiculous to say that Asians are white, and for good reason. But it's silly for Volokh to pretend that whiteness-as-pale-skin is anything but a pretty recent innovation; in a way, pulling Asians (at least, the successful subgroups, the Chinese and Japanese, and to a lesser extent Koreans) into whiteness is the conservative, traditional approach, and his idea that there's a real "whiteness" that people either do or don't fall into is the kind of ethnic studies navel gazing he'd usually vociferously denounce.