Shelly Sallee. The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New
South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xi + 154 pp.
$49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8203-2448-7; $19.95 (paper), ISBN
978-0-8203-2570-5. Reviewed by James Ivy (Department of English,
Trinity University) Published on H-South (August, 2005) The
Souls of White Folk Peruse any bibliography or index from any
scholarly work dealing with issues of race from before the late
1980s and you will be unlikely to find any reference to
"whiteness." It certainly is not the case that white people have
been underrepresented in the literature; rather, in discussions
of race, "white" was often normative and anyone else was racial.
Now, however, whiteness studies abound in literary criticism,
sociology, anthropology, film and art studies, and history, and
this is by no means an exhaustive list. Do your own quick title
search. Articles, books, and reviews work "whiteness" into
wordplay and puns. My favorite thus far is "The Unbearable
Whiteness of Being," and it t