The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Why is it that we classify people by skin color? Is it "natural" to do so? Painter doesn't think so, and she can prove it. In her eye-opening The History of White People, Painter shows that the Greeks, Romans and people of the Middle Ages didn't often put people into what we would call "racial" boxes. They sometimes did it, but it wasn't their main mode of demographic categorization.
All that changed in the Enlightenment and Romantic eras (roughly the 18th and 19th centuries). It was then, Painter explains, that Europeans invented "racial science," a forerunner of modern anthropology. Thus Europeans became "white," Asians "yellow" and Africans "black," and all the "races" were put in a tidy hierarchy. Naturally, Europeans were on top, which, to Painter, is somewhat suspicious. And for good reason: They, after all, were the ones doing the classifying.
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