A Darker and Lesser Shade of White: Race, Gender Class, and Greeks in Modern Times

• In Event: 452 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Whiteness

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Greek ethnicity as a social construction informed primarily by the intersection of race and gender and secondarily, by class. I consider Greek ethnicity from the beginning of the construction of the modern nation state of Greece in 1829 to its contemporary manifestation in Europe, the United States and Australia using a variety of methods including a critical review of the history of Greece and Greeks in the Diaspora, content analysis of Greek newspapers in Chicago, and interviews with people of Greek heritage in Australia and the United States. I conclude that since the construction of the modern nation-state of Greece, Greeks have occupied a position of relative inferiority/superiority. Greeks as a group have not experienced the hostility Blacks have endured, nor have they enjoyed all the privileges that come with being of Northern European heritage. Race is not simply a black and white matter; nor is it uninformed by other dimensions of inequality; rather, it is a system nuanced by gender and class with different and unequal places for all members of society according to their membership in groups judged to be biologically different from one another.

Author

• Vasilikie (Vicky) Demos, University of Minnesota-Morris