Vanishing Eden

White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City

Michael Maly, Heather Dalmage

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781439911198, 9781439911181
• eBook ISBN: 9781439911204
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

For many whites, desegregation initially felt like an attack on their community. But how has the process of racial change affected whites' understanding of community and race? In Vanishing Eden, Michael Maly and Heather Dalmage provide an intriguing analysis of the experiences and memories of whites who lived in Chicago neighborhoods experiencing racial change during the 1950s through the 1980s. They pay particular attention to examining how young people made sense of what was occurring, and how this experience impacted their lives.

Using a blend of urban studies and whiteness studies, the authors examine how racial solidarity and whiteness were created and maintained—often in subtle and unreflective ways. Vanishing Eden also considers how race is central to the ways social institutions such as housing, education, and employment function. Surveying the shifting social, economic, and racial contexts, the authors explore how race and class at local and national levels shaped the organizing strategies of those whites who chose to stay as racial borders began to change.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Racial Change, Neighborhoods, and Whiteness
• 2. Controlling the Change: White Ethnics, White Victims
• 3. On the Borders (co-authored with Nancy Michaels)
• 4. The End of an Idyllic World
• 5. Racial Ignorance, Bounded Empathy, and the Construction of Racial Solidarity
• 6. Conclusion
• Methodological Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index