"Whiteness thus became a method of stigmatizing dissenting ideas, a marker of ideological respectability..."

"... [Nell Irvin Painter, in 'The History of White People,'] should have investigated this phenomenon further. Also missing from the book is an analysis of the all-important question: Who benefits and how from the imprimatur of whiteness? Political elites and employers of low-wage labor, to choose just two groups, actively policed the boundaries of whiteness."