Sociology
The Social Construction of Whiteness and Its Historical Fluidity
Quick fact
In the early 20th century, U.S. courts ruled that Syrians, Armenians, and even some Italians were not 'white' for citizenship purposes, yet today these groups are almost universally considered white—demonstrating that whiteness is a fluctuating social category, not a biological fact.
Why this is interesting
You probably think of yourself as belonging to a race—white, Black, Asian—as something natural. But what if the very category 'white' has changed so much that people once considered non-white are now thought of as white?