White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 [Paperback]

Michael Phillips (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 029271274X | ISBN-13: 978-0292712744 | Publication Date: January 2, 2006 | Edition: 1St Edition

From the nineteenth century until today, the power brokers of Dallas have always portrayed their city as a progressive, pro-business, racially harmonious community that has avoided the racial, ethnic, and class strife that roiled other Southern cities. But does this image of Dallas match the historical reality? In this book, Michael Phillips delves deeply into Dallas's racial and religious past and uncovers a complicated history of resistance, collaboration, and assimilation between the city's African American, Mexican American, and Jewish communities and its white power elite.

Exploring more than 150 years of Dallas history, Phillips reveals how white business leaders created both a white racial identity and a Southwestern regional identity that excluded African Americans from power and required Mexican Americans and Jews to adopt Anglo-Saxon norms to achieve what limited positions of power they held. He also demonstrates how the concept of whiteness kept these groups from allying with each other, and with working- and middle-class whites, to build a greater power base and end elite control of the city. Comparing the Dallas racial experience with that of Houston and Atlanta, Phillips identifies how Dallas fits into regional patterns of race relations and illuminates the unique forces that have kept its racial history hidden until the publication of this book.

(200701)

Editorial Reviews

Review

An ambitious work, White Metropolis deserves attention from historians interested in the history of Texas, urban studies, and southern culture. (David O'Donald Cullen Southwestern Historical Quarterly )

Review

This is an important contribution to the study of race relations, Texas history, southern history, and Jewish history. . . . As Phillips persuasively argues, Dallas is almost absurdly understudied. (Benjamin Heber Johnson, Southern Methodist University, author of Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 299 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1St Edition edition (January 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 029271274X
• ISBN-13: 978-0292712744
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #637,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Phillips (born June 17, 1960) is a scholar of Texas race relations and the author of "White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001," which chronicles white domination of Dallas, Texas, during the first 150 years of its history.

Phillips grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. After an award-winning career as a reporter and columnist for the University of Texas at Arlington student newspaper, "The Shorthorn," Phillips received a journalism degree in 1983.

From 1984 to 1990, he wrote for the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram," starting at its Arlington affiliate, "The Arlington Citizen-Journal." Phillips graduated with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. His dissertation, "The Fire This Time: The Battle Over Racial, Regional and Religious Identities in Dallas, Texas, 1860-1990," won the University of Texas' Outstanding Dissertation Award. Phillips' first book, "White Metropolis,"published by the University of Texas Press in January 2006, represents an update of his dissertation. White Metropolis won the Texas Historical Commission's 2007 T.R. Fehrenbach Award for best book on Texas history.

Michael Phillips is a former researcher at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2002. He began teaching at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas in 2007.

"White Metropolis" received a number of positive reviews, including from the "Dallas Morning News," "D Magazine," the "Journal of Southern Religion," the "Southwestern Historical Quarterly," "Legacies" and the "East Texas Historical Journal." Phillips's second book, "The House Will Come To Order: How The Texas Speaker Became A Power in State and National Politics," will be published by the University of Texas Press March 1, 2010. It was written with Dr. Patrick Cox (author of "Ralph Yarborough: The People's Senator.") are finishing a book based on the project, " Phillips is also collaborating on "Houston and the Birth of the Urban South" with longtime Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter and editor Betsy Friauf.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Big D history gets a big A, February 1, 2006

By 

Readalots (South Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Paperback)

Michael Phillips presents an interesting history of Dallas with "White Metropolis". His analysis of White, Black, Hispanic, and Jewish Dallasites since 1841 is fascinating. (For example, he offers a compact history of the Dallas KKK and its late 19th century early 20th century strangle-hold on city politics.)

Although he occasionally gets side tracked by the Black Civil Rights agenda Dr. Phillips tells a compelling story about how Big D emerged from a provincial Texas back-water to become a leading southern city. The book's 184 pages (paperback) are divided into 7 chapters.

As a native Dallasite, I often marveled at the city's various strange atmospheres through the 1960s and 1970s. Phillips has helped me to understand those turbulent and caustic days and nights. It's a wonder, as he points out, that the city did not erupt into murderous violence more often through its troubled history.

He provides substantial documentation, photos (20 total), statistics, eye witness interviews, and primary source documentation throughout the book. "White Metropolis'" 22 page bibliography will prove particularly helpful to future researchers.

This book is recommendable to those wanting to know more about Dallas, Texas historians, and civil rights documenters. This history of Big D earns a big A!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phillips is Right!!, March 1, 2006

By 

Patricia (Northern NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Paperback)

I just finished reading White Metropolis, and was pleased to see the book reviewed favorably in today's Dallas Morning News as well, because, frankly, this is a book that truly deserves widespread attention and favorable notice. Until George Bush's presidency, I think I'd underestimated the impact that Texas has on the politics of the United States, but I'm now beginning to realize that the forces that Phillips talks about -- and in some cases exposes -- in his book are at play throughout the nation. Behind-the scenes politics, a network of cronies running the show, and an undercurrent of racism seem to drive many decisions and policies. Phillips is amazing at deconstructing the history to understand the roots of "Texas-Style politics" and the dominance of the "White Metropolis" style of management that has prevailed in Dallas, and spread throughout Texas and now the nation. Phillips writes in the book: "In the late 1930s, one Hispanic child in Dallas told a researcher, 'I don't like being a Mexican. I want to be an American.' To which Dallas Morning News reviewer Craig Fluornoy says: "That is exactly the sort of statement that Dallas leaders have wanted the community to forget. It is Dr. Phillips' great achievement to make sure that will not happen." He's right. Dallas leaders, the Dallas/Fort Worth community, Texans -- and, actually, anyone interested in why America seems to be headed in the wrong direction -- should read this book.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Power Contribution to the Nation's Understanding of What Makes Dallas (and Texas, and even "W" Tick...), March 1, 2006

By 

Carina DeSouza "Carina" (Miami, FLA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Paperback)

Anyone who wants to understand the culture of Texas, and its impact on today's culture wars needs to read Michael Phillips book. As someone who relocated to Dallas and lived there for years before moving to Florida, I never quite understood whether Dallas was Southern, or Western, and our current President has certainly attempted to make Texas itself seem far more "Western." Yet Phillips -- in a style that makes it read like a compelling novel! -- explains it all, in context, and pulls back the curtain and reveals Dallas for what it is, a racist Southern city in a mask. Phillips has made a powerful contribution to the nation's understanding of a complex and fascinating --- but in some cases quite frightening -- city.