The Color of Choice

The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890–1945)

By (author) Vartan Matiossian

Book cover: The Color of Choice

Extent: 341 pages

Publisher: Brill | Schöningh

Subjects: Twentieth- & Twenty-First- Century History

Series: Armenian History and Culture

Series volume number: 2

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(July 2025)

ISBN: 9783506797735

6.1 x 9.25 inches

Price: $139.00

In stock

Vartan Matiossians book is the first comprehensive account of a mostly untold story of dehumanization and racism in Europe and America that enhanced the racial and moral profiling of Armenians as undesirables. The book frames this development within the context of the debates on whiteness and immigration in the United States culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924 and the xenophobic discourse in Germany before and during Nazism likening Armenians to Jews.


The extensive research literature on race has paid little attention to Armenians. Between the two world wars, they had to prove that they were free white persons to ensure their naturalization in the United States, while in Nazi Germany they needed to document that they were stakeholders of the Aryan race to safeguard their existence. Vartan Matiossian’s book is the first comprehensive account of a mostly untold story of dehumanization and racism in Europe and America that enhanced the racial and moral profiling of Armenians as undesirables. The book frames this development within the context of the debates on whiteness and immigration in the United States culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924 and the xenophobic discourse in Germany before and during Nazism likening Armenians to Jews.

  • By (author) Vartan Matiossian