Let's take a look at what "white" actually means -- it might surprise you.
February 7, 2014
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Invariably, around February of each year, coinciding with Black
History Month, you’ll hear people asking, “Why isn’t there
a white history month?”
Do these people mean we should condense
all the American history centering around white people to just one month
and devote the other 11 to people of color? Of course not.
It’s
readily accepted that white history is taught, year-round, to the
exclusion of minority histories. But the literal history of whiteness —
how and when and why what it means to be white was formulated — is
always neglected. The construction of the white identity is a brilliant
piece of social engineering. Its origins and heritage should be examined
in order to add a critical layer of complexity to a national
conversation sorely lacking in nuance.
I’m guessing that’s not what they mean, either.
In
conversations about race, I’ve frequently tried and failed to express
the idea that whiteness is a social construct. So, here, in plain fact,
is what I mean:
The very notion of whiteness is relatively recent
in our human history, linked to the rise of European colonialism and the
Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century as a way to distinguish the
master from the slave. From its inception, “white” was not simply a
separate race, but the superior race. “White people,” in opposition to
non-whites or “colored” people, have constituted a meaningful social
category for only a few hundred years, and the conception of who is
included in that category has changed repeatedly. If you went back to
even just the beginning of the last century, you’d witness a completely
different racial configuration of whites and non-whites. The original
white Americans — those from England, certain areas of Western Europe,
and the Nordic States — excluded other European immigrants from that
category to deny them jobs, social standing, and legal privileges. It’s
not widely known in the U.S. that several ethnic groups, such as
Germans, Italians, Russians and the Irish, were excluded from whiteness
and considered non-white as recently as the early 20th century.
Members
of these groups sometimes sued the state in order to be legally
recognized as white, so they could access a variety of rights available
only to whites — specifically American citizenship, which was then
limited, by the U.S. Naturalization Law of 1790, to “free white persons”
of “good character.” Attorney John Tehranian
writes in
the Yale Law Journal that petitioners could present a case based not on
skin color, but on “religious practices, culture, education,
intermarriage and [their] community’s role,” to try to secure their
admission to this elite social group and its accompanying advantages.
More
than color, it was class that defined race. For whiteness to maintain
its superiority, membership had to be strictly controlled. The “gift” of
whiteness was bestowed on those who could afford it, or when it was
politically expedient. In his book
“How the Irish Became White,” Noel
Ignatiev argues that Irish immigrants were incorporated into whiteness
in order to suppress the economic competitiveness of free black workers
and undermine efforts to unite low-wage black and Irish Americans into
an economic bloc bent on unionizing labor. The aspiration to whiteness
was exploited to politically and socially divide groups that had more
similarities than differences. It was an apple dangled in front of
working-class immigrant groups, often as a reward for subjugating other
groups.
A lack of awareness of these facts has lent credence to
the erroneous belief that whiteness is inherent and has always existed,
either as an actual biological difference or as a cohesive social
grouping. Some still claim it is natural for whites to gravitate to
their own and that humans are tribal and predisposed to congregate with
their kind. It’s easy, simple and natural: White people have always been
white people. Thinking about racial identity is for those other people.
Those
who identify as white should start thinking about their inheritance of
this identity and understand its implications. When what counts as your
“own kind” changes so frequently and is so susceptible to
contemporaneous political schemes, it becomes impossible to argue an
innate explanation for white exclusion. Whiteness was never about skin
color or a natural inclination to stand with one’s own; it was designed
to racialize power and conveniently dehumanize outsiders and the
enslaved. It has always been a calculated game with very real economic
motivations and benefits.
This revelation should not function as
an excuse for those in groups recently accepted as white to claim to
understand racism, to absolve themselves of white privilege or to deny
that their forefathers, while not considered white, were still, in the
hierarchy created by whites, responsible in turn for oppressing those
“lower” on the racial scale. During the Civil War, Irish immigrants were
responsible for some of the most violent attacks against freedmen in
the North, such as the wave of lynchings during the 1863 Draft Riots, in
which “the majority of participants were Irish,” according to Eric
Foner’s book
“Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877” and various other sources. According to
historian Dominic Pacyga,
Polish Americans groups in Chicago and Detroit “worked to prevent the
integration of blacks into their communities by implementing rigid
housing segregation” out of a fear that black people would “leap over
them into a higher social status position.”
Behind every racial
conversation is a complex history that extends to present-day
interactions and policies, and we get nowhere fast if large swaths of
our population have a limited frame of reference. An understanding of
whiteness might have prevented the utter incapability of some Americans
to realize that “Hispanic” is not a race — that white Hispanics do
exist, George Zimmerman among them. This knowledge might have lessened
the cries that Trayvon Martin’s murder could not have been racially
motivated and might have led to, if not a just verdict, a less painfully
ignorant response from many white Americans.
This comprehension
of whiteness could also dissuade many white people of such detrimental
and pervasive racial notions, such as, “Why is black pride OK but white
pride is racist?” If students are taught that whiteness is based on a
history of exclusion, they might easily see that there is nothing in the
designation as “white” to be proud of. Being proud of being white
doesn’t mean finding your pale skin pretty or your Swedish history
fascinating. It means being proud of the violent disenfranchisement of
those barred from this category. Being proud of being black means being
proud of surviving this ostracism. Be proud to be Scottish, Norwegian or
French, but not white.
Above all, such an education might help
answer the question of whose problem modern racism really is. The
current divide is a white construction, and it is up to white people to
do the necessary work to dismantle the system borne from the slave
trade, instead of ignoring it or telling people of color to “get over”
its extant legacy. Critics of white studies have claimed that this kind
of inquiry leads only to self-hatred and guilt. Leaving aside that
avoiding self-reflection out of fear of bad feelings is the direct enemy
of personal and intellectual growth, I agree that such an outcome
should be resisted, because guilt is an unproductive emotion, and merely
feeling guilty is satisfying enough for some. My hope in writing this
is that white Americans will discover how it is they came to be set
apart from non-whites and decide what they plan to do about it.
So,
yes, for one month, let’s hear about white history, educating ourselves
and others. Let’s expose whiteness as a fraudulent schema imposed as a
means to justify economic and physical bondage. Let’s try to uncover the
centuries-old machinations that inform current race relations and bind
us in a stalemate of misunderstanding. Then let’s smash this whole thing
to pieces.
This piece is the latest in a
series by feminists of color, curated by Roxane Gay. To submit to the series, email
rgay@salon.com.
