> WHITENESS began not as a racial or ethnic or national identity > emerging from a people’s shared experience, but as a legal construct. > Whiteness was designed to distinguish between poor English-speaking > men brought to North America as indentured servants (after their > communal lands were privatized by law and force) and people kidnapped > from Africa and enslaved by the wealthy. > > Neither group could vote before or after the “American revolution,” > but the former Englishmen (and English-speaking lowland Scots) could > eventually “earn” their freedom, buying their way into citizenship by > acquiring land after paying off their bond. On the other hand, > abducted Africans were doomed to spend their whole lives in slavery; > in the rare event they were “granted” freedom by their enslavers, they > still would not be welcomed as participants in civil society. > > The intent and effect of legislating a new division of people was to > create an overseer class, a class of poor “white” men who believed > that they had an interest in enforcing the enslavement of Africans and > their descendants. Laws granted them a degree of privilege, the > promise of greater wealth and freedom if they made society (including > the torture of Black people and the eradiation of Indigenous people) > continue to run smoothly. > > Whiteness has its antecedent in the British colonial policy in Ireland > which put displaced lowland Scots in the position of enforcing British > rule. Ireland’s long internal conflicts are religious only to the > degree that the Irish brand of Catholicism maintains elements of > indigenous relationship to the land, while the Presbyterianism of the > ethnically Scottish inhabitants of Ireland is sparser, more > conventionally monotheistic, and bears no association with holy places > or Pagan festivals. Many of the poor European people conscripted into > enforcing slavery were members of this English-speaking Scottish > diaspora, displaced again from the first land they were used to > colonize, relocated to the American south. > > FOR LATER generations of European immigrants, becoming white was a > privilege granted only after passing through a painful process of > assimilation, sacrificing identity, memory, custom, and language. They > also had to agree to participate in the enforcement of white > supremacism. James Baldwin wrote: > > “No one was white before he/she came to America. It took > generations, and a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white > country.” > > My great-grandparents came from a colonized country where their > language was outlawed and children were taken from their families to > be indoctrinated in English. My great-grandfather had taken up arms > against the occuppiers. My great-grandmother spoke no English even > decades after the last other Irish speakers she knew had died. They > lived on the top of the highest hill in Lynn, MA, so they could always > look down and see if anyone was coming for them. > > It was the Ku Klux Klan that did come, burning a cross at High Rock > Tower to try to drive the Irish out. My grandfather watched while my > great-grandfather kept him quiet and still. To the Klan, the Irish > were not white. Nor were they white to the Anglo-American Christians, > including the famously liberal Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who vilified > the Irish “race” a generation before. > > My grandfather spoke no Irish. He worked for General Electric. In his > lifetime an Irish-American became President. And he cursed the first > and second generation immigrants from Europe who were not yet white – > the Jews whose whiteness remains contested among the alt-right now. > > So what is whiteness?
Find out before the alt-right says you ain't white enough: https://itsgoingdown.org/lie-white-identity/
