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Race is a social construction, not a biological category. The variation humans exhibit are much wider than our racial categories. Skin color, eye color, facial and body characteristics vary widely within and between racial groups. The interpretation and categorization of people who share similar characteristics are really somewhat arbitrary.
We often set these ideas in stone, however, believing that we have more differences than commonalities with other groups. These ideas are real, in the sense that they have real consequences in the lives of individuals who are seen as being a member of specific categories. But the reality is not based in our biology, but rather in our history, our political systems, our customs, our family histories, and our minds.
RACE IS A RESULT OF HUMAN HISTORY
So to understand race, we must understand how the concept of race has formed. The differences we perceive are a result of our ancestry, how humans have traveled and mated over the thousands of years there have been humans. Race in the United States has been formed only in the past 300 years and did so in the context of conquering, colonizing and enslaving non-Europeans in order to provide expansion of European empires.
This history has created systems of inequality and shaped ideas about who belongs to a group, what characteristics that the individuals in a specific group have in common and the social position of that group in relation to other groups. These notions, in turn, become self-fulfilling prophesies of outcomes for individuals who often face barriers based solely upon their physical characteristics rather than their actions, knowledge, skills and talents. Because of these self-fulfilling prophesies, ideas about race and racism are difficult to challenge and have been passed along to new generations through the process of socialization.
There are, of course, other systems of inequality that shape our social worlds, for example: gender, class, age, sexual orientation, and size. These and other inequalities have similar mechanisms in how they affect our lives, predominately, through stigmatization, stereotyping and discrimination.
There are sociologists who assert that race is a master status in the United States more than any other inequality because for 300+ years our society has divided itself by some construction of race. The argument is controversial and there are other sociologists who would argue that class and/or gender could also be the master status.
No matter where one stands on the question, there is no disputing that race continues to be important in the lives of people in the United States. Thus, it is an important aspect of learning about our society and culture.
Whiteness as a Special Case of Race Formation
In her book, Birth of a White Nation, sociologist Jacqueline Battalora, outlines the legal and cultural history that led to the racial category called white. She makes the historical case that the idea of whiteness was born out of the patriarchal class system that emerged in the new world, most especially in Virginia and Maryland and around tobacco plantations.
Before the 17th century, Europeans did not designate themselves as one race. Instead they thought of themselves according to the country of their birth and with the Protestant Reformation, their religion. When the English colonists arrived in the 1500s, they spoke of themselves as being "English, Christian and free" but not white. Along with the elites who arrived, a number of English men and women also came as indentured servants. This system paid for the passage to the new world and ensure that for a short period of servitude, the person would not only arrive with the potential of new opportunities but also would learn skills that could serve them in moving up the socioeconomic ladder, increasing their chance for upward mobility. Along side those who came from England were other Europeans as well as Africans and Native Americans.
In the early part of the 17th century, most of the workers were English and many Africans came as indentured servants or were freed by their European masters through purchase or wills. The possibility of upward mobility of both Europeans and Africans were about equal. Intermarriage was common. The basic division between people were based upon socioeconomic status, gender and age, not national or ethnic background or skin color.
By the late 17th century, the labor force from Europe was beginning to dry up and competition from freed former servants and slaves were beginning to cut into the profits of the elites. In addition, many of the elites were beginning to resist full participation of former servants and slaves in the political and community life. This led to many disgruntled workers and to new more oppressive laws.
In the 1660s, the first of anti-miscegenation laws were passed in Maryland that made it illegal for "English Christian" women to marry indentured servants or slaves. The penalty was for the woman to become an indentured servant or slave as well and for any children born to the couple to also be enslaved. This backfired as it was seen as profitable by plantation owners because without payment, more laborers would be acquired. In the 1680s, the laws were more specific and instead of penalizing women, it expressly forbade "white" men and women to marry non-whites. These laws were the first to use the term "white." So what happened between the 1660s and 1680s that led to the change in language and the more stringent enforcement (especially when white women married non-white men).
Bacon's Rebellion of 1676
Battalora and other scholars point to a year long armed rebellion of workers against the elite in Virginia, in 1676, led by Nathan Bacon, as the turning point.
The rebellion ultimately failed. In its aftermath, the elites, concerned that workers were willing to rebel and found commonality between themselves, led to new laws and new cultural efforts to divide the workers.
Before 1676, workers of all backgrounds had the same chances, the same potential, a common ground upon which to build upward mobility. After the 1670s, many of the laws became based upon the white/non-white divide. This led white workers to see themselves as having more in common with their elites than with their fellow workers.
These laws did not lift up white workers, but rather took away rights and opportunities from non-white workers. Being white was a way of avoiding oppressive laws, but the same barriers existed for white workers after these laws as did before they were enacted. The "white privilege" was to not be as oppressed as the non-white workers now were.
In other words, the invention of "white" as a racial category has always been about white supremacy. It is an outgrowth of the English belief that their society, nation and religion were superior to others and that their superiority gave them privileges above and beyond less "civilized" peoples.
White did not remain a designation for just the English, however. Over the ensuing centuries, other European groups became regarded as "white." But white supremacy is nonetheless embedded in the social construction of a white race. All other races have been constructed on the basis of geography, language, ethnicity and heritage. Without an understanding of this context, many who are regarded as white have lost an historical and cultural context to intergroup relations. The formation of the white race remains a special case and that case is, unfortunately, the basis for much of the racism that exists in the United States and throughout the world.
This Legacy Lives on Today
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Heather McGhee, author and policy researcher, has studied the economics of race, finding that in situation after situation, when working class white folks support policies and make decisions based upon race rather than economic interests, they are hurt by the policies they support. Racism, she asserts, is damaging to white folks as well. The legacy of the formation of whiteness as a means to divide groups of people who share economic interests remains profitable to the wealthiest classes.
McGhee shares her research in her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, and she summarizes some of this research in her TED Talk below. She researched the factors that led up to the 2008 housing crash and who, in the end got hurt by the financial policies that led to the downfall of the market. In her book she writes:
“There is no question that the financial crisis hurt people of color first and worst. And yet the majority of the people it damaged were white. This is the dynamic we’ve seen over and over again throughout our country’s history, from the drained public pools, to the shuttered public schools, to the overgrown yards of vacant homes.”
This repeated pattern of race-based fears that economics is a zero-sum game in which the rise of one race will come at the cost of another, can be seen as fulfilling the purpose of the creation of whiteness so many centuries ago. Racism, it is asserted by this research, is not good for anyone except a few wealth people who keep lower classes divided. She argues that the way out of these patterns is simple. We must come to understand the progress can be something that is good for all people and that when benefits come to historically disadvantaged persons, it is not at the expense of others, but rather will be good for all of us.
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