I would like everyone to read this wonderful twist in perspective on American history — I think this kind of thing ought to be taught in public schools. The United States of America is exceptional: in the ferment of the 18th century, we invented both an inspiring political document, our constitution, and we invented white people. Not the people themselves, but the abstract distinction that set up “whiteness” as a mark of a privileged class. It was brilliant: it was a strategy that immediately divided those lower class rabble rousers who were screaming for equality, and set them to fighting among themselves, and half of them fighting for the wealthy upper class.
As time went on, the labor needs of the land holders continued to grow, and desperate to cultivate the land, they were loathe to let go of their bond servants and the bondsmen and bondswomen’s children (whom they kept in bondage for a legally defined time as well). In the mean time, a growing American peasantry was proving as difficult to govern as the European peasantry back home, periodically rising up in riot and rebellion, light skinned and dark skinned together. The political leaders of the Virginia colony struck upon an answer to all these problems, an answer which plagues us to this day.
The Virginians legislated a new class of people into existence: the whites. They gave the whites certain rights, and took other rights from blacks. White, as a language of race, appears in Virginia around the 1680s, and seems to first appear in Virginia law in 1691. And thus whiteness, and to a degree as well blackness, was born in the mind of America.
…
This plan worked gorgeously. It broke all efforts of the majority of people, African or European, to fight for civil and political rights in America against a landed class that literally ruled everything. It reduced a portion of the people to the status of the negro slave, and gave the poor but now white people a precious and entitled inch to stand above the permanently enslaved on the social ladder. The next thing the politicians did sealed the deal: they paid poor whites a bounty for runaway slaves, and often made them overseers for slaves, turning every poor white in America into a prison guard against the people who had once been their neighbors and allies.
Look at American history through that lens, and suddenly a lot of things make sense. It also stands as our American contribution to world-wide colonialism. It was a master stroke, taking a trivial genetic difference and promoting it as a tool to divide people into classes — an evil version of the Sorting Hat.
As the aristocrats and their successors traveled around the world through the colonial age, Europeans all over would find or define a group within the colonial territory and elevate it above the other groups, give it some privileges, though never enough to challenge the intruding rulers. In exchange for this slightly elevated status, the rulers would make those people do the colonial dirty work, and usually keep them slightly more well off than their fellows. Over time, these slightly elevated people often tried to keep their European masters in power even after the people realized how evil colonialism was, maintaining the system both to keep above their fellows and out of fear of retaliation for the dirty work they’d done. The most familiar contemporary case of this practice people will recognize is the Belgian categorization of Tutsis and Hutus, and the tragedy that still hangs over that arrangement over a century later. But really, the idea started in Virginia.
The funny thing about this incredibly successful tactic is that it doesn’t make people happier, safer, or richer overall (obviously, a few people get a lot richer). We end up pushing down a majority to maintain a minority.
There is a simple truth to American history for the majority of people who have ever been American: the worse the black experience, the worse everyone else’s experience, including whites. Driving down (or eliminating) black wages, while always agreeable to whites, drove white pay lower than their European counterparts for most of our history. The labor movement that got its start in America took longer to make progress here, especially in terms of hours and working conditions, largely because employers pitted whites against black or immigrant labor, splitting the movement. Civil and political rights in America only ever had to be better for whites than they were for blacks, preserving that furious inch of superiority that was the defining quality of whites. To this day poor whites are the most intransigent racists — left by an exploitative and violent system without education, access to food and medical care, or even the basic necessities of life in the developed world. In this state their only precious possession is the idea of whiteness Virginian aristocracy blessed them with hundreds of years ago.
There is all the wasted potential.
We’ve spent the last few hundred years throwing out every Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk or Tim Berners-Lee who didn’t happen to be white, and didn’t happen to be a man. That’s a terrible thing to have done to those brilliant and now lost people. It’s a much worse thing to have done to the rest of humanity, including our white selves. When I think, “why don’t I have a jet car and live in Alpha Centuri by now?” I think this is because the people that would have invented sky cars and interstellar travel were born black in Detroit, or in rural India or in the medina in Algiers in the 1950s, and spent too much time figuring out how to eat and not get killed to invent my dammed skycar.
And, as the author notes, for some strange reason the people most likely to commit suicide under this system are all white and male — that somehow the privilege of color and sex don’t translate into greater satisfaction with our lives. Why? Because they’re invented and in many ways arbitrary. Skin pigmentation and penises are real, of course, but they correspond to nothing that contributes specially to your sense of worth or your ability to make the world a better place — all the things that matter are independent of melanin and genitals.
But there is hope.
The very happiest white men I know are those actively working towards ending racism and sexism, not necessarily professional, but in all the small ways they learn to. Like people who work on space programs or meditate on rejoining the wonder of their conception of God, I believe an enduring and deep form of happiness arises from imagining a future that is better than the present, and feeling like you have the power to move the world towards it. Hope for the future is not only a good way to be happy, it is the best form of happiness, the most enduring, the most resistant. White people have been told they have it the best it can be had, they are told by power structures, the media, and the people disadvantaged by a global system where overwhelmingly the poorest are not considered white. Thankfully, this pernicious and alienating thought is untrue — a world without our present power structures is one of amazing possibilities, with art and play and dreams of space and life made wondrous beyond imagining.
Except there is a problem: this is a path to happiness, but it doesn’t take you to a state of sublime smugness. We tend to value that impressive aura of oblivious Smug in our politicians and leaders of other movements, and happy, productive people tend to be aware of other people’s concerns, as well as their own. The virtue of whiteness as a marker is that it makes it easy for ignorant people to make decisions. Bad decisions, but they’re still deciding.
Go read the whole thing: here’s Part 1 and part 2.
We’ve had no monopoly on “white man’s burden,” witness the British, Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Spanish (in fact pretty much all of Europe for several centuries) . . . .
Because being a member of the “privileged elite” can impose an awesome sense of failure when total superiority is not achieved. Privilege does indeed hold white men as “special snowflakes”, but in doing so, also makes it too easy to be an utter failure (i.e. becoming {quite easily} a middle manager, but never achieving CEO status one was raised to expect as natural). I speak from my own sense of failure: never achieving that Nobel I always expected, I have to accept paltry “seconds”, in the form of the several patents I’ve achieved; all in the name of a corporation, so no royalties for me; just a plaque for each…
Utterly disgusted that in all my education I never learned this. What a waste of my learning time. Another proof of ‘whiteness’ being fabricated is that the idea of ‘whiteness’ changes in different decades of the Census.
“Hope for the future is not only a good way to be happy, it is the best form of happiness, the most enduring, the most resistant.”
It is difficult to have this kind of hope for the future. The fuckheads are busily, and smugly, battening down all the hatches and blocking all reasonable pathways to a peaceful and rational dissolution of the various “isms” that keep us forever repeating the mistakes and forever maintaining the dysfunctional status quo that serves to keep wealth and power firmly ensconced in the hands of the few, the privileged. That has been amply demonstrated in this very forum where merely broaching the subject that half of our human family is worthy of the same respect, opportunity and basic rights as the other, more privileged, half is met with derision, anger, and hatred.
As individuals we are brilliant, dedicated and driven to improving the lot of humanity. As a race we are stupid, venal, and self-centered. I despair that we will ever be able to drag ourselves from the mire.
I have a good life, poor, though not impoverished. I have managed to draw to myself a community, of which all of you are a part, that values and encourages critical thinking, rational action, and love and respect for all those who are less privileged. I am very lucky. I fear for the future.
Oh, but it also provides convenient scapegoats for your frustration.
A case in point: Illinois was founded in 1818 as a non-slave state. There were two primary populations: French settlers along the Mississippi River (as this area had recently been French), and a new wave of American farmers emigrating down the Ohio River, primarily from southern states. (Chicago came later — a different story, and as many Illinoisans would argue, not really part of Illinois.) The American emigres were determined that Illinois would be non-slave — not for a concern for the status of slaves, but because as small farmers in the South, they could not compete with the large plantations and the huge unpaid labor force. (And this is part of the reason why there is still to this day such antipathy to blacks in southern Illinois, often called “more South than the South”.) The history of America’s western expansion is largely a replay of this economic dynamic time and again — the small farmer (the vast majority of the population) by and large faced an insuperably tilted economic playing field.
PZ:
Damned if I can remember where, but I read something a few days ago about how it takes a bit of effort to keep a minority pushed down. If the majority weren’t doing that, they’d be free to do other things (or free up resources to pursue other interests).
@vaiyt #5
This part from the second page of the article sums it up nicely:
Something that explains why so many on the right can so easily and repeatedly howl about immigrants, the poor, or “the takers.”
@ Ambrosethompson
Yep, the Irish used to be included right along with blacks as not-white. I’m of Irish descent, and you can read by the light off my skin. I’m about as white as you could possibly get, but 100 years ago, I might as well have come off a boat wearing an afro and dashiki. The whole concept of “whiteness” has nothing to do with hereditary race. I am alternately amused by and embarrassed for the Stormfront trolls who think it’s a real thing.
3. ambrosethompson,
As someone pointed out recently, Stephen Colbert should have used the Irish as the but of his joke about racism.
I vaguely recall hearing about some Irish children – categorised as a black – having been adopted out West back in the day, but when they arrived the ‘whites’ were upset to see them being taken in by ‘black’ families, so they were conveniently reshuffled.
-This is obvious fiction. America (and Argentina) ‘s wages were always higher than those in Europe until Argentina’s started falling behind in the 20th century. It is this that delayed the origin of the labor movement in America (and Argentina). There’s a reason everyone wanted to come to America since its founding.
http://eprints.ucm.es/11286/1/S0212610910000108a.pdf
http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/files/ArroyoAbad_et_al.pdf
More evidence American pay (even in the South) was always higher than European:
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/mh5/class/econ489/Clark-Why-Isn%27t-the%20-Whole-World-Developed.pdf
And 1910 was the height of Jim Crow. Also, slave labor in the South would have raised real wages for Northern workers, as it would have led to cheaper textiles. Northern wheat farmers and non-slaveowning Southern cotton farmers (whose real income would have been hurt by slavery) did not compete-the comparative advantages were different.
Also, didn’t the Spanish Empire have a racial hierarchy before the one established in Virginia?
The Irish were definitely considered White in early 19th century America. Examples:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LrIAAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22irish%22%20%22white%22%20people&pg=PA169#v=onepage&q=%22irish%22%20%22white%22%20people&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=AOhVAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&pg=PT94#v=onepage&q=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=J3Y-AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&pg=PA207#v=onepage&q=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=pp_PAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&pg=PA314#v=onepage&q=%22irish%22%20%22white%20people%22&f=false
YES. As Stewart often does on The Daily Show; to mock today’s racism. Being Colbert’s Executive Producer, he probably objected that Colbert would be stealing his ‘thunder’, if he did so. So Colbert just picked another “race” to mock. ^_^
Funny thing is, I thought ‘everyone’ had read Howard Zinn. Well look, anyone who aspires to call themselves a social justice warrior ought to.
I really regret that the linked article is written like a children’s folk tale version of a history I’ve seen the primary sources for. It’s over certain in its narrative and full of nebulous concepts. The broad outline is fine, but I think it’s potentially deceptive on the details. Certainly, I agree that America’s racial culture is not in the best interests of most Americans.
@15 Agreed. Zinn makes every effort to tell it like it truly was.
He also practiced what he preached (social activism/social justice).
“Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed in June 1963 after siding with students in the struggle against segregation. As Zinn described in The Nation, though Spelman administrators prided themselves for turning out refined “young ladies,” its students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn’s years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times.” His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, “are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me.” Wikipedia
Yeah, what a great fucking reason to be racist.
This is tangentially related to the OP:
The Whiteness Project
An interview with the producer/director of the Whiteness Project
You’ll be interested in this blog, it talks about how our historical ideas of a purely white West until after slavery ended is bunk, and how that affects our social and historical views: http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com
Well! That explains something that always puzzled me – why ‘black’ blood was polluting instead of ‘white’ blood being ennobling. It seemed to me (a white child of the 50s and 60s in the more liberal north) that if being ‘white’ was as peachy-keen and fabulous and perfect as they were saying it was, it ought to be able to overcome a little admixture and make someone all ‘white’ if they had even drop of white blood. That’s how I thought it worked. The first time I ran into the concept of a quadroon or an octaroon (blushing to admit it was in romance novels) or even ‘passing’ I was extremely confused. Ah, to be that innocent again.
I remember a youtube argument (yes yes I know) with an American who insisted that Germans couldn’t possibly be racist against Slavs, because Slavs are White People and all White People look identical and are the same Race.
Which is baffling from the perspective of German racism (and European racism in general, I would imagine), which generally discriminates by ethnicity, not skin colour (except in so far as skin colour is an outward marker of ethnicity, and of course against Black People because who can tell all those savage africans apart!).
No racist German would ever imagine they’re the same “race” as a French or Russian person! So the relevant category of privilege in Germany, for example, is “able to pass for ethnically German”, not “white” (though of course being able to pass for a German includes having light skin).
I think related to this is that while it’s possible to become a White American in one’s lifetime, one can’t really “become” a German, because ethnicity is seen as inherent and fixed, while “whiteness” in the US often seems to be more of a privilege to be withheld or bestowed at the majority’s pleasure as a reward for conformity.
This reminds me of another social theory I either read here or as part of an NPR program: The idea that the Civil War was in part a result of the colonists representing their roots in the Cavalier of King Charles and Cromwell’s Roundhead parts of England right after the English Civil War. Makes sense from the point of “southern chivalry”, a gentleman must behave chivalrously and honorably, also he needs to know how to ride a horse, etc. The Puritans, on the other hand, are even dressing in Roundhead styles, etc. The Cavaliers’ believe in divine right of kings morphs into a mandate for the landed gentry, and you create a concept of “whiteness” to reinforce that. Virginia’s a Cavalier colony, so it makes sense they’d be hammering out a stratified social structure there.
When you take these two theories together, places like modern Texas kind of makes sense. The heroes of the Alamo are all poor whites, mostly from Southern States. They’re preoccupied with obtaining land and horses, (and thus supposedly reaching the top of their social ladder, which conveniently doesn’t mention “good breeding” as a requirement). They’re defending it from mixed race people, and their descendents are still doing this. Even their religion kind of supports the old Cavalier ideas of nobility and chivalry. Plus you have weak unionization and strong anti-equality movements.
People in those parts of Europe where the black population includes people of many ethnicities, religions and languages from all over Africa, and others from the Caribbean. : ) (Partly given that, as someone observed, we’re predisposed to think in ethnic terms anyway)
It really is a huge loss to have spent centuries enslaving blacks for labor and then another 100 years of official racial suppression. If you think about what might have happened in North America if it wasn’t for slavery or the idea that it was okay to use unfree labor (indentured and slave), then what probably would have happened is that both the North and the South would have gone along the “free family farmer” route that the North and Midwest did (the effective “wage” for free farm labor in the US was usually too high for most farmers). The crop mix in the South might be different – more corn, beans, and small plots of cotton and tobacco – but the set-up would be the same, and it would have likely driven an early technology and industrialization boom due to the extra demand for all kinds of farm machinery and equipment.
Enopoletus Harding@11, 12
While I share your scepticism of the article (where are the references?), I’m also sceptical of your use of sources. Of the two linked in #11 (which concern Spanish America), the first assesses real wages simply in terms of the grain and meat the wage could buy – but these products are precisely those one would expect to be relatively cheap there. The authors admit that they cannot compare wages in terms of a “basket” of products; if manufactured products (which almost all had to be imported) were compared, one might expect very different results. The abstract for the second includes the following:
So in fact this is not saying real wages were higher than those in Europe or even, in most cases, comparable. The article you link to in #12 compares wages in one industry (cotton) at one point in time (1910) – and notes that the American mills were unique in using automated looms. This does relate to an important factor pushing American wage-rates up as well as encouraging mechanisation: shortage of labour. But a comparison of wage rates across countries, except where the differences are extreme, is very difficult even today, let alone when relying on 18th or 19th century statistics.
As far as the article linked in the OP is concerned, you clearly misinterpret it. You quote it and comment as follows:
But the article says not that the labor movement started late in America – indeed, it says the opposite – but that it took longer to make progress.
Oh, and the belief that “everyone wanted to come to America since its founding” is just a particularly naive American exceptionalist myth. Those who did want to come often wanted land, not waged work.
I’m not going to argue against the consequences of racial policy as described in the article, but the claim that Virginians invented ‘whiteness’ is a bit hyperbolic. The history of Gypsies* in Europe, long persecuted and described as ‘swarthy’ dating back to medieval records suggests that this idea was already familiar in Europe.
* using this term because contemporary sources used this term.
Dutchgirl,
I think the idea is not that Americans invented racism, but rather that they weaponised it. Instead of just being something in the background of the culture, it was turned into a way to keep the people divided. The Roma may have been greatly discriminated against, but they were never really a threat to institutionalized power, so the racism against them is a bit different.
@Nick Gotts
-My apologies. I already knew there was some union activity in Philadelphia in the early 19th century and that there was a court case in Massachusetts in the 1840s resulting in the expansion of unions’ power. I don’t know why I wrote “origin”.
-No, it’s not. Of course, my use of “everyone” is hyperbole, but millions from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Italy did, indeed, come to America in the 19th century. I don’t see why they’d do that if wages here were lower. Obviously, there were those that wanted land, but many (most?) Irish who came to America did come to work in factories.
-Then look at nominal wages (see my first link, p. 261 and my second link, Table 4). These are terrible at approximating real wages across time, but better approximate them across space, especially when there’s a universal precious metal standard.
-Nick, learn to read beyond the abstract. This article does not talk about the U.S. at all. My point was that Argentina, like the United States, had a labor movement that didn’t make much progress until the late 19th century, even though it had very few black people, because wages there (real and nominal) were so incredibly high, which they were:
Sili @10
Your memory is overimplifying the story a bit, but here are the details.
The case went all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court because the orphans were abducted from the custody of the Catholic Church who had the resources to push the case.
It happened in a mining town where they had two ‘races’ — the people of Mexican descent and the ‘whites’, which was everyone else including the one person of African descent in the town who clearly wasn’t Mexican so he had to be white. Catholics in the ‘white’ group had nothing to do with the Catholic church in town because that would have made them associate with Mexicans.
The whole story is fascinating to read.
That was in the US, but let tal about latin america, the things are a bit different, but maybe not much. This is what happned in Mexico
Here we inherit the concept, not of race, but caste.
In the pinacle of the caste was the white european or “peninsular”, he had all the privileges, and wishes to retain them, when their women got pregnant, they sent them to Spain so their children were also Peninsular.
Next, the white men and women born in America or “criollos”, they could not aspire to government not have voice, yet some of them became very wealthy and eventually they led the country to the independence so they became the goverment.
Next were mestizo. Unlike the US, in latin america there was no problem in mixed marriages (or else…) Many of the first mestizo were educated, many of them spoke nahuatl, latin and spanish…. but slowly their position eroded unable to study and attain many works, they became the common worker and peasant of the country.
Black people: they were brought as slaves, after the native population collapsed because of sickness. but the spaniard almost brought only males, while they were many they ha to marry native women, so slowly they have mixed and today you will find few black people but it´s one of our important root. Their condition were harsh but the black revolts in 1609, force the spaniard authorities to change many things, including creating a town of free black people in Veracruz, the town was named “San Lorenzo de los Negros ” but today is called “Yanga” after their lide.
The descendan of black and white were “mulatos” and black and native were “zambos”, the came in the social scale lower than black.
Finally at the lowest came the native american. the poor among poor.
And of course there was the mixed about mixes. the colonial sistem of caste have about hundres clasification, but alt least it has some advantage, the caste was declared at baptism by the priest, and with some… economic encourage, he could change the caste.
Still this led to a highly segmented society with while men in the top and native at the lowest… and that have not changed much, today most of the wealth still is in the hands of the Criollo.
Even today, in latin america we associate wealth with skin color and a dark skin with poverty. If you watch our TV and movies will realize most of the actors are white. :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta
May I suggest caution in accepting uncritically the racial history ideas of a person who claims a white supremacist and neo-nazi as a friend?
link
“Divide et impera” was not an American invention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
-Actually, it’s Native American and male (though non-Hispanic white males do come close):
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/rates02.html
I think the causes of suicide are probably too complex to correlate simply with privilege.
The Desolation of Smug.
Especially for Enopoletus Harding: I advise to read Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People, to educate yourself about the shifts in “whiteness” over the course of the centuries. It took quite a while for the Irish, Slavs and Italians (among others) to be accepted as “white”, with the concomitant privileges.
Brian at #23 – “Albion’s Seed” by David Fischer is an interesting read on the how the culture of various parts of colonial America was shaped by successive was of immigration from Britain. There’s a review/summary here. It doesn’t mention the events in the OP, but it’s a good overview of the early society of colonial America, and goes into some detail towards the end about how these social divisions still echo in the modern USA.
Great post. Probably the most important course I took in college as part of my requirements was a black studies course examining black representation in media and theater prior to the late 20th century. You can really see how racial concepts were constructed and how the idea of “whiteness” evolved over time through media produced by the privileged class. Two texts we read that specifically examine the invention of “whiteness” w/ regard to media might be of interest to folks here & here.
Enopoletus Harding@29,
Yes it is, as in fact you admit. People emigrated for many different reasons. For example, in the case of Ireland, the potato blight made a big contribution, many emigrated from Italy for political reasons, and as I’ve already noted, a large proportion came because they thought they would be able to obtain land, many others would have gone with the hope of establishing their own businesses (in which case, they might have preferred low wage rates), and most would probably not have had information about comparative wage rates (particularly not real wage rates, before they set out. The facts of emigration do absolutely nothing to establish that wages were higher in the USA.
Sorry, blockquote fail @40. Repeating comment:
Enopoletus Harding@29,
Yes it is, as in fact you admit. People emigrated for many different reasons. For example, in the case of Ireland, the potato blight made a big contribution, many emigrated from Italy for political reasons, and as I’ve already noted, a large proportion came because they thought they would be able to obtain land, many others would have gone with the hope of establishing their own businesses (in which case, they might have preferred low wage rates), and most would probably not have had information about comparative wage rates (particularly not real wage rates, before they set out. The facts of emigration do absolutely nothing to establish that wages were higher in the USA.
Crap. If prices differ considerably, which of course they did in the 19th century between continents, because of high transport costs and the profits taken by intermediaries, they are just as terrible across space. You appear to be relying on the neoclassical myths of perfect information and frictionless markets.
I know it doesn’t refer to the USA, which is why I didn’t read beyond the abstract. Given what that abstract said, its relevance to your claim about the USA was nugatory. Obviously you don’t have good evidence that American wages were higher than European, or you’d have cited it. And the extract you quote (a) says nothing about real wages and (b) refers only to the period up to 1820, which can hardly explain the failure of a labor movement to make progress until the late 19th century. Moreover, if real wages were actually high in Argentina, that would appear to support the claim you are arguing against, which is that the presence of a numerous black slave population kept wages low. I should reiterate that I am agnostic both about that, and about the level of 18th and 19th century real wages in the USA and Spanish America relative to that in Europe – because neither the original article, nor you, have produced adequate empirical evidence.
I was lucky in many ways. My view of the world of “race” was shaped by an unusual set of circumstances. I had great “southern” parents who did not think that a white skin made you better than other people . I also grew up in an area of South Carolina where, around the turn of the 19th/20th century (IIRC) a large contingent of Turkish Christians moved into the area.
They were white. Yes, of course, they were white. I mean, they sure as hell weren’t niggers. Obviously (probably because they had, as a group, a good bit of money when they came). The fact that many of these white people had darker skin than most “black” people was occasionally remarked upon but only by kids, who hadn’t quite figured out where they were supposed to draw the line in such visually complicated situations.
My high school “desegregated” (with three kids from the local Air Force Base) 8 years after Brown v Board of Education. They only did it because the Air Force finally got off their thumbs and said “take all our kids or none of them” and the public schools could not operate without the large amount of money the military gives local schools for each military kid. The next year it was everybody–except for those who had enough money to pay for the brand new private “Academy” set up in the old, falling apart high school building, many of whom were of Turkish decent and really-really-white-just-ask-them.
Interesting times, my friends.
@23
Except that a large percentage of those fighting for Texas’ independence from Mexico were those “mixed race” people you were talking about and were and are revered to this day by “white” people. Texas is complicated. It is always a mistake to think otherwise.
For example: The General Commanding the Freedman’s Bureau was once told that immediately after the war a large number of blacks had been out-right murdered (it is estimated that roughly 1% of the black population was murdered between 1865 and 1867), because they were “thinning the niggers out a little”. Yet in San Antonio at least, by 1867, there were black people who bought land in town, and passed the lots down to their children. I assure you that in Dallas at that time, they would have hung the white guy that sold them the land right next to the black guy that bought it. But not in San Antonio.
Texas is complicated.
@Nick Gotts
-Both the populations of the early 19th century U.S. and early 19th century Argentina were primarily located on or near the Atlantic coast. If anything, transportation costs should have been higher for Argentina because it was further away from Europe. I don’t see why there should have been a big transportation cost difference between early 19th century Argentina and the early 19th century U.S. The “neoclassical myths” might be “myths” for countries like Peru, but I don’t see how they’re “myths” for early 19th century U.S. and Argentina.
-Respond to what I write, not what you imagine I write:
-In early 19th century Northern U.S., wages were most likely kept slightly down by unrestricted Irish and German immigration (they surely were not kept down by slavery).
-So why wouldn’t the 19th century Irish move to Russia, Germany, or Italy in large numbers?
-Only if they were planning to start a business in the exporting sectors.
Obviously, you don’t have good evidence against my claim that American wages were much higher than European throughout the 19th century, or you’d have cited it.
-If you have any good evidence real wages in the U.S. and Argentina fell in the mid-19th century, you can provide it here.
I don’t yet have a complete theory as to why labor unions in the U.S. and Argentina both began to make substantial progress in the late 19th century, but I suspect it has something to do with the worldwide supply-push deflationary trend of the time.
@M’thew
-Italians, yes, Slavs and Irish, not as far as I know.
Perhaps the most contentious issue relating to whiteness today in America is whether Iranians, Afghans, and Arabs should be considered White.
The invention of the White Race also seems to have effected how we look at ancient history. Ancient Egyptians have long been portrayed in movies as a white people when in actually they were black. If you doubt this, go read ‘s The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality http://www.amazon.com/The-African-Origin-Civilization-Reality/dp/1556520727.