The Invention of the White Race

From CounterPunch:

It is in the context of such findings that he offers his major thesis — the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stage of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-77).  To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” and 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also “disastrous” for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.

More here.

Howard Zinn hits on exactly this topic in his book A People's History of the United States, and it looks like the guy who wrote the book being reviewed here was studying the same historical sources.  So it's a good fit with what I already know: because there was very little mixing of black and white before this time period, the concept of "race" didn't really exist in the way we now understand it.  

Before Europe started colonizing the New World, race was a sort of nationalistic thing, the French people, the English people, etc.  But big time global trade, and the movement of large populations of workers along with it, essentially the earliest days of capitalism, necessitated a divide-and-conquer strategy in order to keep workers docile and compliant.  So "race" was created, and with it the notions of superiority and inferiority that we continue to see to this very day.  In short, by making white workers resent black workers, and vice versa, resentment toward the true assholes, the exploitative merchant class, became diffused and misdirected.  It was apparently a very successful strategy from the viewpoint of the rich. 

We continue to see this strategy at work even today.  When the Democrats embraced civil rights in the 1960s, it was the beginning of the end for that party's powerful coalition with organized labor, which had always been almost exclusively white, and historically hostile to allowing blacks within their unions.  Even though the unions have definitely become more progressive on race in recent years, just as the rest of the nation has, the damage was done, and the Democrats, without a powerful labor movement on their side, are no longer a friend to the working American.  We also continue to see the bizarre success of Republicans, who are straight-up hostile to to the concerns of people who work for a living, among working class whites.  Indeed, that party's Southern Strategy has been built almost entirely on the notion of racial resentment, the welfare queen, the undeserving beneficiary of affirmative action, etc.

Really, when you get right down to it, the construction of the white race has been one of the greatest successes of all time for the wealthy class.  It has functioned well, more or less, for four centuries, and it looks to be a major part of the labor/capital dynamic for decades to come.  I'm really starting to believe, as did Martin Luther King, Jr. in the final years of his life, that racial justice and economic justice are inextricably intertwined.  

You can't have one without the other.

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