[lbo-talk] Wages of whiteness in late 18th and 19th centuries: pyschic or real?

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Tue Jun 9 09:37:00 PDT 2009


recent discussions (which I can't find dammit) there was discussion of how Britain's Empire, and U.S. slavery benefited a small elite, but not the white working classes of those nations. (That is important because it reflects on the extent to which white support of racism and militarism reflects material self-interest.)

My question, let us assume for the moment that this formulation is true for slavery, and that racism in the U.S. was also idelogically constructed around blackness and whiteness regardless of how it affect other types of cultures and nations.

My question is, wherever the psychic wages of whiteness came from, weren't the material wages primarily from the grab of land and natural resources from the nations already present at the time of European nation? That is, when we think of land taken for timber and fur and farming and canals and railroads, and more protein and bigger houses, and plenty of fuel to keep warm weren't the white working classes materially better off than they would have been even with the impossible counterfactual of the cost of those invasions being spent for their benefit? In short, did the construction of whiteness actually generate enough loot in form of natural resources stolen from First Nations to provide a genuine material wage of whiteness?

Also is this important? There is no question that part of the core of the creation of whiteness was a belief that all whites had benefited from genocide and racism, that peace and equality were real material threats to the standard of living of the newly created category of "white". Does it matter a great deal whether this belief was true or false?



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