The invention of race and the persistence of racial hierarchy: White privilege, White supremacy, and White colorblindness
Abstract
Given the long history of contention over the meaning of race and the continued discomfort about what role it plays in the structure of inequality, I endeavor to clarify the origins of the association of race with skin color and other physical features by briefly discussing the historical record by which race became codified in law. My focus is the U.S. and specifically Colonial Virginia, where the codification of racial categories in law was especially consequential. I also discuss the existence of a racial hierarchy in which Whites are dominant and Nonwhites of various types are subordinate. I argue that the continued existence of this racial hierarchy not only has a legacy from the past, but it is reproduced in the present and continues to have major effects on the life chances of those thought of as belonging to different racial groups. I also discuss the elasticity, ambiguity, and contested nature of racial classifications, as well as the internal differentiation among those thought to belong to the same racial groups and the changes and variations over time that are continually remaking the meaning of race. Because of the political significance of race, I also clarify the meaning of key concepts that have been receiving recent attention: White privilege, White supremacy, and White colorblindness. Finally, I discuss race as a process rather than as a classification and briefly discuss how Whites and men can become allies, advocates, and activists in support of social justice.
Race is a topic that Americans especially do not want to confront but also cannot leave alone. Myrdal (1944: lxxvii) argued that despite libraries full of books on the topic, it is still not understood and in every respect for most people constitutes “trouble.” The current wisdom at present is that race is a social construction, and because of that, is not “real,” and yet it is very real in its consequences. Without doubt, it is a topic about which there is controversy, ambiguity, disagreement, and discomfort all around. Because there is so much misunderstanding about what race is, what it means, whether it is still relevant, and what difference it makes, there is a need for greater clarity about race, especially about its role in intergroup relations and intergroup inequality. To provide that clarity, this paper will outline the invention of race with a specific focus on Colonial Virginia, because of its importance in the codification of racial categories in law. I further discuss the existence and implications of a racial hierarchy; the ambiguity about who falls into which racial categories; and how those assumptions have changed over time. I also explain important concepts that are repeatedly discussed both in academic literature and the popular press, but which lack clarity, namely, White privilege, White supremacy, and White colorblindness. I discuss race as a social process rather than as a thing; and finally, I consider how Whites can engage as allies, advocates, or activists in the goals of social justice.
1 THE INVENTION OF RACE
Prior to its codification in law in Colonial America, race was not associated with skin color or with physical features that were used to rank people (Goodman et al., 2020; Morgan, 1975; Painter, 2011; Smedley & Smedley, 2012). Instead, race referred primarily to language group or lineage, especially with reference to royal households. Although groups of people were differentiated, it was more often on the basis of citizenship or by religion, not skin color (Hannaford, 1996). The term “slave” comes from “Slav,” because the first use of the term was with regard to people now thought of as White from the Caucasus Mountain region (called Caucasians or Circassians) of modern day Georgia on the eastern part of the Black Sea (Painter, 2011). Hence, in what is now thought of as Europe, slavery was first associated with White skin color. It was not until the expansion of the African slave trade and the increase in the number of African slaves in Colonial America and the Caribbean that slavery became associated with dark skinned people. Slavery became a critical aspect of the economic development of the American colonies, the Caribbean, and South America, as well as of European countries and others funding the slave trade.
Slavery had existed all over the world prior to its introduction to Colonial America. Those who lost in tribal wars were often killed rather than being enslaved (Patterson, 1982, 1991), but as empires grew and took possession of more and more land, emperors and kings needed laborers to make the land they were conquering profitable for them, leading to more slavery than killing of captured soldiers (Bendix, 1978). Slavery, however, was notoriously inefficient because slaves had no incentive to work hard. Because of this, in the slave societies of Ancient Greece and Rome, slaves were promised manumission after a period of service to induce their cooperation and effort. The growing reliance on a slave system, however, especially in combination with the possibility of manumission, created tensions within slave societies that led to an expansion of freedom and civic rights for small landowners who challenged the power of large landowners because they feared that they could not compete with slave labor (Patterson, 1982, 1991). It was precisely this situation in Colonial America that led the House of Burgesses in Virginia to codify race into law and to differentiate rights in terms of race (Morgan, 1972).
The settler colonialists of what became the United States needed laborers to build the wealth that they sought, but the African slave trade was not their initial choice (Smedley & Smedley, 2012). They first tried unsuccessfully to enslave the indigenous people (whom they called “Indians”), but the indigenous people were not easily subjugated. Many died from the diseases that the colonists brought to America. Further, indigenous people could run away and rejoin their tribes who helped protect them, and they could also live to fight another day. Some indigenous people were sold into slavery, but these were often shipped to the Caribbean to avoid the issues of their having support nearby. As an alternative, the large landowners imported indentured servants from Europe to provide the labor that they needed to work the land they claimed. Indentured servants came from among the landless poor in England, many of whom had been driven off the land through processes of enclosure. Having no means to support oneself in England was considered both a threat and a crime (Morgan, 1972), so many who ended up landless were often charged with minor offenses including vagrancy and were then pressed into military service or into indenture. With England's subjugation of Ireland, many Irish peasants were also forced into indenture.
Indentured servants turned out to be rebellious and potentially threatening to large landowners who controlled the government (Allen, 1994, 1997; Morgan, 1972, 1975). Although the harsh conditions in the colonies led to a large proportion of indentured servants not surviving to the end of their indenture periods, those who did survive often found that the land that they had been promised at the end of their indenture was not provided to them or that they could not afford to purchase land to set up their own homesteads. Further, large landowners and investors had laid claim to such large swaths of land near the settled parts of the colonies that they forced those newly freed from indenture into the wilderness areas where they were more vulnerable to Indian resistance to encroachment on their lands. Morgan (1972) claims that the fear in England of the dangerousness of landless peasants was transported to the colonies, where landless peasants were even more dangerous than they had been in England because colonists had to be armed to protect themselves and others from both Indians and pirates. These two issues came together in 1676 in what was called Bacon's Rebellion, when a coalition of freedmen, African slaves, and some local elites led by Nathaniel Bacon challenged the authority of Virginia Governor Berkeley and other large landowners who were restricting their ability to more aggressively drive Indians from their lands. The governing body of Colonial Virginia, under direction from the British crown, feared that a wider war with Indian tribes would further threaten the colonies, but Bacon and others also thought that the large landowners were restraining the colonists on the frontier because of the involvement of large landowners in the lucrative fur trade with various Indian tribes.
Bacon's Rebellion was a serious threat to the authority of the large landowners in Virginia, because it engaged such a large coalition of people, killed many in the process, looted large estates, and burned Jamestown, the seat of government, to the ground (Morgan, 1975). Some even defined it as a civil war in the colonies. The main issue was the availability of land for former indentured servants but providing them with land required driving Indians out or exterminating them. It also required challenging the authority of the large landowners who had taken control of most of the available land near the settled areas of the colony. When Bacon died of dysentery early in the fall of 1676, the Rebellion dissipated after a few months. Its end was helped along by war ships sent by the King of England to the colonies in support of the government. The Rebellion, though, was so widespread and so destructive that it caused great alarm among the wealthy families of Virginia, especially because of the coalition that formed between former indentured servants, both free and enslaved Africans, and smaller landowners.
The restlessness and threats from the population continued even though Bacon's Rebellion was defeated. The House of Burgesses, which was the elected governing body of Virginia, undertook to pass new legislation intended to drive a wedge between the groups that had participated in the coalition to make further rebellions less likely (Allen, 1994, 1997; Morgan, 1972, 1975). Among other things, the House of Burgesses extended citizenship rights and privileges to former indentured servants, while withdrawing rights and privileges from Africans, both free and enslaved, as a way to differentiate the groups and make subsequent coalitions less likely. The same divide and conquer strategy had been used elsewhere, including in Ancient Greece, in Ireland, and in the Caribbean, even without the same racial distinctions (Allen, 1994, 1997; Patterson, 1991; Smedley & Smedley, 2012), so the actions in Colonial Virginia to encode these differences as racial is consequential historically.
The efforts in Colonial Virginia coincided with the expansion of the African slave trade, which provided large Colonial landowners with a solution to their problems of obtaining laborers to work the land that they were taking from the indigenous people. It became a solution, however, only after slavery was racialized and codified into law (Goodman et al., 2020; Morgan, 1975; Smedley & Smedley, 2012). The new “slave codes” that they passed stripped slaves of rights they had held previously, while extending rights to White indentured servants that paid them in the “wages of Whiteness” (Du Bois, 1992 [1935, 1962]; Morgan, 1972, 1975; Patterson, 1991; Smedley & Smedley, 2012). Until the passage of the slave codes, privileges were assigned based on religion, as well as gender. Christians were differentiated from infidels or heathens. As African slaves began to convert to Christianity, being Christian no longer set slave owners apart from slaves, and some slaves who had converted to Christianity sued successfully for their freedom (Allen, 1994, 1997; Morgan, 1975). As a consequence, the 1705 Slave Codes adopted in Colonial Virginia declared that “negros, mulattos, or Indians, although Christian, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, and other infidels” did not have the same rights as White Christians (An act concerning Servants and Slaves, 1705). Overlaying racial categories based on skin color onto slavery in the colonies solved the problem for large landowners of what to do with slaves who converted to Christianity (Goodman et al., 2020).
Although some people have tried to write race back into history (Jordan, 1969), there is no evidence that it was a meaningful concept prior to the late 17th century despite interaction among people from different geographical regions in the Ancient world and through the Middle Ages (Hannaford, 1996). The first recognized use of the term race to mean different groups of people was from a short travelogue in 1684 (Bernier, 1684), and the term White was not used in the U.S. colonies until 1691 (Smedley & Smedley, 2012). Defining rights by racial classifications and differentiating Whites from others was explicit in Colonial Virginia only with the adoption of the 1705 Slave Codes (An act concerning Servants and Slaves, 1705). An active discussion arose about the meaning of race later in the 18th century, but this was after the codification of racial categories in Colonial Virginia (Allen, 1994, 1997; Bernasconi, 2022; Goodman et al., 2020; Hannaford, 1996; Painter, 2011; Smedley & Smedley, 2012). The Slave Codes solved two problems for the Virginia colonists.
First, as had been the case in both Ancient Greece and Rome (Patterson, 1982, 1991), the expansion of slavery created the potential for rebellion when small landowners became unable to compete with slave labor, and they risked themselves falling into debt and perhaps enslavement. Their potential rebellion and growing unrest, as occurred in Colonial Virginia, led to extending new rights to small landowners and in Colonial Virginia, even to landless former indentured servants as a means to buy their loyalty and prevent future rebellions. Second, unlike in Ancient Greece and Rome where the growing numbers of freed slaves contributed further to the unrest with small landowners, the absolute subjugation of African slaves and the withdrawal of rights from free Africans in Colonial America helped minimize the fear of slave revolts (Morgan, 1972). Under the newly adopted codes, slaves could not own property, had no standing in court, and further, manumission was forbidden. Miscegenation was also outlawed, even though it had been fairly widespread before these new laws were in place. Smedley and Smedley (2012) argue that these codes differentiated slavery in the British colonies from those in Spanish colonies, where there were frequent intimate relationships among the Spanish, indigenous people, and African slaves. Despite the routine rape of enslaved African women by White slave owners, because the Virginia slave codes redefined the status of a child by the legal status of the mother rather than as was traditionally the case by the status of the father, the children of these unions had no legal rights in the British colonies. These relationships were more ambiguous in Spanish colonies. The Virginia slave codes became more general throughout the colonies in the slave states, contributing to the embodiment in law as well as custom that skin color and other physical characteristics defined race and were associated with slavery.
2 THE RACIAL HIERARCHY
The Slave Codes in Colonial Virginia enshrined in law a racial hierarchy, with Whites in a dominant position, Africans in the lowest status position, and other groups, including indigenous people, Asians, and others in between. The codification of this hierarchy shifted the narrative from religion and language or lineage to race in ways that have become widely adopted and consequential, although not necessarily openly acknowledged. Perhaps the best articulation of the development and meaning of a racial hierarchy is the work of Mills (1997) in his book, The Racial Contract. Mills (1997, pp. 14, 16–17) argues that race is not an afterthought of the racial polity, nor an exception to the focus otherwise on freedom and equality, but is a central constituent of it. As a political philosopher, Mills (1997) endeavored to raise questions about the interpretation of the social contract from 18th Century Enlightenment philosophy, which formed the basis for both the American and the French Revolutions. Mills calls attention to the failure of analyses of the social contract to recognize the centrality of race in the actual history of these revolutions, thus creating a false and misleading picture. According to Mills (1997), the social contract was an historical fiction, which from the outset, applied only to White, Christian, land-owning men. In contrast, he argued, the Racial Contract was a more accurate representation of what had actually happened historically, namely, that Nonwhites were treated as “subject races” who were subordinated to Whites. Although written into the Declaration of Independence which claimed that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” this was not true at the time it was written, nor subsequently. Mills (1997, p. 4) argues that the traditional interpretation of the idea of the social contract obfuscates the power and domination of Whites over Nonwhites, while the Racial Contract, based on the actual history of such domination, addresses “conquest, imperialism, colonialism, white settlement, land rights, race and racism, slavery, jim crow, reparations, apartheid, cultural authenticity, national identity, indigenismo, Afrocentrism, etc.” which have defined the relationships among people in most of the world since the Enlightenment.
Mills (1997, pp. 9–19) argues that the Racial Contract has a political component about the proper relationship of men (people) to government, a moral component about the proper relationship of men to each other, and an epistemological component, which Mills defines as “epistemological ignorance,” that is, the agreement among Whites not to know the world that they themselves have made. Because the purpose of the Racial Contract is the privileging of Whites and the exploitation by Whites of Nonwhites, only Whites are parties to the Racial Contract, while Nonwhites are simply subject to it. Importantly, although the codification of race into law may have originated in the American colonies, the Racial Contract has since become applicable around the world. According to Mills (1997, pp. 28–30), White settler societies followed policies of “extermination, displacement, and/or herding onto reservations of the aboriginal population,” and by World War I controlled 85% of the world as “colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths.” Thus, according to Mills (1997, p. 30), although “we live in a world built on the Racial Contract … most whites don't think about it or don't think about it as the outcome of a history of political oppression but rather as just ‘the way things are.’”
Mills (1997, pp. 41–53) argues that because the Racial Contract is about exploitation, it is centrally concerned with the protection of private property. The Racial Contract also defines space in that Whites and lands where Whites reside are defined as civilized, whereas Nonwhites and lands where Nonwhites live are defined as savage or barbaric. Hence, in their view, Whites have the right to occupy Nonwhite lands, because Whites bring civilization and modernization to otherwise “unoccupied” lands. Given this presumption, Whites considered it not only morally acceptable, but a moral obligation, to clear the savages from such places, if necessary by extermination or subjugation. Once Whites took over such lands, it then became a primary occupation to keep Nonwhites “in their place.” In their domination, White bodies became the norm of what constitutes beauty, and White cognition was needed to certify, for example, in courts, Nonwhite cognition (Mills, 1997, pp. 53–62). Despite this, in the context of civil rights movements around the world, Mills (1997, p. 73) argues that the Racial Contract has written itself out of existence, even though the legacy of White supremacy still shapes economic, political, legal, and moral interactions among groups in the current period as they did in the past. Hence, the epistemological ignorance that has always been part of the Racial Contract has been transformed into a kind of colorblind ideology that denies the ongoing existence of a racial hierarchy, despite the inequality that continues to privilege Whites and to keep other groups in their place (Haney Lopez, 2006). Finally, Mills (1997, pp. 127–130) notes that the Racial Contract is not “essentialist,” because “Whiteness is not really a color at all, but a set of power relations” about which we need to know how they played themselves out historically.
3 BEYOND SLAVERY: SLAVE-LIKE CONDITIONS WHEREVER CHEAP LABOR IS NEEDED
Despite the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the slave society that was created by the Empire continued for many centuries but ultimately transitioned into feudalism in most of Europe during the Middle Ages (Patterson, 1991). Given this history, slavery as such was not actively practiced in European countries by the Age of Exploration when European powers began to circumnavigate the globe in search of trade and treasure, although other forms of oppression continued. Slave-like conditions had already existed in the colonies in the form of indentured servants or transportees (those arrested for various offenses including vagrancy who were thus forcibly expelled, for example, from Britain). Many have argued that the conditions faced by many indentured servants were not that different from slavery (Allen, 1994, 1997; Morgan, 1972, 1975; Williams, 2021 [1944]). Indentured servants and transportees could be bought and sold, were subject to physical punishment, and often had their terms of service extended for minor or even trumped-up infractions. Further, many indentured servants died before the end of their terms of indenture, so many were never able to escape their subordinated status. Such conditions were prevalent in the American colonies, in the Caribbean, in Australia, and in other parts of the globe that were being colonized. Importantly, depending on the structure of the economy and the need for labor, as Williams notes (2021 [1944]: 4), “Unfree labor in the New World was brown, white, black, and yellow; Catholic, Protestant, and pagan.” Racial categories became differentiated, especially in the latter part of the seventeenth century, only when they served the interests of large plantation owners and investors, and slavery became associated with dark skin color only where it was cheaper than alternative forms of labor. Williams (2021 [1944]: 14) argues further, “Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor … The features of the man, his hair color and dentrifrice, his ‘subhuman’ characteristics so widely pleaded, were only the later rationalizations to justify a simple economic fact: that the colonies needed labor and resorted to Negro labor because it was cheapest and best.” This claim is consistent with those of others who studied the original documents of the period (Allen, 1994, 1997; Morgan, 1975; Smedley & Smedley, 2012).
It is noteworthy that the abolitionist movements that arose in England, in America, and in France reflected the Enlightenment claims of the rights of “men” to challenge governmental authority, which they declared needed their consent. In this context, the racialization of slavery was essential to justify the enslavement and brutalization of Africans and indigenous people, while declaring that the rights of Europeans should be protected. For example, slavery was outlawed in France following the French Revolution, but much of the wealth of the country was derived from slavery in French colonies, such as Haiti (called Saint-Domingue at the time). Even after the Haitian slaves successfully overthrew the French and declared their freedom as an independent country, France subsequently threatened war and extracted reparation payments to former slave owners that impoverished Haiti for more than a century (Piketty, 2020). Of course, in the American colonies, there was so much investment in a racialized slavery that it required fighting a civil war to end the formal practice of slavery in the U.S.
Davis (1984) argues that there were many forms of slave-like conditions that continued following the end of slavery and that these continue to the present in many parts of the world. Further, even after slavery was finally ended in the U.S., the Caribbean, and in Western European countries, the strong belief in a racial hierarchy did not end. Because of the extreme consequences of how people are classified or categorized in the context of a widely accepted racial hierarchy, decisions about who should be counted as White has been a constant source of disagreement in both law and culture, extending from the period when race was codified in law. It is still a major source of disagreement and ambiguity. The historical record shows that there is no settled racial classification system that remains stable. Not only do many people challenge how they are viewed by others, but they also continually seek to redefine themselves in ways that present themselves and members of their group in a more positive light.
4 THE ELASTICITY AND AMBIGUITY OF WHITENESS
As a master status (Ridgeway & Kricheli-Katz, 2013), race is one of the characteristics that we now notice almost immediately about others, and in doing so, we act on the consequences of our assumptions about racial classifications (Omi & Winant, 2014). Even though scholars argue that race is not biologically real, race is very real in its consequences, as indicated by the continued evidence of extreme racial inequality on all of the dimensions that make it possible for people to have decent lives (Reskin, 2012). Although some recent research in biology has claimed that there are biological markers of race, especially with regard to medicines that ostensibly work better for some groups of people more than others, there is far more variation within groups that we define by race than there is between them (Monk, 2014, 2022). Whether biologically real or not, race is clearly socially real, and importantly, it is also hierarchically organized. Whites are continually favored for positions of leadership, authority, status, and material and psychic rewards. Thus, because of the privileges associated with Whiteness, the determination of who should be defined as White has had a long and tortuous scholarly history that became regularly contested in the law and enacted in everyday intergroup relations (Painter, 2011). Among prominent scholars, there has been over many decades a great deal of effort given to measuring racial differences and to associating traits with purported racial groups. There has been a lot of attention to head and brain sizes and slopes, as well as measurement of almost every type of body part to determine who should be included within which racial groups (Goodman et al., 2020). Despite decades of research by scholars in both the U.S. and Europe who endeavored to find scientific evidence that would justify the superior qualities of Whites over others (Painter, 2011), there is little consistency in the groupings or of the qualities attributed to Whites and others. Further, the evidence that has been claimed over the last century of such research has varied with historical circumstances and in terms of the rationales used to define Whiteness.
The consequences of being defined as White or being denied the claim to Whiteness in the U.S. have been profound. Among immigrants to the U.S., being defined as White determined the ability to become a citizen, to vote, to own land, and often whether one could enter and remain in the country. Based on a 1790 law, only White people could be naturalized as citizens of the United States, and this requirement was not completely eliminated until 1952 (Haney Lopez, 2006). Over this period of time, there were many efforts by applicants for citizenship to gain legal status as White. As Haney Lopez (2006, p. 1) notes, in cases brought before courts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those denied the classification as White were from Hawaii (before statehood), China, Japan, Burma, and the Philippines, while those from Mexico and Armenia were declared to be White. There were mixed rulings with regard to those from Syria, India, and Arabia. Because the courts had to explain the rationale for their rulings, the record shows dramatic inconsistencies, with the courts sometimes defining those considered Caucasian to be White, while at other times denying such claims as relevant to who should be considered White. Similarly, at times the courts relied on skin color, but in the case of a Japanese applicant, the courts relied instead on custom and what they defined as common knowledge. In fact, the courts vacillated back and forth between claims about scientific evidence to define race and their reliance on what they considered to be common knowledge (Haney Lopez, 2006). Ultimately, according to Haney Lopez (2006, p. 8), the law defined “the spectrum of domination and subordination that constitutes race relations.” Haney Lopez (2006) goes further to claim that the law not only interpreted who was defined as White, but the law also created race by deciding who was able to enter or remain in the country and who could have intimate relationships with others.
The difficulty of classifying racial groups is reflected in the inconsistencies and contradictions in the schemas offered over the years by elites in politics, law, science, and popular wisdom. Despite the many changes over time, many still believe that racial differences are identifiable, but the reality both in biology and in external physical features is that there is a shading across features among members of every ostensible racial group that belies any firm boundaries about who belongs to a given racial category and who does not when considered globally (Monk, 2014, 2021, 2022). Many people in both North and South America come from a mixture of European, African, and indigenous mating over time. Across both continents, however, being White is still an economic resource (Harris, 1993), while the acknowledgment and relevance of African ancestry, especially in South and Central America and the Caribbean, are often minimized.
Throughout much of the last three centuries, when defining race has been so central to scholarship and science, alarm has been raised by members of dominant White groups in the Americas and in Europe about the possibility of their being threatened by the growth of Nonwhite groups in their presence. Although economic competition for jobs was always a factor in the background, there were major concerns as well about being outbred during periods of high immigration. Concern about the “mongrelization” of the White population by interbreeding with Nonwhites, especially those with African ancestry, was a major policy concern in the U.S. during the early years of the twentieth century when immigration was especially high. Such concerns fed the eugenics movement and even programs of sterilization of those considered feeble minded. Racial purity was also a central theme in the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II, and the Nazis actually borrowed the claims from the U.S. eugenics movement in their own search for racial purity (Maddow, 2023). Concerns about racial purity have once again become prominent in political discourse among right-wing political parties across much of the Western and developed world at present, including in the United States.
Right-wing political parties have raised alarms about the growing race/ethnic diversification of the population of every major developed country. Despite the decline in the birthrate of native-born populations in such countries and the economic need in these countries for immigration, right-wing parties have tried to hold back the demographic changes that are underway and return to a period of guaranteed White dominance. The goals of such groups are decidedly undemocratic, and many have taken steps to try to undermine majority rule by putting in place new arguments about foundational documents that have challenged the basic tenets of liberal democracy (Andersen, 2018, 2020; MacLean, 2017; Mayer, 2016). Despite the changes in laws and culture following the aftermath of the Holocaust, the emergence of civil rights movements in the 1960s, and the impact of globalization in the post-World War II period, many of the protections that were put in place to further democratic principles and to become more inclusive have been challenged by recent political movements. Such groups have increasingly turned to violence and to efforts to capture governments by using authoritarian rhetoric about the threats of the immigration of Nonwhites to “White” countries (Clark, 2020).
In many major cities in the U.S. and Western Europe, the populations are multicultural, often with Whites already a minority in some of these locations. Because immigrants tend to enter through gateway cities before spreading out to other areas, many advanced countries are facing a rural-urban conflict that is affecting the rise of nativist parties in their countries. The growing political divide is also affected by age and education, with older Whites without a college degree being especially uncomfortable with the changing demographics in their countries. The growing political divides have led to the rise of right-wing political parties and movements across many developed countries, and in some cases, these groups have been gaining political support despite their appeals to violence as a political strategy often based on anti-immigrant sentiments. Their concerns, however, are not only about the patterns of migration, but as in earlier periods, about maintaining dominance in politics and the economy.
In the United States, for example, even if there were dramatically decreased immigration, the population would continue to become more multicultural because of the high concentration of the children of immigrants and the extent to which they and their children are forming relationships with those outside their own race/ethnic groups. Further, it remains to be seen whether the definitions of race/ethnic categories will shift and how various group members will choose to define themselves over future decades (Alba, 2018, 2020; Alba & Foner, 2014). The direction of the future depends a great deal on whether various groups who have the opportunity to do so will define themselves as White and whether others will acknowledge them as White and allow them to be incorporated into the White classification as happened in past centuries for the Irish, Italians, Jews, Greeks, and others. Of special interest in U.S. politics is whether Hispanic/Latinx people will primarily define themselves as White or whether most will give more emphasis to their Hispanic heritage and similarly, whether Asians will be able to move from the status of what Hacker (1992) called “probationary Whites” to either a White or at least a Non-Black category (Hochschild et al., 2012). Both Hispanic/Latinx people and Asians have had a high rate of intermarriage with Whites, so their children and their children's children increasingly fall into the blurred or hybrid categories about which right-wing political leaders have been concerned and through which more progressive groups have seen a multicultural future (Frey, 2018; Lewis & Cantor, 2016).
Alba (2020) argues that the current evidence suggests that those from mixed backgrounds with one White parent have been fluid in their self-identification, and in general, should not necessarily be considered as Nonwhite as the U.S. Census Bureau currently classifies them. Instead, he argues that there is a strong likelihood of an expanded mainstream, depending on the structural opportunities available for integration. Kim (2023), however, argues that White dominance has to be understood as also having a strong component of Black subordination in which both Whites and other people of color draw boundaries between themselves and those with African ancestry. Alba (2020) finds similar evidence that those with Black ancestry are not like other minority or mixed groups in their experience of becoming part of the expanded mainstream.
Thus, in addition to recognizing the increasingly complex nature of race/ethnic classifications and the difficulty of trying to fit individual people into groups with defined boundaries, more attention has also been given in recent years to the need to move away from binary categories with regard to race, gender, and class and to take into account the multidimensionality of how people are identified and treated. Crenshaw (1989) is credited with introducing the concept of intersectionality as a way to describe this multidimensionality. In doing so, she argues that failing to consider how race and sex intersect contributes to making lower status groups like Black women invisible, thus making it difficult to address the kinds of issues of special consideration to them. Others have elaborated on Crenshaws discussion of intersectionality and added class as a key dimension that needs to be considered along with race and sex, especially when taking into account those who are more marginalized in society (Andersen, 2001; McCall, 2005).
For example, the research evidence shows that when we think of women, we think primarily of White women, and when we think of Blacks, we think primarily of Black men (Ridgeway & Kricheli-Katz, 2013). Hall et al. (2019) review research evidence that shows that White men are prototypically considered “just right” in terms of masculinity, while White women are prototypically considered “just right” in terms of femininity. In contrast, both Black men and women are thought of as too masculine, and both Asian men and women are thought of as too feminine. Such widely shared cultural beliefs mean that Black men, for example, are often thought of as dangerous or frightening, and thus if in leadership positions, Black men have to signal that they are not a threat (Livingston & Pearce, 2009). Asian men often have difficulty obtaining leadership positions because they are thought of as not agentic enough. Because of these prototypical and intersectional characterizations, Black women are often invisible, as are Asian men, while Asian women are often expected to be subordinate, and if they are not, they are likely to receive backlash.
As noted, prior to the invention of race, the primary divisions among groups of people were based on citizenship, lineage, or religion. Especially through the Middle Ages, violent religious conflicts, often among Christians, Muslims, and Jews were prominent in world history. Currently, even in countries with ostensible freedom of religion, we have seen anti-Muslim sentiment growing across much of the Western and developed world. Hence, religion is once again becoming as important a distinction among groups of people as race, class, and gender, raising again issues about a clash of civilizations that threaten the purported White, Christian West (Alba & Foner, 2014; Crul, 2016; Koopmans, 2013).
5 WHITE PRIVILEGE, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND WHITE COLORBLINDNESS
In the context of the epistemological ignorance that Mills (1997) argues characterizes the Racial Contract, the idea that Whites enjoy a type of privilege that benefits them over others has often invoked protests and claims of an ideological agenda. Yet, the evidence is quite clear that Whites, and especially White men, are disproportionately represented in positions of authority, power, status, and high rewards compared to other groups (Reskin, 2012). Further, there is strong research evidence that observing the inequality by which White men dominate positions of authority across domains contributes to the development of status expectations that become widely shared cultural assumptions that White men deserve to be in such positions because they are more competent, worthy, likable, and leaderlike (Ridgeway, 2019). In other words, the very fact that White men are more likely to hold such positions creates its own justification for their being chosen to hold such positions on the argument that they are often the “best candidate.” According to Ridgeway (2011, 2014), it is the link between the positional inequality that White men enjoy and the categorization of them as Whites and men that reinforces their claim to such positions, provides them with the benefit of the doubt from others, and gives them cumulative advantage.
Such preference and privilege are also evident in everyday interactions, as McIntosh (1989) describes in her widely reported analysis of White privilege that argues that Whites and men frequently find themselves in situations where their own competence and leadership qualities are validated, because most of those they encounter in positions of authority look like them, enact good will toward them, and provide them with further opportunities that enhance their future. Whether in the media, schools, religious organizations, government, the courts, entertainment, or in other domains, Whites and men will find themselves well represented in higher-status positions and will often share the assumption that they belong and that they merit such positions. Certainly, in the family, men are often dominant, and that is perhaps especially so in White households, where White men are more likely to earn more in income and have more resources to provide for their wives and children than Nonwhite men (Hartmann, 1976).
Analyses of racial inequality in both the media and in scholarly work have far too often assumed that the main problem to be addressed with regard to inequality is the bias against racial minorities and women, which is often attributed to unconscious processes of which the individual is not aware. But DiTomaso (2015) argues that it is the bias for Whites and men that is the primary dynamic by which racial and gender inequality gets reproduced. More attention is needed to how biases for Whites and men are enacted, especially with regard to the positional inequality that Ridgeway (2011) argues is the source of reproducing inequality and to the stereotype content that treats White men as the normative ingroup (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Fiske et al., 2002). Given these processes of favoritism and privilege, Whites and men enjoy ongoing advantages that position them for success, rewards, and honor. Obviously, not all White men hold such positions, but disproportionately, White men are represented in positions of honor and reward, and this contributes overall to both the experience of and the cognitive embeddedness of White privilege.
Positional inequality overlays White dominance and enables it to perpetuate White privilege and power. As Reskin notes (2012), there is a race discrimination system that affects many domains at the same time and in interrelation, including in housing, jobs, education, criminal justice, and beyond (Omi & Winant, 2014). An important dynamic that makes this possible, of course, is that the interpretation of who is competent has a decidedly self-referent quality, such that those in positions of power evaluate those who are most like them as the most qualified (DiTomaso et al., 2007; Rivera, 2012). In addition, the cognitive effects of both the racial hierarchy and assumptions about a normative ingroup, both of which privileges White men, mean that others in positions of authority also give preference to and give higher ratings to White men when asked to provide evaluations (DiTomaso, 2015; DiTomaso et al., 2007). Given these dynamics, Nonwhites will be at a disadvantage in both hiring and promotion decisions. As candidates, Nonwhites start from a position of inequality, where it is difficult for them to get the same quality and level of education, gain the same amount of experience, and gain access to the most relevant prior positions, all of which contribute to their being thought of as less qualified.
The dominance of Whites in the racial hierarchy that is still so widely accepted as part of shared cultural beliefs and everyday practices (Markus & Moya, 2010; Omi & Winant, 2014) is the foundation of White supremacy. Participants in right-wing political movements endeavor to hold onto dominance for Whites and to suppress, restrict, and exploit Nonwhites around the globe. There is not only a political struggle that is underway about whether Whites will be able to maintain their dominance and power over the lives of others, but such a struggle is supported by the epistemological ignorance (Mills, 1997) that denies the structures of advantage and disadvantage that characterize intergroup relations. There is both denial that the past history of domination of Whites over Nonwhites has any continued effects on the present, and there have even been efforts, for example, in the United States, to make it illegal for schools to teach about the past and for public bodies to acknowledge it (Wallace-Wells, 2021).
In the United States, White supremacist groups have been resurgent in the last several decades, and they have been given new legitimacy in the right-wing politics of recent years (Clark, 2020). But nationalist movements in Western Europe and beyond have also had a resurgence, with a number of countries electing or coming close to electing leaders from these movements. For White supremacy groups, talk about colorblindness is already a step too far, given their agenda to preserve the purity of the White race and to prevent Nonwhites from “replacing” them in positions of power or authority. Such groups have aligned themselves with anti-government militia groups that endorse an ideology of violence against their political enemies, and unfortunately, there are too many examples where they have acted on those views with deadly consequences (Campbell, 2022; Mogelson, 2022).
Haney Lopez (2006, p. 148) calls the effort to erase any recognition of racial distinctions from public discussion “colorblind White dominance,” which he argues allows for the continued bias for Whites (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). Although the category of who counts as White is expanding, the underlying assumptions about a racial hierarchy reinforce inequality and simultaneously deny that race is aligned with social practices and with inequality. Haney Lopez (2006) argues that although colorblindness, which presumes that race should not be taken into account in decision-making, was initially introduced as a criterion for promoting racial equality in the context of civil rights legislation, that it has now become a tool for promoting reactionary responses to any efforts to remedy the existence of White dominance and racial inequality. In the current period, there is a preference among dominant and majority groups to promote a colorblind ideology that argues that we are really all the same and therefore any mention of racial differences is itself racist, while those who favor a multicultural future are more likely to be supported by subordinate groups who want to hold onto their own racial or ethnic identities while still being considered legitimate and equal participants of the larger society (Dovidio et al., 2009). In this context, colorblindness does not allow attention to inequality, whereas multiculturalism does. As Markus and Moya (2010) note, however, race and ethnicity, and indeed the racial hierarchy, must be taken into account in order to address inequality and to provide remedies that are meaningful.
6 DOING RACE
…Race and ethnicity are central to understanding individual and collective behavior in the United States and throughout the world; they are important resources in answering the universal questions ‘who am I?’ and ‘who are we?’ They shape the ways people identify with some peoples and groups, and how they derive or are denied power and privilege from those affiliations. They also shape the ways people discriminate against, distance themselves from, and wield influence over other peoples and groups. Going to school and work, renting an apartment or buying a house, watching television, voting, listening to music, reading books and newspapers, attending religious services, and going to the doctor are all everyday activities that are influenced—explicitly or implicitly—by widespread assumptions about race and ethnicity, including who counts, whom to trust, whom to care about, whom to include, and why. Race and ethnicity are powerful precisely because they organize modern society and play a large role in fueling violence around the globe. For all these reasons, race and ethnicity must be taken into account when formulating public policy.
Markus and Moya (2010) argue that we do race both in our everyday interactions and at the structural level by embedding such differentiation into institutions and in policies and practices that fix people in their place. Their analyses are quite consistent with work by Omi and Winant on racial formation (2014).
Perhaps the most important insight from the analysis of Markus and Moya (2010) is that they provide a framework for helping us to understand that the historical circumstances under which racial categories were created, codified in law, and then enacted through the centuries still have a legacy in the present that is continually recreating and reconstituting racial differences in our everyday experiences. In other words, the past is continually in the present, and what happened in the past still has an impact on what happens to people and groups every day in the most mundane and the most profound of their daily activities. It is not, therefore, true that those in the present who have continued to benefit from the existence of racial inequality have no responsibility or obligation or engagement in the processes by which racial inequality is continually created and thereby affects who gets what out of life. Because we continually do race, even if we live in a state of epistemological ignorance (Mills, 1997), we need to accept the role that we ourselves play in perpetuating racial inequality and join the efforts of those who have endeavored to interrupt those processes in the interests of social justice and a more inclusive and equitable society. As noted by Kendi (2019), we need to be anti-racists, not just “not racists” in these efforts.
7 WHITE ALLIES, ADVOCATES, AND ACTIVISTS AND THE NEED FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
White people can be part of the legal, political, and social challenges to White supremacy and to the racial hierarchy in concert with those who have been designated as Nonwhite and been the subject of oppression and exploitation. The role that Whites are likely to play in such efforts, however, will not be the same as for those who experience the world through subordinate positions and who are marginalized in terms of their self-identity and social roles. White people can be supportive of social justice and can take on the role of allies, advocates, or activists (Chrobot-Mason et al., 2020; Creary, 2023; Radke et al., 2020). When in leadership positions, White people can promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organizations, endeavor to be inclusive in their hiring decisions, be attentive to how assignments are distributed in their organizations, and to whom is given the benefit of the doubt. As coworkers, they can support social change efforts and can share learning and social support. They can cheer others on, encourage them, mentor them, and support them when they take on important and/or difficult responsibilities. As subordinates, Whites can be respectful and can do their part to help make the organization successful and give credit when warranted to those with whom they work.
Importantly, allies and advocates have to use their own privileges to support more equitable arrangements, without taking over or assuming that their own roles are central to such efforts. They need to learn more about the lived experiences of marginalized groups without expecting to be taught by them, and they need to be humble and willing to learn from and be corrected by others as they play a more supportive role. For those who have been used to being the center of attention, to being given credit for successful outcomes, to being given deference and goodwill from others, taking on the role of ally or advocate can sometimes be uncomfortable and even frustrating. But it is an essential part of the change process.
8 CONCLUSION
In this paper, I have tried to bring clarity to our understanding of race as a social category, to provide information about the historical invention of race in Colonial America, to the implications of a racial hierarchy that still affects the present as it has in the past, and to address the crucial issues of the fluidity, ambiguity, and uncertainty about racial categories, as well as to call attention to how they have evolved through a contentious process in both law and culture. In that regard, race is not a fixed category; it is an outcome of conflict and struggle. Such struggles are ongoing as those who end up being disfavored relative to others continually try to redefine themselves and escape the stigma that others try to associate with them. I have also tried to provide some clarity to the concepts of White privilege, White supremacy, and White colorblindness. Finally, I have outlined the argument about race as a process rather than a thing, and I have also raised some critical issues with regard to how Whites, especially White men, can take on the role of allies, advocates, and activists in support of social justice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Because of my 2013 book, The American Non-dilemma: Racial Inequality without Racism (New York: Russell Sage Foundation) in which I make an argument for the importance of bias toward Whites (and especially White men), I have been asked a number of times to write about various aspects of White privilege. In the development of this paper and others that I have authored recently, I have sought the wise advice of scholars who are experts on aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I have received very helpful comments and suggestions from among others: Bernardo Ferdman, Stella Nkomo, Corinne Post, Victor Ray, and Orlando Richard. My work has also been influenced by the scholarship of others who have addressed similar issues including: Rosalind M. Chow, Eric D. Knowles, Brian S. Lowery, and L. Taylor Phillips.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
I have no conflict of interest.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
