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Whiteness and Class Struggle
... In part because of the property restriction it imposed on citizenship, white settlers "spilled into the lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains" in search of the real estate that would qualify them for the right to belong to the nation-state (Wood 2009, 2). Land functioned not as "surplus value" of white labor, the wages of whiteness Ignatiev (2003) and others seek to explain the consolidation of white identity across class lines. Instead, these settlers sought legal rights as property owners, while inadvertently and literally preparing the ground for capital's expansion. ...
... Damit stehtHund den Ideen von W.E.B. DuBois (1985[1935) und den frühen, marxistisch inspirierten US-amerikanischen Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) nahe (vgl.Allen 2014aAllen [1994Allen ], 2014bAllen [1997;Ignatiev 2003;Roediger 1999Roediger [1991), die in der deutschsprachigen Rezeption jedoch weitgehend ignoriert werden. Hier dominieren privilegientheoretische und identitätspolitische Varianten der »Weißseinsforschung« (vgl.Karakayalı 2015).4 ...
The question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background.
This article criticises the political-economic analysis of settler colonial studies, which it draws out through an immanent critique of its most famous practitioners. It then offers a critical genealogy of the wider theoretical trend that secures it: the post-Cold War vogue of asserting the ever-increasing centrality of primitive accumulation in global capitalism – what we might term a mode of predation. Finally, it teases out the tensions and confusions in the reliance of settler colonial studies upon Marx’s concept of surplus populations, as well as problems abounding in Patrick Wolfe’s ‘logic of elimination’. Overall, it argues that the frequent claim that we inhabit a global settler modernity cannot be sustained through these notions, and that this claim is profoundly moral and academic, lacking political and analytical value. The insistence on the durability of settler colonialism amounts, in this literature, to a claim on behalf of settler colonial studies itself.
This paper explores the roles, disputes and strategies of four Italian trade unions in Capitanata (Apulia region) regarding the struggles to improve conditions for migrant farmworkers in the area. Detaching from previous academic trends, this dissertation focuses on local actors' actions, identifying the major differences when it comes to labour rights, living conditions and legal status of migrant farmworkers. Building upon some contributions regarding race and working class, the paper engages in a dialectic between black struggles and white claims, investigating if and how labour unions reproduce the hierarchical power structure inherent in the concept of whiteness. In the analysis, the fragmentation of unions' actions is displayed, and it is argued that the embeddedness of unions in broader structures of power stimulates the reproduction of extractive dynamics that might depower the strength of their efforts.
ABSTRACT This article contributes to the call for decolonial utopian work by examining one of the earliest utopian texts in the United States, Equality; or, A History of Lithconia. Using a close reading drawing on colonial context, the author argues that Equality criticizes management of the Euro-American settler state. The story's historical and philosophical content overwrites Indigenous bloodshed and critiques instead both Jeffersonian agrarian democracy and urbanized commerce. The junction between reason and religion in this Deist text displays its ideological commitment to terra nullis and a settler autarky that rearranges space for the betterment of a settler populace. Advocating an equal share of land and income among settlers, Lithconia's history praises an intelligent class that deploys reason and crafty social alliance to resolve Old World conflicts. Lithconia's universal income ultimately diverts the spoils of centuries of war against indigenous peoples, suggesting utopia and indigeneity occupy an incongruent relationship.
This paper explores punishment philosophy and practices in the United States from a critical criminological perspective, utilizing a racial capitalism framework to illustrate forces that impede prison abolition. The paper examines historic and contemporary punishments implemented against ‘others’ to show how such practices help to sustain white capital accumulation and white privilege. The paper also discusses a number of the individual social-psychological theories that assist in the maintenance of that system. Finally, the paper calls for the eradication of racial capitalism through a stronger revolutionary consciousness.
The concept of whiteness has been formally recognized in academia over the last two decades as a means to address a significant and missing dimension within discussions of race and ethnicity. However, notions of white racial identity have long been significant in the writings of scholars of color. Among the many examples include, William J. Wilson, who in 1860 wrote "What Shall We Do with the White People?" analyzing presumptions of whiteness in the Declaration of Independence and during the early years of the United States nation (Roediger 1998, 58).
Similarly, Frederick Douglass critiques the centering of the white experience in his famous speech, "What to the Slave Is Your Fourth of July?" (Douglass 1970, 349). In 1861 Harriet Jacobs describes the annual practice of "muster," a time when armed whites terrorized the enslaved population in anticipation of revolts. She suggests that this institution served to unite whites across class lines (Roediger 1998, 336). In 1891 Anna Julia Cooper examined the naturalization of whiteness in the women's organization Wimodaughsis (Cooper 1998, 88).
Mia Bay’s The White Image in the Black Mind thoughtfully uncovers discussions of whiteness in eighteenth and nineteenth century writings in slave narratives and by African American scholars (2000). However, "Discounting and suppressing the knowledge of whiteness held by people of color was not just a by-product of white supremacy but an imperative of racial domination" (Roediger 1998, 6).
Drawing from the intellectual tradition that these and other works established, this essay will summarize current trends in scholarship, broadly defined as “whiteness studies”.
The paper presents an empirical analysis of education policy in England that is informed by recent developments in US critical theory. In particular, I draw on ‘whiteness studies’ and the application of critical race theory (CRT). These perspectives offer a new and radical way of conceptualizing the role of racism in education. Although the US literature has paid little or no regard to issues outside North America, I argue that a similar understanding of racism (as a multifaceted, deeply embedded, often taken‐for‐granted aspect of power relations) lies at the heart of recent attempts to understand institutional racism in the UK. Having set out the conceptual terrain in the first half of the paper, I then apply this approach to recent changes in the English education system to reveal the central role accorded the defence (and extension) of race inequity. Finally, the paper touches on the question of racism and intentionality: although race inequity may not be a planned and deliberate goal of education policy neither is it accidental. The patterning of racial advantage and inequity is structured in domination and its continuation represents a form of tacit intentionality on the part of white powerholders and policy‐makers. It is in this sense that education policy is an act of white supremacy. Following others in the CRT tradition, therefore, the paper’s analysis concludes that the most dangerous form of ‘white supremacy’ is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo‐nazi groups, but rather the taken‐for‐granted routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream.
This paper identifies the common themes in 245-plus refereed articles on whiteness studies that were published in academic
journals after 1992 in an attempt to assess the implications of whiteness studies for the discipline of sociology. Of special
interest is the relationship between whiteness studies and Michael Burawoy’s call for public sociology. I argue that the emerging
field of whiteness studies identifies itself as a public sociology that is infused by the moral vision of critical sociology.
Nevertheless, the field does not accept professional sociology as Burawoy defined it. The ontological, epistemological, and
soteriological foundations of whiteness studies encourage the field to pander to one segment of the public—the marginalized—and
condemn another segment of the public—“privileged whites,” thus rendering impossible a democratic dialogue on one of the most
basic social issues of our time. Conflating Western epistemology with whiteness encourages a misreading of American social
scientific work on race relations, thus opening the door to a so-called hermeneutics of suspicion. The result is not an innocuous
“pop” sociology, but a partisan sociology, whose implications should caution sociologists against an uncritical embracing
of public sociology.
KeywordsPublic sociology-Whiteness studies-Race relations
The aim of this study was the investigation of the possible relationship between sport
participation and moral functioning between Greek handball team athletes. The instrument
that was used was developed by Gibbons, Ebbeck, and Weiss (1995). The sample consisted of
204 athletes, 107 men, 97 women. Factor analysis revealed 4 factors. Cronbach’s varied from
.81 up to .88. Statistical significant differences were indicated in the dependent variables of:
(1) lying, (2) violation of a rule, (3) intentional injury, and (4) deliberately hurting.
Conclusively, the results support the use of the instrument for measuring moral functioning
among Greek athletes.
Le texte de Peter Kolchin constitue une sorte de bilan critique des whiteness studies, a partir d’ouvrages parus aux Etats-Unis depuis le debut des annees 90. Faire la critique d’une critique d’ouvrages n’etait pas une chose facile, surtout de la part d’une non-specialiste dans ce domaine. La critique stimulante proposee par Peter Kolchin m’a toutefois amenee a lire d’autres etudes sur cette question, que je n’avais pas abordee dans mes precedents travaux, pour pouvoir me faire ma propre idee...
Scholarship on whiteness has grown dramatically over the past decade, affecting nu- merous academic disciplines from literary criticism and American studies to history, sociology, geography, education, and anthropology. Despite its visibility and quantity, the genre has generated few serious historiographical assessments of its rise, development, strengths, and weaknesses. This essay, which critically examines the concept of whiteness and the ways labor historians have built their analyses around it, seeks to subject historical studies of whiteness to overdue scrutiny and to stimulate a debate on the utility of whiteness as a category of historical analysis. Toward that end, the essay explores the multiple and shifting definitions of whiteness used by scholars, concluding that historians have employed arbitrary and inconsistent definitions of their core concept, some overly expansive or metaphorically grounded and others that are radically restricted; whiteness has become a blank screen onto which those who claim to analyze it can project their own meanings. The essay critically examines historians' use of W. E. B. Du Bois's reflections on the “psychological wage”—something of a foundational text for whiteness scholars—and concludes that the “psychological wage” of whiteness serves poorly as a new explanation for the old question of why white workers have refused to make common cause with African Americans. Whiteness scholars' assertions of the nonwhite status of various immigrant groups (the Irish and eastern and southern Europeans in particular) and the processes by which these groups allegedly became white are challenged, as is whiteness scholars' tendency toward highly selective readings of racial discourses. The essay faults some whiteness scholarship produced by historians for a lack of grounding in archival and other empirical evidence, for passive voice constructions (which obscure the agents who purportedly define immigrants as not white), and for a problematic reliance upon psychohistory in the absence of actual immigrant voices. Historians' use of the concept of whiteness, the essay concludes, suffers from a number of potentially fatal methodological and conceptual flaws; within American labor history, the whiteness project has failed to deliver on its promises.