Analysis Of George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment In Whiteness

RTC 1- Article 19: Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy” Article 19 in RTC discusses “possessive investment in whiteness”, but what does George Lipsitz mean by this phrase? First it is important to understand that the concept of race is a social construct, created to ensure and protect the rights of the European Americans ‘…because of realities created by slavery and segregation, by immigration restriction and Indian policy, by conquest and colonialism” (139) As this country began, and as institutions were being created and structured, it was always to ensure that ‘whites’ were protected, and would always be the beneficiaries of whatever it was that they were creating; hence, ‘positive investment in …show more content…
The laws of this country were changed and amended in order to ‘protect white homogeneity’ at all times. The story of the Chinese and the attitudes of the Whites towards the Chinese reaffirms the concept that Author George Lipsitz discusses in his article “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy”. Lipsitz’s describes how American policy “…restricted naturalized citizenship to ‘white’ immigrants, and provided pretexts for exploiting labor, seizing property, and denying the franchise to Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans.” (Lipsitz 140). The exploits that Takaki describes of the Chinese in America are the very definition of positive investment in whiteness. The Chinese were taxed on their gains from their labors because they were foreigners and yet, they could never become a citizen because of the law only allowing whites to be American citizens. The Chinese were paid less money for the same work as whites and they were used to advance this country during the time of westward expansion. This country never intended on fully including any minority into American society including the Chinese. The Chinese were also viewed as “…threats to white racial purity” (Takaki 188) like the Blacks and Natives. At the Constitutional convention in 1878, a U.S. senator stated, “Were the Chinese to amalgamate at all with our people, it would be the lowest, most vile and degraded of our race, and the result of that amalgamation would be a hybrid of the most despicable, a mongrel of the most detestable that has ever afflicted the earth.” (Takaki 188) The ideals of white supremacy were well established by the time the Chinese arrived but like all racialized minority groups, they too have suffered from the ills of positive investment in whiteness. (Lipsitz