Race, the White Myth, and the American Bourgeoisie
“There is not a country in world history,” Howard Zinn writes, “in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States” (23).
Whiteness—that is, the white myth—is an elusive and ever-shifting qualifier, typically understood to mean “of European ancestry;” however, upon further interrogation, whiteness reveals itself as a signifier of power, class, and prowess in a nation that has thrived in its subjugation of ethnic minorities in the capitalist pursuit of wealth and global political, economic, and ideological superiority.
It must be noted that, while this paper interrogates whiteness and racial classifications, contemporary notions of “white” in the context of the …show more content…
Contemporary historians agree that modern racial classifications first arose at the beginning of the 17th century with the introduction of Western slavery in the New World. Whites, in an effort to morally justify the inherently immoral, postulated that the African, being a savage and less evolved race of man, was best suited for slavery. Whites cited, among others, craniological and phrenological research steeped in bias and scientific racism, particularly works such as Samuel George Morton’s Crania Americana and Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race.” Those who argued for polygeny—the genetic divergence of the human species along three distinct evolutionary paths—divided the human population into the Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid races. Polygenists based their conclusions on brain mass among the devised races and cranial morphology in relation to an ape’s skull. The most evolved of the races was the Caucasoid, a racial category encompassing the peoples of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The Negroid, or the peoples of sub-Saharan African, was the least advanced of the races, and the Mongoloid, or the peoples of East and Southeast Asia and the Americas, were between them. French writer and aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau writes in An Essay on the Inequalities of the Human Races of the white race’s “immense [intellectual] superiority” over the …show more content…
But Baldwin says that while the European would welcome the black American in Warsaw, in Chicago they would be viewed as enemies, for in the United States, blackness is inherent the antithesis of whiteness
“There is not a country in world history,” Howard Zinn writes, “in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States” (23).
Whiteness—that is, the white myth—is an elusive and ever-shifting qualifier, typically understood to mean “of European ancestry;” however, upon further interrogation, whiteness reveals itself as a signifier of power, class, and prowess in a nation that has thrived in its subjugation of ethnic minorities in the capitalist pursuit of wealth and global political, economic, and ideological superiority.
It must be noted that, while this paper interrogates whiteness and racial classifications, contemporary notions of “white” in the context of the …show more content…
Contemporary historians agree that modern racial classifications first arose at the beginning of the 17th century with the introduction of Western slavery in the New World. Whites, in an effort to morally justify the inherently immoral, postulated that the African, being a savage and less evolved race of man, was best suited for slavery. Whites cited, among others, craniological and phrenological research steeped in bias and scientific racism, particularly works such as Samuel George Morton’s Crania Americana and Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race.” Those who argued for polygeny—the genetic divergence of the human species along three distinct evolutionary paths—divided the human population into the Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid races. Polygenists based their conclusions on brain mass among the devised races and cranial morphology in relation to an ape’s skull. The most evolved of the races was the Caucasoid, a racial category encompassing the peoples of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The Negroid, or the peoples of sub-Saharan African, was the least advanced of the races, and the Mongoloid, or the peoples of East and Southeast Asia and the Americas, were between them. French writer and aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau writes in An Essay on the Inequalities of the Human Races of the white race’s “immense [intellectual] superiority” over the …show more content…
But Baldwin says that while the European would welcome the black American in Warsaw, in Chicago they would be viewed as enemies, for in the United States, blackness is inherent the antithesis of whiteness