One of the more annoying things I heard some white people say during Barack Obama’s presidency is that he shouldn’t identify as black since he was half white. Curiously, it was extremely rare that I heard anyone refer to him as a “mulatto” which was once the legal term for this in many jurisdictions which determined whether or nor someone could be enslaved.
In fact, there were a whole plethora of terms in the New World for people of partial black ancestry, many of which originated in Haiti: e.g., Quadroon (half mulatto and half white), Octoroon or Metif (half Quadroon and half white), Griffe or Sambo (half black and half mulatto), Sacatra (half Griffe and half black), Meamelouc (half white and half Metif), Quarteron (half Meamelouc and half white), Sangmele (half quarteron and half white), Mango (half Griffe and half black). They even had words for people who were as little one-sixteenth (hexadecaroon) or one sixty-fourth (Sang-mêlé) black.
This tendency to classify people by their percentage of African ancestry was imposed by white people as a justification to deny others their rights or even to buy and sell them. It wasn’t invented by black people, but it forced them to see themselves as a group, and a group that actually could not make fine distinctions about what constituted blackness.
More than anything else, what marked someone as black is that custom or the law treated them as a subclass of human beings based on ancestry rather than appearance.
For poor whites, the most important thing was that they were not put in any of these classifications. This meant they were free to move about and to sell their labor. Their material conditions might be desperate but at least they couldn’t be enslaved. Eventually, the men among them were even granted to right to vote, and this added another important distinction that separated them from blacks.
So, this is the origin of race consciousness among non-land owning or property poor laborers. It’s why most people still consider Barack Obama more black than white, and why Obama feels this way himself.
I thought about this when I saw that a former marine and police officer is running for office in Kentucky as a Democrat and emphasizing the poor whites share a distrust of the legal system with blacks:
[John] Hicks argued that in places like the 6th District, there’s actually more commonality about mistrust of the police and the legal system among different racial and ethnic groups than it might appear…
…“I think the priority has to be to understand that everyone does have a difference of opinion. But that doesn’t make us that different because social justice, criminal justice issues affect everyone in this district,” Hicks said. “People of color don’t trust, and for sometimes very good reasons, because they feel the criminal justice system is broken.”
“And poor white folks in a rural part of this district, they also don’t trust the criminal justice system, largely because they can see that it’s geared towards wealthy folks because you can’t be working at Tire World in Nicholas County, making eight, nine, 10 bucks an hour, and post a million dollars bail when you get charged with a crime — and a wealthy person can,” Hicks said. “And that commonality, that thing that makes us far more alike than different, has to be talked about in these times.”
I hope that Mr. Hicks is correct that poor whites in Kentucky can relate to the Black Lives Matter protesters in the streets, but I am highly skeptical. The white guy working at Tire World in Nicholas County for ten bucks an hour may not be able to afford bail, but he’s also unlikely to be wrongly arrested or brutally mistreated by the police. In fact, these advantages basically constitute his sole claim to superiority over similarly situated blacks. Were blacks to suddenly stop suffering these injustices and indignities, all distinctions between them would disappear. Therefore, whether consciously or not, the poor white’s sense of self-worth is tied up in an inextricable way with the continuation of a system of oppression against blacks.
This is the legacy of a very old way of classifying and treating people, and it’s stubborn in its effects. The persistence of this way of thinking is why socialists continually fail to get Americans to think primarily in class terms.
“ Therefore, whether consciously or not, the poor white’s sense of self-worth is tied up in an inextricable way with the continuation of a system of oppression against blacks.”
Yep, their racism defines them.
Trump won their hearts when he came down that escalator and called Mexicans rapists. He’s about to once again call them pestilence carrying invaders,
and they will cheer and cheer and cheer.
.
It’s also true that Trump’s supporters aren’t predominantly poor/working-class whites; his supporters are primarily whites—across the income spectrum.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Regarding LBJ’s comment above, that is race and the utility of it in a nutshell right there. This has been the game since Reconstruction, and it still works today. The substantial beneficiaries have always been those at the top who economically exploit us all, and this is why Hicks is undoubtedly wrong about poor whites ever aligning with BLM. White people, culturally, have been thoroughly convinced of this, and it explains why many support a party that exists for no other purpose than to transfer public wealth to the 1% in the form of “tax cuts” at their expense, while fighting with every remaining tooth and nail they may have, against any program that might benefit them, as long as it will also benefit non whites.
Democrats and progressives wonder, “why do they vote against their own interests?” This is why, and there is no magical “messaging” that will break through that. The only way you can break through it is somehow have them see that the game is as LBJ described, and that working class whites have more in common with working class blacks and people of color. Which means they have to be truly convinced, culturally, that they we all are equal in that sense. But that would also mean, culturally, they have to give up on white supremacy, and that’s a very tall order, since for many, that’s all they have to hold onto, so forget it.
Not reconstruction. Bacon’s rebellion in the 1670s.
Those in power are skilled at turning one oppressed group against another. That was at the core of colonialism and the British were the world’s masters. Think of how they held down the entire Indian population (which then included what’s now Pakistan) with a handful of soldiers and administrators. They created and exploited divisions which at independence led to the split between majority-Hindu India and majority-Muslim Pakistan.
Human beings are not skilled at being human. We don’t have much empathy, we’re not good at standing in each other’s shoes. We’re skilled at exploiting advantages. But it doesn’t provide satisfaction. There are a lot of unhappy rich and powerful people. Trump’s the poster child.
The Dalai Lama recently spoke of how the source of happiness is a kind and open heart. I’m paraphrasing but that’s the essence. Having enough to meet one’s basic needs and to care for one’s loved ones is important. Beyond that, money and power are the booby prizes one goes for after having given up on the possibility of the much greater and truer happiness which flows when one lives from a kind and open heart.
Unfortunately the heart closes down when people are emotionally wounded and we all carry early wounds from childhood. It’s rare for people to carry open heartedness into adulthood. My sense is that’s the point of education, therapy and good spiritual work. Done well, the heart opens and one is returned to oneself. Not all at once but in degrees. Watch the Dalai Lama. One sees true compassion in his face and true happiness in his eyes. I don’t live from those places but I’ve had glimpses. For the most part, I don’t live in judgment but I struggle to open my heart. Every now and again it breaks open and those times are by far my most joyful. Like everyone else, I mostly sleepwalk through life.
Beautifully put. Well done.