Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

1/ “Whiteness” is not easily disentangled from White Supremacy—if it can be at all.

A thread (long):

2/ Just as “Blackness” was cobbled together out of various nations, tribes, tongues, and shades of brown, beginning with Gomes De Zurara’s bogus descriptions of African peoples as a beastly lot, for the very sake of justifying Prince Henry’s enslaving prowess, …

3/ … so “Whiteness” was cobbled out of various nations, tribes, tongues, and lighter shades of brown to form the “White Race.” There was no “White Race” until the turn of the 18th century.

4/ A notable divide was first made when, in 1640, a group of indentured servants, mostly of European descent, escaped from their mater in Virginia and were caught.

5/ When the captives were sentenced, John Punch—the lone African—was sentenced to life long servitude, whereas the Europeans were simply given additional years of service.

6/ Next, Elizabeth Keys, the daughter of a wealthy European man and an African slave, sued and won her freedom. How? Because her father was European, had asked for her emancipation in his will, and she was a baptized Christian.

7/ Laws were soon changed to state that the status of a child was to come from the mother and not from the father, coupled with laws stating that non-European men could not have marital relations with European women, …

8/ … effectively allowing “white” men the special status of having sex with and impregnating whom they will.

9/ Then in 1682, The House of Burgess limited citizenship to only those of European descent, specifically excluding “Negroes, Moors, Mullatoes, and Indians” who were to be considered “slaves to all intents and purposes.”

10/ And, largely, in response to Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-7), wherein both European and African slaves revolted against their masters, legal protections for indentured servants were granted to all and only those with “Christian” nations of origin (Virginia Slave Codes 1705),

11/ … with the “Negro” alone failing to meet the stated conditions for such protections, becoming thereby the lone permanent indentured slave class.

12/ Why the Slave Codes? To ensure that Europeans, no matter how poor, landless, or indentured, would never again unite in rebellion with the chosen slave class. But, in 1690 we see the first use of “white” in the legal code, via Virginia’s House of Burgess:

13/ “Whatsoever English or other white man or woman, being free, shall intermarry with a negro, mullato, or Indian man or woman, bond or free, shall within three months after marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever.”

14/ “White” was now a legal category, including all of European descent, all those not “negro, mullato, or Indian,” etc. In the 18th century, we are also given preudo-scientific reasoning to buttress this created category of “Whiteness,”…

15/ … Carolus Linnaeus’ (1758) and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s anthropological race categories—with “whites” or “Caucasians” as the undisputed superior race. It was also at this time, though already disproven by Robert Boyle a century earlier, …

16/ … that the Curse of Ham was peddled by Christians to justify the “White Race” as descendants of Shem and the “Negro Race” the descendants of Ham—the latter cursed to perpetual slavery under the former.

17/ Last, we could say the needle of “Whiteness” was last threaded at the first gathering of the then newly formed U.S. Congress in 1790. The first census counted only white men over 16, white men under 16, white women, all other free persons, and slaves (3/5’s, of course).

18/ But even more importantly, the first act of Congress, the Naturalization Act of 1790, deciding who were citizens, who could vote and receive land, etc., excluded non-Whites: ...

19/ “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, …

20/ … may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….” It is no wonder that the Dred Scot decision would later declare, “When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, …

21/ … and were not numbered among its ‘people or citizens.’ Consequently, the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply to them; “citizens” like those of the “white race,” as stated over and over in the ruling.

22/22 This is all to say that the construction of “Whiteness” itself, and the so-called “White Race,” is nearly inseparable from White Supremacy. The concept and category “White Race” was constructed for the very sake of Supremacy.