Whiteness: Identity, Status, and Property (?)

“Whiteness as Property” by critical race theorist, Cheryl Harris, is asking us to widen our understanding of property beyond the scope of Locke and George’s contributions. Specifically, Harris urges us to consider how “whiteness”, as a “right to white identity as embraced by the law” is indeed a modern form of property (1726). Harris highlights that whiteness functions as each an identity, status, and form of property– defending the latter by noting that, “the fact that whiteness is not a ‘physical’ entity does not remove it from the realm of property” (1725). Whiteness, she argues, shares with physical property the ability to exclude, codified and enforced by the law. However, whiteness as property fuses the concept of property with questions of power, selection, and allocation (1729), ultimately creating value because it and its explicit and implicit benefits could be, and is, denied to some (1744).

To bolster her claims, Harris traces the evolution and legacy of two monumental Supreme Court cases, Plessy and Brown, to showcase their attention to de jure, rather than de facto, forms of racism. While her main focus rests on the inadequacies of the legacy of Brown I and II, I found one of her footnotes quite curious. Harris mentions, “The removal of de jure segregation resulted from the domestic pressure generated by the oppressed Black masses under the banner of equal justice under law as well as from the external dynamic of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence in the Third World. The United States was vulnerable to the charge that its domestic policies toward Black people residing in the United States were a better indication of its view of the emerging nations of Africa and Asia than its rhetoric of democracy” (1754). Contextualizing Brown v. Board in the Cold War moment makes its inability to address substantive and de facto inequities unsurprising, and perhaps predictable. The United States, as an empire, is unique in its rejection of its own status. Racism is written in the DNA of the U.S., making phrases like “We the people…” forever exclusive despite its appeal to both liberty and equality (an unlikely pair) on the global stage. What is rhetorically beneficial is prioritized, which is why Brown needed only to produce the bare minimum of equality under the law to keep the foundation of our international brand somewhat stable. Moreover, the Cold War, most basically representing the clash between Communism and Capitalism ideologies, is a clash between theories of private property. Compared to the Soviet Union, which generally attempted to advance economically-oriented rights, the United States emphasized more politically-oriented rights by which whiteness was undoubtedly protected and removed from class discontents. Whiteness could more easily function as property in the United States because whiteness superseded class distinction, a phenomenon aided by a disregard for social and economic rights in favor of political rights more easily formulated into rhetoric.

On another note, I want to pay attention to Harris’s section regarding the case Mashpee Tribe v. Town of Mashpee. Commenting on the ruling, Harris writes, “Fundamentally… the external imposition of definition maintained the social equilibrium that was severely challenged by the Mashpee land claims” (1765). This makes me wonder how certain groups are meant to remain the same over time despite external pressures to comply with changing cultural, social, and economic environments threatening the groups very survival. In other words, how is land connected to the perception of identity? How do claims to land depend on the stability, or even static-ness, of some identities? It is clear that the Mashpee Indians could not provide the vision whites wanted to have of them as “authentic”, even if this authenticity was not composed by the group it was meant to portray. In some ways, this pressure for cultures to remain unchanged in order for dominating groups to digest their presence reminds me of similar pressures imposed upon gentrifying neighborhoods today. In order to combat major, sterilizing, development, ethnic neighborhoods are sometimes saved by portraying the authenticity and richness of their culture. Cultural enclaves too must adapt to the market, and the construction of identity as portrayed to visitors can be crucial to its preservation. In a sense, claims to land are tied to how one presents their tie to it. If the presentation is convincing to outsiders, the better chance the tie has of surviving. Although the topic of gentrification deserves more attention, I found that Harris’s mention of the Mashpee case really struck a chord.

To sum it up, Harris’s “Whiteness as Property” makes a compelling argument as to why whiteness should indeed be understood as property, which makes her strong belief in affirmative action as a distributional, as opposed to corrective, form of justice convincing. However, as we have the luxury of hindsight, I do question how Harris, writing in 1993, underestimated the impasse that the U.S. finds itself in today. My parting questions revolve around her thoughts viewing whiteness as a “consolation prize” in that, “it does not mean that all whites will win, but simply that they will not lose, if losing is defined as being on the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy – the position to which Blacks have been consigned” (1758-59). How are we to get whites to view whiteness as property if some feel they are a part of the “forgotten America”, in which jobs, livelihoods, and the comforts whiteness used to automatically afford, feel as if they have been taken away? This “impasse” (which I see Trump wholly capitalizing from) has created a scenario in which whites don’t see whiteness as putting bread on the table, but as something explained to them solely through critique. How do you tell somebody they own a historically valued entity when they perceive themselves as having nothing without engendering defensiveness? Something to consider.