[Pen-l] Wages of whiteness in 18th and 19th centure pyschic or real

[Gar Lipow <gar.lipow@xxxxxxxxx>]

In recent discussions (which I can't find dammit) there was discussion
of how Britain's Empire, and U.S. slavery benefited a small elite, but
not the white working classes of those nations. (That is important
because it reflects on the extent to which white support of racism and
militarism reflects material self-interest.)

My question, let us assume for the moment that this formulation is
true for slavery, and that racism in the U.S. was also idelogically
constructed around blackness and whiteness regardless of how it affect
other types of cultures and nations.

My question is, wherever the psychic wages of whiteness came from,
weren't the material wages primarily from the grab of land and natural
resources from the nations already present at the time of European
nation?  That is, when we think of land taken for timber and fur and
farming and canals and railroads, and more protein and bigger houses,
and plenty of fuel to keep warm weren't the white working classes
materially better off than they would have been even with the
impossible counterfactual of the cost of those invasions being spent
for their benefit? In short, did the construction of whiteness
actually generate enough loot in form of natural resources stolen from
First Nations to provide a genuine material wage of whiteness?

Also is this important?  There is no question that part of the core of
the creation of whiteness was a belief that all whites had benefited
from genocide and racism, that peace and equality were real material
threats to the standard of living of the newly created category of
"white". Does it matter a great deal whether this  belief was true or
false?
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