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

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

  Gar Lipow wrote:

> 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?

 

All the econ. history I've read indicates that after the Brits were kicked out, white workers were more prosperous in the US than in the "old country."  This encouraged labor-saving technical change, along with immigration from Europe.  US workers as being able to get land for themselves, which allowed access to democratic rights like voting (for free males).

 

I see the the "construction of whiteness" as a result, a symptom, of settler colonialism in what's now the US, which you describe well.

 

--

Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.

 

 

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