“Whiteness as Property” analyzes the historical, legal, and cultural conceptions of whiteness. Harries describes how through laws like the Black Codes, whiteness came to stand for free people and Blackness for enslaved people. Whiteness became enshrined in law through the three-fifths compromise, the enfranchisement of all white men regardless of property ownership, Plessy, and countless other court decisions. Harris goes on to discuss ways that we define property – rights of disposition, right of use and enjoyment, reputation and status, and the absolute right to exclude – and demonstrates how each of these are also facets of whiteness. This creates her thesis that whiteness is property: it can be used by white people as “the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity,” others can be excluded from its benefits (e.g. the “One Drop” rule), and white people expect the privileges of whiteness and feel stripped of a thing of value when that expectation is subverted. Harris also discusses Brown, what it accomplished, and most importantly, what it failed to accomplish. She concludes with a discussion of affirmative action and its potential for challenging whiteness as property.
This is a long and dense text, but it accomplishes an astonishing amount. Harris establishes the historical and legal evidence of how whiteness was intentionally crafted to serve white people in the same way that property does. She shows how this is not just an analogy for the power of white privilege but a reality that is baked into our legal system. By discussing Brown, hailed by white people as the decision that fixed segregation, she reveals how the courts have changed from “race-ing a group” to create racial subordination to a “color-blind,” liberalist denial “denial of the existence of racial groups.” This did nothing to solve the material, economic and social inequality that still pervades American society. She then goes into a brilliant discussion of affirmative action. She advocates for a distributive rather than corrective approach. I was most captivated by her discussion of court cases that challenged affirmative action. These cases precisely prove her point; white people expect privilege and when that undue benefit is taken, they act as if their property has been taken. I wish she would have discussed the idea of the “innocent white” a bit more. The notion that white people today are innocent in white supremacy despite benefitting from it seems worth further discussion.
Leave a Reply