The Concept of Whiteness, Essay Example

Please explain the concept of whiteness and how did the early immigrant groups earn their status as ‘white’.

The notion of how the concept of whiteness functioned amongst early immigrant groups that arrived in America is valuable because it helps us think about how classifications such as race are essentially societal constructs. Such an idea becomes clear to the extent that by thinking of whiteness in terms of a concept, as opposed to a genetic predisposition, this intimates that whiteness amongst immigrant communities was a product of various social and historical factors. Moreover, the fact that early immigrant groups had to “earn” their status as white suggests that the concept of whiteness is not something that can be attributed to a scientific conception of race, but rather is attributable to these very social constructs that are active in shaping identity within modern society. In other words, explaining the concept of whiteness and how whiteness is “earned” helps us better understand how these social mechanisms function within a particular historical or social context.

In Roediger’s article “Popular Language, Social Practice and the Messiness of Race”, the author provides a basic theoretical and historical framework to understand whiteness as a concept and how it is produced in society, as opposed to being the product of some theory of natural selection that would recall particular scientific, biological and anthropological discourses. That is to say, one of the key undercurrents of Roediger’s article is to argue against a biological account of race, and replace it with a sociological account. Keeping this distinction in mind is invaluable to helping us delineate more clearly what is meant by the concept of whiteness.

Firstly, Roediger is lucid in noting that when considering European immigrants who went to America, not all of these immigrants were automatically considered to be white. Rather, there was an intense conflict between European immigrant groups along ethnic lines. Thus, as opposed to a basic binary distinction between different societal groups, such as white and non-white, there instead existed a plethora of immigrant groups, whose identity were defined more in terms of nationality as opposed to race. As Roediger observes, “The hypothetical Sicilian and Polish immigrants…would have been taught their racial place in the New World with slurs like guinea, greaser, and hunkie.” (Roediger 37) These epitaphs demonstrate that even members of a European immigrant population were subject to racial discrimination, despite what may be termed their “whiteness.” This lack of a clear distinction between ethnic groups from Europe indicates a fundamental social construct operative in America in regards to the treatment of immigrant groups, as an apparently shared biological and ethnic European heritage was not enough to secure a particular immigrant population a position within the dominant hierarchies of American society–a hierarchy which was above all Anglo-Saxon in nature. As Roediger observes, the public discourse about who was to be considered white was itself subject to change: “For example, at the level of legal and academic expertise, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, there was broad agreement that eastern and southern Europeans were white, though arguments raged about the relative merits of various white “races”, such as southern Italians, Greeks, and Poles.” (Roediger, 50) This clearly demonstrates that even according to supposedly more scientific discourses, such as the legal and the academic, there was a great debate concerning the notion of who was white. This indicates that white was essentially a malleable concept, subject to various changes in societal outlook.

Nevertheless, Roediger observes that there were opportunities for immigrants from Europe to become “white.” However, the necessary terms to be fulfilled in order to become white or to earn “whiteness” were not clear. Roediger writes: “To the immigrant who sought to mitigate his or her nonwhiteness, it could not have always been clear whether such a process was a personal or a group one, whether it entailed overcoming biology or changing habits, whether it was practicable or quixotic.” (Roediger, 53) Hence, those immigrants who would seek to integrate into the general “white” identity were confronted with an ambivalence regarding exactly how to do so. This ambivalence is tantamount to the notion of considering how whiteness was to be earned by these immigrant populations. For example, would “overcoming biology” as Roediger notes, entail inter-marriage between a member of a Polish immigrant group with a more firmly entrenched American citizen such as someone of English descent? Or was the gradual dissolution of particular group identities through cultural and social assimilation with the dominant ethnic group sufficient to become white?

The crucial point to gather from Roediger’s comments concerning the idea of earning whiteness is that it speaks to the fundamentally societal and historical nature of whiteness as it was created within American society. This societal and historical nature is reflected in the ambivalence of whiteness as concept, which means that there was no clear scientific index which determined who was white or not white. Whiteness was rather a heterogeneous and particular social construct, one that was ever-moving and ever-changing. In other words, this absence of a firm measure of whiteness points to the very notion that the societal construct formed whiteness as a concept, which means that this concept was essentially based on a volatile societal discourse that was subject to change and interpretation.