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Totally agree with your first point. Its also central to Ignatiev's argument.

That theconversation article is revisionist verbiage, both more Woke and less scholarly than Ignatiev. The early-1600s date for first use of "White" as an ethnonym surprises me, will follow up the source. The rest of the argument is unreferenced bilge. The West Indies in particular were defined by free/unfree identities, even between people of the same skin tone. The first slaves sold in the West Indies were Irish, you know. And many plantation owners were black.

"Whiteness" may or may not have been circulating as a concept among playwrights, but it was conspicuous in its absence from public life until the 1800s in America, and even later in the British Empire.

H 2y ago

I agree. My previous post said it will be almost impossible to find sources that aren't biased, but you demanded one anyway. The important thing is that White people were defined in the 1600's.

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H 2y ago

Sorry I missed your last post. I already showed you that literally in *America* it was defined in legal code before the 1800's.

Low Information Voter 2y ago

I didn't demand unbiased references, I asked you to share one if you had it. That last article's references have potential :)

"White people" was a recognised expression earlier than I'd been led to believe, thank you.

But as to when it became a dominant self-definition ("I am White like other White people" supplanting e.g. "I am Calvinist" or "I am a man of Kilkenny") I defer to Ignatiev's rather extravagantly well-researched hate tract. (I mean, book.)

The level of special-pleading and reaching for any excuse to dismiss the suffering of "White" slaves in that The Conversation article is chilling, and the author seems personally obsessed with "reparations for slavery", and wants to reserve them for one politically-useful clique.

That author hates as well or better than Ignatiev, but is only 10% the scholar. IIRC Ignatiev is quite willing to admit death rates were higher for slaves under "indentured servitude" compared with those under African chattel-slavery laws. He minimises, but he doesn't lie.

Srsly, you might like the work, whatever you think of the man.