European immigrants became white by projecting surrendered preindustrial freedoms onto blacks.

Evidence

Recently this idea has been taken up and reworked by historian David Roediger (1991, 1994) in his account of the transformation of European immigrants (including Jews and Irish) into the standard bearers of a “new white race in the USA.” Roediger argues that Native Americans and African Americans came to unconsciously represent the sexual and social freedoms of the preindustrial world which the white populations of the American frontier towns were being forced to surrender in making the transition into the work disciplines of capitalism and modern times. The racial ambivalence of the Irish in particular stemmed from the fact they belonged in both worlds; their love/hate relation to blacks was part of a historical “return of the repressed” (Roediger, 1991). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1283

Categorization

• XREF: Sharpens the vault’s whiteness-as-constructed claim (Race the Power of an Illusion / Ignatiev) by grounding it in psychodynamic projection. — connects to: European immigrants became white by projecting lost freedoms onto racialized others.; European immigrants proved Whiteness by joining anti-Black subordination — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 388; European immigrants earned whiteness by adopting anti-nonwhite antagonism (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• European immigrants became white by projecting lost freedoms onto racialized others. #corroborates (0.95)
• Whiteness consolidated as repression of preindustrial freedom #corroborates (0.80)
• European immigrants proved Whiteness by joining anti-Black subordination #expands (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 388
• European immigrants earned whiteness by adopting anti-nonwhite antagonism #expands (0.70)