Groups become White by renouncing cultural difference and proving state loyalty

Evidence

Those registered as racially different, as bruised, are lured into Euro-likeness while warned that its inner treasures are almost always beyond their reach. White-likeness is a liking of what’s white, socially induced, a drive to be white-like, but also a grasping in the dark about its idealized experience, for its treasury. That “playing in the dark,” to twist Toni Morrison’s title, and the more or less extreme ambivalence both about what one thus is missing and what it is about one that inevitably makes one miss, if only one could put one’s finger on it, is the sinking sand, the depressing frustrations, of fixating on the unreachable. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1136 (#complicates, via linked claim)

That is, when people do engage in affirmational identification (“I am white”), to what extent does their definition of this identity incorporate contrast from an out-group? Research on white racial identity indicates that whites are more likely to define themselves in terms of their race if they had a high level of exposure to non-whites while growing up (Knowles & Peng, 2005). This implies that identification with the white in-group depends, at least to some extent, on contrast from racial minorities. For white supremacists, out-groups may be so salient that their ingroup is partly defined by out-groups; not being black, Jewish, or Asian may be considered a core part of what it means to be white. Thus, the identity of white supremacists may be fundamentally linked to the identity of minority groups. This observation of interdependence between the identities of white supremacists and their out-groups has been made by Leets (2001, p. 290): “white supremacists’ racial, religious and sexual orientations represent a classic dichotomization of others as ‘not us.’ ” Whites who are not white supremacists may be less likely to perceive a dichotomy between their racial in-group and out-groups. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1119 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reconstructed Klan fused racial and national loyalties rather than sectional white supremacy — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1737; Pressure to pass into whiteness acted on all racialized groups; Whiteness can be intermittently granted and revoked for non-Western groups — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 48 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial others are recruited into whiteness while denied its inner rewards #complicates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1136
• White racial identity strengthens through contrast with minority out-groups #complicates (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1119