Slave codes invented white racial identity as a unifying political category

Evidence

The slave codes helped to ensure that poorer white Virginians felt relatively empowered. “Many of the European-descended poor whites began to identify themselves, if not directly with the rich whites, certainly with being white,” the historian Robin D. G. Kelley said. “And here you get the emergence of this idea of a white race as a way to distinguish themselves from those dark-skinned people who they associate with perpetual slavery.” Whiteness proved a powerful unifying elixir for the burgeoning nation. Whether laborer or elite planter, “neither was a slave. And both were equal in not being slaves.” And so it served the interests of both groups to defend slavery. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 112

Categorization

• XREF: Powers the reframing argument: whiteness as a constructed political identity built on slavery opposition, key to the deviation-vs-design question. — connects to: White Christians created racial categories to soothe guilt over slavery and genocide — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 145