White creole privilege survived decolonization through hybridity discourse rather than open racism

Evidence

Thus, whiteness, however tainted, retained its valorized position in Creole nationalist construction. The right of white Creoles to social and economic privilege and preference was retained, and even enhanced, with the departure of the colonial power. In many instances, white Creoles became international brokers in the new regime of sovereignty. At the same time, their representation as cultural and racial hybrids, and their organic claims to the territory protected their social and economic privilege in the crucible of anticolonial nationalism. Otherwise, nationalism’s challenge to white privilege might have become the basis for expulsion. Instead, their “whiteness” was rendered invisible in the face of a nationalist rejection of white supremacy. More importantly, white creolization became the mechanism for the nonproblematization of whiteness. It legitimized a postcolonial version of racial capitalism. This explains the continued domination of whites in the private sector of the postcolonial Caribbean despite nationalism’s racial challenge to white supremacy. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3233

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to analyses of postcolonial racial capitalism, and to how privileged groups recast privilege as identity/hybridity rather than supremacy — parallels critiques of colorblindness as cloaking continued inequality. — connects to: Neoliberal decolonisation policy aimed to keep whites in former colonies as welcome partners. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 232; the MOC “The Tongue of Power: When Language Becomes the Battlefield of Empire”; the MOC “The Word Is a Fence: Language as Battleground, Property, and Partition”
• DEFINE: Defines ‘nonproblematization of whiteness’ — creolization makes whiteness unexamined, a mechanism rather than a claim.