White identity was partly constructed through contrast with the imagined Black other

Evidence

The image of the Negro served a need shared by whites, North and South; it performed an identity function for white Americans during a period when they were groping for self-definition. It is significant to note the way whites imagined the Negro in relation to themselves: the Negro was mentally inferior, naturally lazy, childlike, unwholesome, and given to vice. He was the antithesis of themselves and of what they valued: industriousness, intelligence, and moral restraint. (p. 42). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3408

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to social identity theory and the ‘antithesis’ construction of ingroup identity via contrast with outgroup. — connects to: Shakespeare’s Moor and Jew characters encoded pre-modern racialized difference. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 27; White English identity was forged through othering its own poor and Scots — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 137; White English identity formed simultaneously with othering of domestic and colonial populations
• SEED: Could be the anchor for an essay on how negative outgroup stereotypes function as identity-building self-portraits, not just misperceptions.