White purity discourse made whiteness an unattainable symbolic capital shielding colonial power.

Evidence

The historical production of difference in Caribbean society had a direct relationship to the representations and practices of groups located inside and outside the social space of Creole society. It was the fundamental pillar supporting the discourse of white supremacy by rendering white privilege unattainable to the Creole through a discourse of white purity. The symbolic capital of white purity came be located at the heart of colonial and neocolonial exploitation. For the colonizers, location outside the social space of the Creole served, historically, as the basis for colonial practices of divide and rule. These practices operated not merely as mechanisms for the obfuscation of the commonality of interests among the colonized. They served to legitimize colonial and later neocolonial exploitation. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3201

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘symbolic capital’ framing ties to Bourdieu’s capital theory used in the trust/social-capital pieces from this reading list.
• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which white purity functions as symbolic capital within Creole society.