Whiteness historically conferred exclusive ownership of the American category through ingroup projection

Evidence

Following Pe´ rez et al. (2019), we reason that part of what used to make White people distinct was their ability to project their racial group’s attributes onto the category, American (cf. Waldzus et al., 2004). Indeed, to be White was to be American, with this tight association between categories emerging in self-reports (Pe´ rez et al., 2019) (r = .63) and indirect measures (i.e., IAT, d . .60; Devos & Banaji, 2005). This ingroup projection is now complicated by growing numbers of Asian and Latino individuals, many of whom also lay claim to being American (Pe´ rez et al., 2019; Silber Mohammed, 2017; Tsai et al., 2002). Thus, Whites’ distinctiveness as Americans is possibly compromised because they no longer confidently define this high-status category, which once differentiated them from PoC. — Efrén Pérez, Jessica HyunJeong Lee, Ana Oaxaca, Tania Solano Cervantes, Jasmine García Rodríguez, Kimberly Lam, and David McFall, Manifold Threats to White Identity and…, 22

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s pre-registered question about when a host dominant identity becomes politically weighty — distinctiveness/projection mechanism is the hypothesized activation condition. — connects to: Whiteness itself functioned as inheritable wealth for white Americans — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 566; Whiteness is a constructed American identity whose real prize was class admission — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 66; Racial categorization shapes who belongs to national collectivities — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 101 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines ingroup projection as the mechanism by which a dominant group claims a superordinate category like ‘American’ as its own.

Broader Connections

• Whiteness is a constructed American identity whose real prize was class admission #expands (0.90) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 66
• The United States constituted itself as a racialized white nation from its origin #expands (0.90)
• Whiteness itself functioned as inheritable wealth for white Americans #expands (0.85) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 566
• Racial categorization shapes who belongs to national collectivities #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 101
• Whiteness confers presumed belonging while nonwhiteness signals perpetual foreignness #expands (0.85)