Whiteness in Venezuela functions as a structural advantage rather than mere identity

Evidence

The overwhelming members of Venezuela’s elite, politically and economically, have tended to be white or at least light skinned, while those inhabiting the poorer classes have tended largely to be darker. Most incarcerated in Venezuela’s prisons, by the same token, are Afro-Venezuelan. This is not, of course, to say that whites overwhelmingly are wealthy and powerful and blacks not; only that being wealthy largely correlates with being white, and being dark(er) largely does not correlate with wealth, social privilege, or power. It also implies, more tellingly, that being white disposes one to privilege, that there are fewer barriers to social advancement and decent health than for those not white. Whiteness and blackness, as I have indicated more generally, are structural conditions of possibility and restriction, not simply social identities. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1174

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the crucial distinction between race as social identity and race as structural condition — whites dispose one to privilege while darkness restricts opportunity.
• ADDENDUM: The prisoner demographics point echoes the structural-inequality framing relevant to sacrifice/stratification dynamics; carceral overrepresentation of Afro-Venezuelans fits the systems of stratification thread.