Whiteness was sanctified as divine and made synonymous with Americanness.

Evidence

As Cheryl Harris observes in her landmark article “Whiteness as Property,” “The hyper-exploitation of Black labor was accomplished by treating Black people themselves as objects of property.” Whiteness, therefore, not only represented the pinnacles of citizenship and civilization, it was made synonymous with American as the nation forged its identity. However, its value superseded the bounds of the new nation and all earthly things within and beyond it. Whiteness was sanctified as divine, and its makers reconstructed religious institutions and recolored Jesus in line with that image. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 219

Whiteness, therefore, not only represented the pinnacles of citizenship and civilization, it was made synonymous with American as the nation forged its identity. However, its value superseded the bounds of the new nation and all earthly things within and beyond it. Whiteness was sanctified as divine, and its makers reconstructed religious institutions and recolored Jesus in line with that image. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 219

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 219
• XREF: connects to: Whiteness is the load-bearing fiction behind America’s racial architecture. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 65; The Talented Tenth ideal assumed northeastern white culture as the universal standard — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 161