Whiteness’s self-elevation was fragile against any trace of black blood

Evidence

The South African writer Njabulo Ndebele puts this case most forcefully:We are all familiar with the global sanctity of the white body. Wherever the white body is violated in the world, severe retributions follow somehow for the perpetrators if they are non-white, regardless of the social status of the white body. The white body is inviolable, and that inviolability is in direct proportion to the vulnerability of the black body. This leads me to think that if South African whiteness is a beneficiary of the protectiveness assured by international whiteness, it has an opportunity to write a new chapter in world history… Putting itself at risk, it will have to declare that it is home now, sharing in the vulnerability of other compatriot bodies. South African whiteness will declare that its dignity is inseparable from the dignity of black bodies. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 156 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Whiteness is structurally fragile, needing constant self-assertion to sustain its privilege — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1112; Slave status marked whites so indelibly that even race could not absorb the stigma — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 748; Whiteness was defined as exclusion from black occupation, not skin or work — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 399 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• White bodily inviolability is inversely proportional to black bodily vulnerability #complicates (0.72) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 156