This week I watched this video from Jacqueline Battalora’s keynote address “Birth of a White Nation.” Being the cinephile I am, I have to say that the title of her address is a riff on the 1915 D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, a film that depicts a part historical, part fictional origin story of the Ku Klux Klan. Film students across the country still view this film in school because of how influential it was. It was the first 12-reel film ever made and the longest film ever made at that point. It was so influential, from both a film and propaganda perspective, that there was a showing of it at the White House while Woodrow Wilson was in office.
Battalora’s thesis is pretty simple. She says, “White supremacy is embedded in American society as a matter of law.” She starts her talk with a startling claim: “‘White people did not exist in this country until 1681.” She proceeds throughout her talk to cover a vast amount of history, both political and legal. She covers the middle to late seventeenth century systems of indentured servanthood and slavery in the British colonies, specifically Maryland and Virginia, Bacon’s rebellion, and Antimiscegenation laws to track the development of how “White” came to equal propertied American citizen. Battalora also helps us understand a definition of whiteness.
To understand the full impact of Battalora’s thesis and the scale of racial existence we still operate within, we have to go back to August 8, 1444 to Portugal when Prince Henrique the Navigator, with his royal chronicler Zurara beside him, watched the disembarkation of 235 slaves kidnapped from Mauritania. Watching this catastrophic event Zurara says, "On the next day, which was the 8th of the month of August, very early in the morning, by reason of the heat, the seamen began to make ready their boats, and to take out those captives, and carry them on shore, as they were commanded. And these, placed all together in that field, were a marvelous sight; for amongst them were some white enough, fair to look upon, and well proportioned; others were less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops, and so ugly, both in features and in body, as almost to appear the images of lower hemispheres" (Jennings, 2017). Here Zurara places the world on a scale of racial existence. There is white and then there is black, and all the space in between.
I was taught to understand whiteness as a “trajectory of endless becoming.” Another way of understanding it is a building project toward maturity. Whiteness is a journey toward maturity from owned to owner, stranger to citizen, and darkness to White (Jennings, 2019). What does that mean? It means lots of things. It means that whiteness is not reducible to skin color. It means it is a way of existing in the world. It is a project, a goal, a system that has real life consequences on people’s lives.
Real life consequences on people’s lives. It’s important to keep that in mind at all times when we’re defining terms or telling our stories or reflecting on our upbringings: whiteness has real life consequences on people’s lives. It has economic, labor, theological, geographical, medical, and a host of other consequences for people’s lives, and that includes you and me, people who have called ourselves white. Perhaps that is the most important thing to remember with our definition of whiteness: it is a building project toward maturity that ultimately leads toward our destruction. Whiteness affects all of us. It affects us differently, but it affects all of us and not for our flourishing.
I’ll see you next week.
Battalora’s thesis is pretty simple. She says, “White supremacy is embedded in American society as a matter of law.” She starts her talk with a startling claim: “‘White people did not exist in this country until 1681.” She proceeds throughout her talk to cover a vast amount of history, both political and legal. She covers the middle to late seventeenth century systems of indentured servanthood and slavery in the British colonies, specifically Maryland and Virginia, Bacon’s rebellion, and Antimiscegenation laws to track the development of how “White” came to equal propertied American citizen. Battalora also helps us understand a definition of whiteness.
To understand the full impact of Battalora’s thesis and the scale of racial existence we still operate within, we have to go back to August 8, 1444 to Portugal when Prince Henrique the Navigator, with his royal chronicler Zurara beside him, watched the disembarkation of 235 slaves kidnapped from Mauritania. Watching this catastrophic event Zurara says, "On the next day, which was the 8th of the month of August, very early in the morning, by reason of the heat, the seamen began to make ready their boats, and to take out those captives, and carry them on shore, as they were commanded. And these, placed all together in that field, were a marvelous sight; for amongst them were some white enough, fair to look upon, and well proportioned; others were less white like mulattoes; others again were as black as Ethiops, and so ugly, both in features and in body, as almost to appear the images of lower hemispheres" (Jennings, 2017). Here Zurara places the world on a scale of racial existence. There is white and then there is black, and all the space in between.
I was taught to understand whiteness as a “trajectory of endless becoming.” Another way of understanding it is a building project toward maturity. Whiteness is a journey toward maturity from owned to owner, stranger to citizen, and darkness to White (Jennings, 2019). What does that mean? It means lots of things. It means that whiteness is not reducible to skin color. It means it is a way of existing in the world. It is a project, a goal, a system that has real life consequences on people’s lives.
Real life consequences on people’s lives. It’s important to keep that in mind at all times when we’re defining terms or telling our stories or reflecting on our upbringings: whiteness has real life consequences on people’s lives. It has economic, labor, theological, geographical, medical, and a host of other consequences for people’s lives, and that includes you and me, people who have called ourselves white. Perhaps that is the most important thing to remember with our definition of whiteness: it is a building project toward maturity that ultimately leads toward our destruction. Whiteness affects all of us. It affects us differently, but it affects all of us and not for our flourishing.
I’ll see you next week.
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