Both Du Bois and Baldwin thought whiteness was especially important in the United States because the concept of whiteness was (and is) a cornerstone of the country itself. For Du Bois, whiteness was a “false ideal” that imprisons and delegitimizes people, as opposed to ideals he thought we should strive for that would instead liberate and uplift. Baldwin thought that the United States’ inability to acknowledge and attempt to redress the detrimental effects of whiteness makes those maintaining the status quo morally impotent. Du Bois’ writing in “The Souls of White Folk” was in no way dissimilar, noting the irony: “It is curious to see America … looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peace-maker, then as a moral protagonist. … No nation is less fitted for this role.”
The critical study of whiteness has grown in recent years, and there has been a plethora of publications for people who identify as white to consult and learn their own origin story. One very notable work is The History of White People, written by Nell Irvin Painter, the Edwards professor of American history, emerita, at Princeton University. Her work, which contributes vitally to the development and expansion of what we consider “white,” looks as far back as the Greeks and Scythians. What is especially relevant to our political climate is the way Painter’s thorough investigation of whiteness reveals an intimate historical affinity with being American. Despite the consensus on the biological meaninglessness of race, it remains a relevant topic in how nonwhites are treated. Painter told me that despite the biological meaninglessness of race, “[t]he idea—the ideologies—of race may change over time, but they are not arbitrary. They relate to relations of power and concepts of class and gender and beauty,” and she pointed out the importance of recognizing the “social and economic power of ideologies of race.”
Yet, like the work on whiteness by Du Bois and Baldwin, these insights have generally failed to become a part of popular political and social discourse. It is now common to denounce white privilege and its injurious effects on those considered nonwhite, but how are we determining who is white, and its opposite, in the first place?