Undoing the Wages of Whiteness: Rational or Irrational?

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Economy

Abstract

In this paper, we make two arguments. First, we argue that white people in the United States are not so-called voting against their own self-interests when they oppose policies that would enhance their material situation. This is because, when viewed through the lens of stratification economics (e.g., Darity 2005), it becomes clear that the U.S. racial arrangement confers two types of self-interest upon white Americans: absolute and relative. In this view, when white Americans sacrifice their absolute position, they offset this reduction with gains in their relative group position over Black and other non-white Americans. Such a dynamic is predicated on intergroup inequality in which “[c]ollective self-interest centers on advancing or maintaining the status of one’s social group in comparison with another or others that are situationally relevant” (Darity 2022, 3). Ours, then, is a calculus that not only takes into account the dynamics of intergroup inequality in contemporary American politics but also spotlights the endurance of white racial solidarity as a mechanism through white Americans derive benefits – what Du Bois referred to as “a sort of public and psychological wage” (2017 [1935], 626) – from the social status attached to their white identity.

Second, we argue that offsetting reductions in absolute position with gains in relative group position is the rational thing to do. In a society that confers social status – and benefits – to white racial identity, white Americans who tap into this psychological wage achieve gains that offset any reduction, for example, in actual wages. This stands in contrast to other scholars, who, though they criticize the racial arrangement, suggest or imply that it is irrational for white Americans to act in ways that maintain it. George Lipsitz, for example, has said that “The best thing that could happen to the white poor, the white working class, and the white middle class would be to disinvest in their whiteness and join with other exploited and aggrieved people across racial lines” (2018, 120). Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey have argued that “Their [white Americans’] own white racial framing makes it hard for most of them to understand well not only the situation of the racially oppressed, but also their own situation of persisting class oppression” (2019, 215). And historian Spencer Crew echoed a similar sentiment: “People need to understand the commonality of their existence, and through that commonality, define places where working collaboratively can work to the benefit of all those involved” (Lowery 2021).

A “rising tide lifts all boats” type of logic is appealing but also suggests and undoing of the racial arrangement which created the intergroup disparity in the first place. In our context, this would be between white and Black Americans, as well as other non-white Americans. But it has applicability to other contexts as well in which white Westerners derive benefits from their relative group position over non-white populations as a result of, generally, what Du Bois referred to as the former’s “‘perceived title to the universe’” (cited in Myers 2018, 6) – from the the Rand Revolt in 1922, after which “[t]he colour bar became even more entrenched” (Volmink 2022) South Africa, to more recent rhetoric, invective, and policy aimed Middle Eastern and north African migrants to Western Europe (e.g., Fekete 2018; Judis 2016). From the perspective of white Americans who benefit from it, undoing the racial arrangement would not be rational. Instead, we argue, it would be irrational.

Authors

• Joshua Jordan, Louisiana State University (LSU)

• William Darity, Duke University