Book Review: “The Invention of the White Race” by Theodore Allen
Book Review: “The Invention of the White Race” by Theodore Allen
By: Justin Laing | January 25, 2021 | Antiracism, Book/Media Review, Racial Capitalism
I read these electronically but they are so good I wanted the actual copies. Beginning in Vol 1 and showing how the British further developed the idea and use of “race” in their “planting” of British people in Ireland in the 12th-13tn century colonializing process (where we in the U.S. got “plantation”). Allen details a strategy refined in England that creates a positively racialized buffer class that then protects the ruling class from the negatively racialized group at the bottom of the society, which in the above-mentioned case was the Irish. In the U.S., this group would be Black people and other non-White people. This oppression then allows the class oppression of the positively racialized group (British Protestants in this case) and, in Allen’s framework, becomes the way in which the racial oppression of the negatively racialized group intersects with the national oppression of the positively racialized group.
It really brings home to me that antiracist work fundamentally needs to include work to show the two-sidedness of both privilege of being over non-White ppl, but also, for most, the acceptance of oppression from ruling class white ppl. I imagine people at least intuitively understand this cross-class, intra-race bargain, but making it explicit had definite value for me.The Invention of the White Race gives some detail to The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s core idea that “race is the glue that holds class oppression together” core idea. I actually am more persuaded by Cedric Robinson’s frame that Euro racialism is much more deeply rooted than capitalism, but Theodore Allen’s Marxist take is still really useful. A bit of a push, it is still worth the two-volume effort for folks who learn by reading.
