{"id":34574,"date":"2013-11-03T22:39:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T22:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34574"},"modified":"2017-01-22T20:06:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T20:06:35","slug":"race-was-created-in-america-in-the-late-1600s-in-order-to-preserve-the-land-and-power-of-the-wealthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34574","title":{"rendered":"Race was created in America in the late 1600s in order to preserve the land and power of the wealthy&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Biologically speaking, there\u2019s no such thing as race. As hard as they\u2019ve tried, scientists have never been able to define it. That\u2019s because race is a human creation, not a fact of nature. Like money, it only exists because people accept it as \u201creal.\u201d Races exist because humans invented them.<\/p>\n<p>Why would people invent race? Race was created in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thirteen_Colonies\" target=\"_blank\">America<\/a> in the late 1600s in order to preserve the land and power of the wealthy. Rich planters in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Colony_of_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia<\/a> feared what might happen if indigenous tribes, slaves, and indentured servants united and overthrew them. So, they cut a deal with the poor English colonists. The planters gave the English poor certain rights and privileges denied to all persons of African and Native American descent: the right to never be enslaved, to free speech and assembly, to move about without a pass, to marry without upper-class permission, to change jobs, to acquire property, and to bear arms. In exchange, the English poor agreed to respect the property of the rich, help them seize indigenous lands, and enforce slavery.<\/p>\n<p>This cross-class alliance between the rich and the English poor came to be known as the \u201cwhite race.\u201d By accepting preferential treatment in an economic system that exploited their labor, too, the white working class tied their wagon to the elite rather than the rest of humanity. This devil\u2019s bargain has undermined freedom and democracy in the U.S. ever since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Joel Olson, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bringtheruckus.org\/?q=node%2F146\" target=\"_blank\">Whiteness and the 99%<\/a>,\u201d <em>Bring the Ruckus<\/em>. (October 20, 2011). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bringtheruckus.org\/?q=node%2F146\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.bringtheruckus.org\/?q=node%2F146<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biologically speaking, there\u2019s no such thing as race. As hard as they\u2019ve tried, scientists have never been able to define it. That\u2019s because race is a human creation, not a fact of nature. Like money, it only exists because people accept it as \u201creal.\u201d Races exist because humans invented them. Why would people invent race? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16285,16284],"class_list":["post-34574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-bring-the-ruckus","tag-joel-olson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51271,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34574\/revisions\/51271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}