{"id":37927,"date":"2014-10-24T18:23:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-24T18:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37927"},"modified":"2014-10-24T18:25:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-24T18:25:23","slug":"because-the-presumption-of-freedom-arose-from-color-white-and-the-black-color-of-the-race-raised-the-presumption-of-slavery-whiteness-became-a-shield-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37927","title":{"rendered":"Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be \u201cwhite,\u201d to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Because the \u201cpresumption of freedom [arose] from color [white]\u201d and the \u201cblack color of the race [raised] the presumption of slavery,\u201d whiteness became a shield from slavery, a highly volatile and unstable form of property. In the form adopted in the United States, slavery made human beings market-alienable and in so doing, subjected human life and personhood\u2014that which is most valuable\u2014to the ultimate devaluation. Because whites could not be enslaved or held as slaves, the racial line between white and Black was extremely critical; it became a line of protection and demarcation from the potential threat of commodification, and it determined the allocation of the benefits and burdens of this form of property. White identity and whiteness were sources of privilege and protection; their absence meant being the object of property.<\/p>\n<p>Slavery as a system of property facilitated the merger of white identity and property. Because the system of slavery was contingent on and conflated with racial identity, it became crucial to be \u201cwhite,\u201d to be identified as white, to have the property of being white. Whiteness was the characteristic, the attribute, the property of free human beings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Cheryl I. Harris, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=37896\" target=\"_blank\">Whiteness as Property<\/a>,\u201d <em>Harvard Law Review<\/em>, (Volume 106, Number 8, June 1993). 1720-1721.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because the \u201cpresumption of freedom [arose] from color [white]\u201d and the \u201cblack color of the race [raised] the presumption of slavery,\u201d whiteness became a shield from slavery, a highly volatile and unstable form of property. In the form adopted in the United States, slavery made human beings market-alienable and in so doing, subjected human life [&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":[18241,10375],"class_list":["post-37927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-cheryl-i-harris","tag-harvard-law-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37927","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=37927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}