Whiteness In America

Short Response #3
What is ‘whiteness’? How and why does it change over time? Provide Examples

One would think of ‘whiteness’ as matter of skin color but it actually consists of a body of knowledge, ideologies, norms, and particularly practices that have been constructed over the history of the United States. The White race just happened to be superior in every single aspect of life. Their‘whiteness’ allowed them to create a sense of superiority enabling them to be at the top of the hierarchy and suppress the non-white races. The Anglo-Saxon race, to ensure ‘whiteness’ was preserved, changed its norms and practices constantly to meet the expectations of a rapid changing young America.
‘Whiteness’ represents what is considered “normal” and “common sense,” “it is anything that isn’twhat a white person is not.” However, ‘whiteness’ was threatened by the immigration of people of different countries and the “other” people that was found in U.S. territory; therefore “whiteness” was slightly modified to conveniently meet the same standards of the white race. The set of requirements to fully qualify as ‘white‘ and attain citizenship rights changed every time “whiteness” waschallenged.
The challenges began with the “mysteriously appearance” of the Native Americans in American soil and the constantly defying slave population. Although this two races were subjugated, to some extent they brought different challenges to the justification of “whiteness.” Urging the white man to come up with the Scientific explanations and lawful justifications. The Native Americans werealways seen as savages and at times compared with wild animals. Even though Indians were “hunted” and tried to be wiped out since the foundation of this great nation, all the sympathy, if any, was completely lost when “Manifest Destiny” proved the White race was superior in any possible way. However, white man had nothing to do with the “mysteriously disappearance” of the Indians that kept on attackingthe “innocent” white families moving west.
On the other hand African Americans, according to the science field, were biologically different from white man. To be more precise African Americans shared similarities with apes making them scientifically inferior. They were not protected by the U.S. laws either. Racism was everywhere and they were abused, incarcerated, hanged, burned, and killedwithout being protected by the government. In fact they could not be protected by the government and did not posses any type of citizen rights because they were not even humans. In 1789 the Constitution of the U.S. established white supremacy by giving whites extra votes, including congressional seats awarded on the basis of the three-fifths compromise.
While Indians and African Americans posed achallenge on the “whiteness” matter, a greater challenge was encountered when a mass of the same white specie fled the European continent looking for a better future. From the 1830s to the 1840s many Irish arrived in the United States. The Irish possessed the same physical and biological characteristics as the white American but they brought competition for the American workers. In fact, before thehuge migration, Europeans were well accepted and there was only one white race that was easily identified by skin color. Upon the arrival of the Irish population, Americans noticed they were white but were also completely different and inferior. Irish did not share the same religious beliefs, neither the culture or background as the white American creating a “fractured white race.” Suddenly itwas not only a white race but a race full of differences. The Irish acquired ape-like features and became the “niggers turned inside out.”
As the Irish were adapting to the American culture another culture was arriving to the new settled California. The Chinese, after the gold rush, fled their country to join the capitalistic America to compete for lower wages and lower standards of living....