The outcome of the 2024 Presidential election will determine America’s future. Will America fulfill the “promise of whiteness” and return to the past or will America continue to pursue its stated principles of freedom, justice, and equality for all?

The creation of whiteness

During the late 1600s, the class-based social hierarchy of the British aristocracy in the American colonies was violently attacked by a multi-racial group of indentured, enslaved, and yeoman Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans. The aristocratic elite responded by creating a new social hierarchy based upon skin color “whiteness.”

“Whiteness” was the social construct created by the ruling elite to preserve, maintain, and perpetuate their wealth and power; and as a means to maintain control over common whites and enslaved blacks. For 400 years, “whiteness” has been a tool for social control of the masses of those designated as “white”, which has ensured a sense of identity with and support of the interests of the ruling elite in the colonies.

The promise of whiteness

The promise of whiteness consisting of four “P’s”: place, privilege, power, and protection ensured that social, political, and economic equality for non-whites would never occur. The supreme promise of whiteness was social inequality for nonwhites, particularly blacks.

The promise of place

The promise of whiteness established a racial hierarchy; an artificially determined social hierarchy based upon the mythology of white superiority. The social construction of whiteness promised those with white skin a superior “place” in the American social hierarchy, a position in which they would have no equals. The lack of equality for non-whites is the primary tenet of the construction of whiteness.

“Whiteness” placed at the apex of this race-based social hierarchy enabled indentured and common Europeans to gain a social status unavailable to them in their home countries. The collateral racial hierarchy elevated those at the bottom of the rigid class system as peasants in Britain and yeomen in the colonies to a higher place/position on the new “racial” hierarchy. The “whiteness” gained only marginally changed their material and economic conditions, but it was and continues to be a powerful psychological mechanism for creating a sense of status, dignity, and esteem.

The promise of privilege

The promise of “whiteness” is central to American societal structure. Whiteness provides the foundation for racial oppression through institutional economic, political, and social discrimination. The promise includes advantages that only whiteness provided or permitted.

  • There will be no equal political, social, or economic access and opportunity.
  • Whites receive the greater portion of all economic and social rewards.
  • Blacks will be assigned to inferior jobs, whites to superior jobs.
  • No black man shall ever have more material and economic prosperity than any white man.
  • Whites will have all control over prestige and privileges.

The promise of power

  • Whites hold all personal and collective power.
  • Whites can impose their will upon non-whites in terms of decisions and actions.
  • Whites have the power to define and demean blacks with negative stereotypes.
  • Whites have the power to punish blacks for any mannerisms or actions that do not demonstrate their “place” on the racial hierarchy.

The promise of white protection

*Whites can expect that the law, police, and the courts will represent and be responsive only to their interests.

What happens when the promise of whiteness is threatened? Fear, anger, and rage are the immediate emotions, and violence is usually the first response. The racial violence that occurred in Ocoee, Florid; Elaine, Arkansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma was the result of black violation of the tenets of the promise of whiteness.

In Ocoee, blacks believed that they had the right to vote as equal citizens just as whites. As a result, a lynching occurred and the black community was demolished.

In Elaine, Arkansas, black sharecroppers and tenant farmers, victims of debt peonage, sought to end economic exploitation and have equality of economic opportunity. The Elaine Massacre of 1919 has been considered one of the bloodiest racial massacres in the history of the United States.

An even greater violation relating to the promise of whiteness was the refutation of the mythology of white supremacy when blacks demonstrated outstanding material and economic prosperity. The community of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as the “Black Wall Street” exceeded the mythology of white superiority and black inferiority. The punishment for this violation was the total destruction of the community.

Reconstruction was believed to be the extreme betrayal of the promise of whiteness. As a result, racial violence was epidemic, and the Jim Crow laws and customs were codified that legally returned blacks to their, place on the racial hierarchy and denied them social, political, and economic equality.

It was not until the Supreme Court Brown decision in 1957, which ignited the Civil Rights movement that the power of the promise of whiteness came to be legally diminished. The laws, such as the Civil Rights of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, as well as other Presidential acts, passed during the Civil Rights era diminished the power of the promise and provided political and social equality for blacks and other non-whites as well as women. The laws met with fierce resistance and the delusionary sense of superiority fed by generations of mythical beliefs that had a severely negative impact on the consciousness of those attached to the designation of “white.” A sense of victimhood, reverse discrimination, and a fear that equality for blacks would come at a cost for whites.

Since the 1960s, the desire to return to the ways in which they were assured of the promise has festered. Voter suppression began, including the 2013 Supreme Court gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Affirmative Action has been rolled back, and currently the elimination of DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs in educational institutions and workplaces are efforts to restore the promise.

The changing demographics of the nation, “the browning of America” through immigration, the advancements made by blacks in education, the emergence black billionaires, and CEOs of major corporations have increased white rage. Most threatening and the true betrayal of the promise of whiteness was a black man in the White House. As fears, anger, and rage grew, “I want my country back” has become a rallying cry for the restoration of the promise of whiteness.

The election of 2024 will be a deciding point in American life. As a nation, we will return to an America where inequality was the promise of those designated as white, or we will enter a third Reconstruction where Americans fight to retain the freedoms that have been won by blacks, nonwhites, and women. Americans through the power of their votes will determine if we want to support a myth of American freedom and equality or to live up to the moral principles that we profess as a nation.