The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

Historically, whenever the possessive investment in whiteness is threatened, white people will find some regulation or new rules that will preserve the privileges of white people at the expense of people of color. In the last decade of the 19th century, the state of Mississippi gave registrars the discretionary authority to deny Black people the right to vote and thus the registrars would protect the investment in whiteness.

The theme in American life that is consistent is the combination of disavowing racist intent while deliberately pursuing policies that would have deleterious and racist consequences. Lipsitz argues that Roosevelt invoked antiracist ideals while instituting racist policies. The main legislative features of the New Deal didn’t contain overtly racist provisions but there were racialized categories that would obstruct people of color from receiving the same benefits and opportunities as white people.

When Lipsitz refers to California as “the Mississippi of the 1990s,” he highlights the long arc of interracial conflict and oppression and makes clear that Mississippi is “not the only state with ghosts from its past and skeletons in its closet” (244). Lipsitz argues that the “Mississippi of the 1960s” that has been conveyed through “political discourse, popular journalism, fiction, and motion pictures” has stripped the struggles of those years “of all