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

“I use the adjective possessive to stress the relationship between whiteness and asset accumulation in our society, to connect attitudes to interests, to demonstrate that white supremacy is usually less a matter of direct, referential, and snarling contempt than a system for protecting the privileges of whites by denying communities of color opportunities for asset accumulation and upward mobility.”

Lipsitz’s claims about the possessive investment in whiteness relate to both literal and symbolic forms of ownership. The possessive investment in whiteness sustains racial hierarchies while actively reinforcing a white person’s ideological attachment to white supremacy. Because the possessive investment of whiteness is ideologically bound, the white subject may not be aware that their participation in white identity is racist.

“Whiteness is more a condition than a color.”

The importance of this statement about whiteness is that whiteness is associated with power because of the cumulative personal, institutional, and collective opportunities that come with whiteness. This sentence alludes to the ways that whiteness magnifies simple differences in appearance while concealing the systemic advantages of being white. This short statement hence immediately turns simplistic notions of whiteness on its head and announces the nuances that will follow.

“New social movements are emerging in this conjuncture. They are often race based but rarely race bound.”

Lipsitz refers to the intersectionality of racism, which is why he maintains that social movements are “rarely race bound.” He suggests in the text that racism never exists in isolation but is intersected by homophobia, sexism, class subordination, and a variety of other sociopolitical pressures. Here, he exhibits a technique frequently used in the text, which is an internal half rhyme in the prose: “race based” becoming “race bound.