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Invention of "White" Race in 1681!

The 2013 book Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today is by Jacqueline Battalora who was born in Edinburg, Scotland and lived in Antwerp, Belgium for six years before her family relocated to Victoria, Texas. It was this experience of attending high school and middle school in Victoria that informed her understanding of race in America. She is a lawyer and professor of sociology and criminal justice at Saint Xavier University. Dr. Battalora holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has been engaged in anti-racist training since the mid-1990s.


The video below Epigenetics: Birth of a White Nation (The Invention of "White" People) is a culture-shattering interview with Dr. Battalora. She was shocked to find, in doing research on another topic, that the concept of "white" people did not exist before 1681! The concept of race was invented for political reasons -- to divide workers and ensure the power of the "elite"! Dr. Battalora explains that the invention of "white" people was an assertion of power by the 1%. State governments in the south often used race as a divide-and-conquer means to disempower workers.
 

The video discusses the laws that created the concept of "white"!  Italians and Irish were not accepted as "white" when they first came to America. When they had gained economic and political power, they petitioned to be included So, "white" is a political rather than a racial concept. However, as Dr. Battalora shows, there really is no “white race” genetically-speaking.

This short video shows the origins of and reasons for the concept of race: The Origin of the Race Concept

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