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

Lipsitz sees racial projects in the United States as historically forged in combat. He cites Chickasaw scholar Jodi A. Byrd who argues that the United States uses its military and economic might to “make Indian” other peoples and nations that might obstruct the military and economic goals of the country (78).The fact that war machinery is often given names associated with the Indigenous past (Black Hawk, Apache Longbow, Lakota, etc.) bears witness to this legacy of conquest. Lipsitz argues that the possessive investment in whiteness is learned and finds legitimacy in warfare.

Lipsitz explains that anti-Asian violence in America is grounded in the view that Asians are deemed unassimilable and unwanted by white Americans. The decades of wars in Asia contribute to this perception and its corollary, that true citizenship is based on white identity. Racist tendencies tend to conflate Asian Americans as external enemies of the nation. Fear of the Asian peril originates in the history of racism against Indigenous people, Black people, and Mexicans at home and against Arab and Latin American people abroad, formed through military struggles.

Whiteness does not work in isolation but functions a part of the broader intersectionality of class, race, gender, and sexuality. In the postwar era, patriotism masks class antagonisms and brings reconciliation by channeling the intersections of race and class into the vilification of a foreign foe.