I also recommend this
Judy Helfand's Constructing Whiteness to better grasp how the base of society ends up in the superstructure and then serves to maintain such relations, thus the superstructure acts on the base simultaneously.
Also, this paper does not provide a complete history of the social construction of whiteness, even on this one dimensional level. Instead, the paper examines some historical events to provide examples of whiteness being constructed. The early history of Virginia Colony provides the foundational example, illustrating through laws passed by the colonial assemblies how the knowledge, ideology, norms, and practices that comprise whiteness evolved in response to the social, economic, and political situation in that colony and ultimately resulted in the creation of a white race. The history of immigration and naturalization policy illustrate how the white race created in Virginia Colony was maintained despite the entrance of people previously unclassified as to their status as white. A look at who became land owners in the conquered territories to the west after the Civil War provides an example of how institutional and cultural forces reflecting the knowledge, ideology, norms, and practices of whiteness contributed to a system in which white people profited over people of color; postwar suburbanization provides another. Labor history has provided numerous examples of the construction of whiteness and this paper uses the example of the Irish entering the workforce during the 1800s. Also in the field of labor history, the Social Security Act, the Labor Relations Act, and the GI Bill reveal how whiteness is constructed and maintained, and white people benefit, through apparently neutral government policies and institutions.
Another way of framing it is that economics creates positional inequality based on real and imagined differences. Then after this inequality is created it then reinforces a sort of status inequality, where ones social categorization is associated with positions of lesser positional status. So in a way the classist attitude that derives from positions in an economy go further into inferring status to associations such as race and gender. So being black becomes associated with things like poverty, crime, broken families, drugs and so on which are inherited from material history.
Though there is the idea of some innate tendency for tribalism, I think this doesn't go far enough into exploring why certain social identities are socially significant and what makes them felt as significant. The prior post by Goon shows a great example of how race as we imagine it today simply wasn't a socially significant category until it was. The social identities that many people are categorize by are in a sense based in very concrete social relations. This is why anti-racists and feminists have been able to touch on many things true to the social category of being a woman or of some particular race. Because their is a reality to those relations that are set within the limits of the material base of the society.
In a society with different material conditions that resolve many of the problems that face people within these categories, their social significance would be made almost redundant. Which is what I imagine political correctness and liberalism tries to imagine in an idealized abstract view of reality rather than a substantive one. Where one rejects the racial essentialism within the culture/superstructure but ignores the base that helps maintain race being a socially significant because of the concrete social relations maintained within it.
Nuance is lacking in those that refuse to acknowledge (PC) that many who happen to be of a certain social categories do fulfill the outcomes of the stereotypes. But it is certainly an error in people's understanding to attribute race to an essentially biological foundation with particular tendency which is thought to also correlate clearly to variations in skin pigmentation. And its also prone to error to treat everyone within the category as strongly homogenous, this isn't sensitive to the variation that occurs within a broad population. As things like race come to serve as a proxy for the more concrete determinants (poverty) of undesirable behaviours and beliefs. But race in this case serves to mask the concrete relations and thus serves as a mystifying ideological function. That one isn't to simply ignore race but to make race the be all end all is too crude to be true, though one might speak crudely because one isn't going to detail the nuances of one's thought every time. Though there likely is a fuzzy distinction between those that come to certain conclusions (opposing immigration) because of the base concerns than someone who is enamored with the super structural mystification (typical to middle class).
So for example, when someone like Richard B. Spencer is advocating for a white-ethnic only North America through a 'peaceful' ethnic cleansing, its hard to not take his desired ends as signifying racist beliefs and desires to implement severely white supremacist structures within society. If a person like that can't be labelled as racist, then I don't think anyone can, because one has likely diffused the substance of the word so much that it applies to no one in existence.
This seems different to the attitude that is more focused on the base, though one could perhaps emphasize that its all attitudinal stuff, where in action, the white supremacist and the person just worrying about competition int he job market work towards the same ends in regards to immigration.
Though a difference might then be argued about how they structure society itself, where one despite speaking of a peaceful ethnic cleansing, to actualize his goal would be required to use substantial force to realize his goal of a primarily white nation, whilst the latter may not hold beliefs amicable to such an end because he wasn't smitten with the idea of there something essentially wrong with the people just that didn't want the economic competition.
Though I think might be less clear when we get into discussions of culture, where the way some people talk seems to take too strong of a position on culture. Like the description I made earlier of the person who seems to treat culture as inherited biologically and embedded within one's biology because they also have a complementary belief in race as a biological concept. Which they don't necessarily describe in any great detail of how it relates to cultural affinity from one's genetics or what ever.
But at the same time, it is clear that cultural beliefs aren't so fragile and weak that one simply assimilates into a new society. To which comes a separate issue of to what degree does one expect assimilation.
Because I would take it that the laws of the land set the formal expectations of everyone, those who break the law no matter of their cultural background are to be prosecuted. Things being stated as cultural beliefs doesn't serve as a defense to certain crimes like domestic violence unless we as a society are in such a state as to defend domestic violence (which many do, they just like to categorize it as fundamentally different, they [url]burn their women, we shoot ours[/url]. Wow so different, clearly Honor killings Versus Domestic violence despite both largely stemming from in patriarchal ideologies).
Though there is also the case of how the law is to deal with certain cultural sensitivities, because people will come into conflict. And that has to be resolved within a society, so for example, many play up the whole women's autonomy liberal sentiment in rhetorical opposition to things like the Burqa along with points about security concerns. It is of specific interest because of its cultural difference, if it originated as a fashion trend within society to wear head scarfs, it wouldn't be seen with such animosity. The object itself not really being a problem as much as the meaning we inscribe upon it based on the relations that underpin its maintenance.
Though at the same time I do wonder to a double standard in an over exaggerated homogeneity within a culture to exaggerate differences between
perceived in group culture and out group culture.
That there is always a degree of expected social conformity, but it seems in this case the state is expected to provide some expected standard of the citizen which even citizens within the nation may not be compelled to comply with and push up against. That if some other prick in my own country tried to hassle me for what I wear, it wouldn't likely reach to the same response as a foreigner whose backdrop is political and international conflicts.
Another interesting point is that in this idea of assimilation, one fundamentally expects a person to not be themselves in anyway, to throw away every part of their identity and adopt what ever national caricature is epitomized by that region. So one can even be a mutlifaceted human being, but one has to be the average citizen. That it seems that its inevitable that a degree of
acculturation occurs when people between places mix. When I go to New Mexico being an Australian, I'm a foreigner that's bringing in certain internalized attitudes and behaviours not recently native to that region.
Though I think a discussion on culture can be had around whether one supports the costs it takes to help a people integrate into a society, because many immigrants might be ill suited to do well in a new country until a few generations later once they've established some wealth for themselves in a new country and come to better understand it. Because it seems a tendency that new people are generally poorer on average, thus when a mass of people migrate they end up where the property is cheapest and form a sort of ethnic ghetto. This hour long doco provides a good example of the Vietnamese refugees who were accepted into Australia after the Vietnamese-American war but weren't provided much support, making their transition into Australia all the more difficult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfQ3TlzleaIBut I would emphasize in such a case, that though there was some chaos, in the long term, things worked themselves out to some degree of stability when people worked to deal with it. But one might not be keen on resources invested into addressing the problems that come from being in poverty and new to a country. Many aren't even sympathetic to the poor in general, let alone those that they might dislike for their differences.
For myself, I try to understand different cultures and situate cultural expression within its material context to get an idea of how significant shifts in material conditions yield chaotic transitions. So I would say that I reject the view of that I attribute to Richard B. Spencer based on his expressed opinions. But am amicable to certain policies that in practice would disproportionately effect people of certain backgrounds, but it isn't founded in any specific prejudice to them as a people though it could err towards that if not careful, but attempt to base it within perceived concrete implications. That in a sense I still retain certain liberal sentiments having been raised under a ruling class ideology living in a capitalist society, but I wish for it to be more substantive and grounded rather than idealistic and abstract. That I intend to enact certain beliefs and values that I imagine to be characteristically class based. That the working class should do its best to support one another but also to resist the means in which the capitalist class seeks to drive competition between them out of desperation of their circumstances. Which isn't necessarily that easy to understand depending the perspective one abstracts from. That things are much bigger than simply immigration, that it is not end goal or intrinsically good, but should only be considered strategically to larger and substantial goals.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics