History of Whiteness

As Canadians, we are so often inundated with American culture and references that we start equating race to ethnicity and culture. While ethnicity refers to the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition, race is sometimes used interchangeably as we associate certain cultures with certain races. There is this idea that Europeans are white, and European culture is white culture, which erases all the non-White Europeans that champion these cultures.

In the USA, ethnicity and race are strongly linked because there are ethnicities that are defined by their race, such as Black Americans who share a common language (AAVE), food, cultural practices (such as Kwanzaa), etc. Black Americans can be defined by their race, or by their ethnicity; which then creates the belief that there is such a thing as “white culture” or a “white ethnicity” without realizing that this is inherently racist.

“White” and “whiteness” are social, political, and historical constructs designed to consolidate power (i.e., politically, institutionally, and justified through such mechanisms as religion and ideology). Whiteness is actually not linked to skin colour, because in the past, most non-Indigenous peoples in Nova Scotia were not considered white.

Nova Scotia had a heavy influx of settlers from Scotland, Ireland, in addition to the Acadians who were already on the land by the time that they arrived. Although each of these groups of people came from Europe and are considered white today, they were not afforded the sociopolitical power that came with whiteness in the past, which led to the erasure of their languages and the consolidation of their cultures. As an example to better explain this point, at the time of Canadian Confederation, in 1867, Gaelic was the third most spoken language in Canada. As many as one hundred thousand Nova Scotians spoke Gaelic as their mother tongue in 1900. Today, estimates claim there are between 1000 and 2000 Gaelic speakers and learners in the province. The decline in Gaelic language is, in large part, due to educational policies and economic disparity, but in larger part due to extreme racism. Although Nova Scotian Gaelic emerged from Scottish Gaelic, the language was associated with the Irish, who were heavily racialized. This racialization led to the extreme poverty of the Gaelic-speaking regions of Cape Breton, and thus the language came to be associated with rural deprivation and backwardness. This encouraged members of these communities to shed the language as fast as possible, not teach it to their children, and aid in the assimilation of their people into whiteness (source, source). 

Fun Fact: Eòin Boidhdeach and Seòras MacShuail were born in Cape Breton and were believed to be the only black speakers of Goidelic languages in Canada at that time. In adulthood, they became friends with Rudyard Kipling, who in 1896 wrote Captains Courageous, which featured an isolated Gaelic-speaking African-Canadian cook originally from Cape Breton. Highlighting once again the difference between race and ethnicity: these black men were racially black and ethnicity Gaelic; and racialized as Gaelic because the Gaelic-speaking community  were not considered white at the time (source).

So if whiteness does not actually refer to one’s skin colour, what does it mean?

Ruth Frankenberg defines whiteness as “a dominant cultural space with enormous political significance, with the purpose to keep others on the margin. ... [W]hite people are not required to explain to others how ‘white’ culture works, because ‘white’ culture is the dominant culture that sets the norms. Everybody else is then compared to that norm. … In times of perceived threat, the normative group may well attempt to reassert its normativity by asserting elements of its cultural practice more explicitly and exclusively” (qtd. in Estable, 1997, 21).

Whiteness is all about power, rather than culture or shared traits. Whiteness seeks to absorb excellence, so that being white is equated with being excellent; and so we see groups over time as they adapt and assimilate into the mainstream, they get integrated into whiteness. The Irish and Italians who were brought over as indentured servants gained whiteness through time. We saw the Acadians arrive in Mi’kma’ki as white people, and have their whiteness stripped from them by the British when they were no longer the dominant culture, which led to them being expelled as a way for the British to consolidate power over the land. We saw French-Canadians being called les negres blancs (white negroes), and the catch phrase “Speak White” in response to anytime someone was heard speaking French. 

As whiteness became threatened with the increase of cultures in Canada, through the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and the increased multiculturalism through immigration, the concept of whiteness was expanded to include the Irish, the Italians, the Gaelic-speakers, and Francophones (such as the Acadians). Today, we are seeing whiteness attempt to expand once again by incorporating Asians. In Washington State, for example, the school board started counting Asian students as white, rather than as people of colour, with many activists explaining that Asian-American students “benefit from white supremacy” and “proximity to white privilege”. This is being heavily contested by Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians as they speak to the horrible instances of racism that they have had to, and they continue to, live through because of their race. 

According to Matthew Jacobson, a history professor at Yale, the idea of whitening stems in part from Brazil, where there’s a Portuguese phrase that translates to “money whitens”; the idea being that “if you move up the economic ladder you get magically whitened.”

Whiteness in STEM

Whiteness in STEM centres around the notion that everything excellent is made by white people and that whiteness is needed for progress. In the education system, this means that white scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technicians are celebrated, whereas those who hold identities that diverge from whiteness get progressively erased. Think about Alan Turing, often hailed as the inventor of modern programming. Alan Turing was a gay white man who is celebrated for his whiteness, equated with his excellence in programming, but often has his queerness erased in the context of his invention because being gay is a step away from societal power. The result being that queer STEM students  are unable to see themselves in STEM and know that queer people before them have done so much for modern science. This also has the added impact of preventing non-queer folk in STEM from being able to associate queerness with excellence, thereby dismissing the contributions that queer members of society can (and do) make to the advancement of STEM. 

It is commonly known that the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison, but the innovation used to create longer-lasting light bulbs with a carbon filament came from African-American inventor Lewis Latimer. He created this patent at the U.S. Electric Lighting Company, where he was in direct competition with Edison in 1880. The addition of the carbon filament increased the life span and practicality of light bulbs, which had previously died after just a few days. In 1884, he went on to work with Edison at the Edison Electric Light Company. Did you hear his name in any of your science or engineering classes when Edison’s name came up?

Many modern-day discoveries depend heavily on the pioneering investigation of algebra by the 9th Century Persian mathematician, Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi, but his name is not well known amongst mathematicians or engineers. Why? He was so prominent in creating the equations they use in the advancement of their fields. We know about Archimedes, René Descartes and Isaac Newton, so there is no reason for us to not have Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi be a household name as well. 

Representation isn’t just a nice way to appease racialized and marginalized peoples. STEM is a reflection of who has helped Canada and the world advance, and who hasn’t. STEM isn’t just white, and it never has been. It also allows society as a whole to expect multiculturalism in all fields. If young white children see examples of non-white inventors, scientists and engineers in STEM classes, they will not be surprised when they, as adults, run into people of diverse identities in STEM fields. 

“While there are strong imbalances in the racial/ethnic and gender representation across scientific fields, there is no evidence to suggest that cultivable scientific potential differentially segregates across lines of social identity. That is, there is no evidence that the ability to develop into a scientist differs across our socially constructed lines of identity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, etc.). Thus, the large and persistent underrepresentation of certain social groups from the enterprise represents the loss of talent. As NIH Director Francis Collins has said, chronic and woeful underrepresentation in the workforce leads to “the inescapable conclusion that we are missing critical contributors to our talent pool.”” - Kenneth Gibbs, Jr.