By James M. Thomas
Historian Nell Painter remarked in 2011, “Being white these days isn’t what it used to be.”
For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.
Meanwhile, an explosion of popular literature scrutinizes those rules and places white people’s elevated status in sharp relief.
How are white people making sense of these tensions?
In his 1935 publication “Black Reconstruction in America,” sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois described the “public and psychological wage” paid to white workers in the post-Reconstruction era on account of their being white. Today those “wages of whiteness” remain durable as ever. Nearly 60 years removed from the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement, its aims have not been met.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
White people still enjoy better jobs, health care, housing, schooling and more.
I’m a sociologist of race and racism. My team of graduate student researchers and I have spent the past four years interviewing white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status today. We concentrated our efforts among white people living in the U.S. South because that region is seen as more responsible for shaping what it means to be white, and the social and economic advantages of being white, than any other.
There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound.
Some white Southerners we spoke with fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, we found white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.
As Walter, 38, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us, “It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner.” We use pseudonyms to protect anonymity.
Crises cast a long shadow
The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci defined a crisis as a historical period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Within this space between, Gramsci argued, “morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”
Many people we spoke with lived through the defining ruptures of the 20th century that forever changed the South, and America too: the formal demise of Jim Crow rule, violent and bloody struggles over integration, and the slow, uneven march toward equal rights for all Americans.
Still others came of age against the backdrop of the defining shocks of this new century: 9/11 and the war on terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the racial backlash to the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
For some, the political rise of Donald Trump and his willingness to traffic in racist rhetoric constituted a crisis, too. “He embodies everything that is immoral,” said Ned, 45, from Vardaman, Mississippi. The town Ned is from is named for James K. Vardaman, former governor of Mississippi who once declared that “if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”
Taken together, these crises cast a long shadow of uncertainty over white people’s elevated social position and anchor how white Southerners understand their white racial status.
Resistance to desegregation
Miriam, 61, from Natchez, Mississippi, grew up under the last gasps of Jim Crow. She recalled her parents pulling her from public school and sending her to a nearby private school shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1969 Alexander v. Holmes ruling, which ordered the immediate desegregation of Southern schools.
Her new school was one of hundreds of “segregation academies” founded across the South in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.
“You didn’t go over there, by the Black school,” Miriam recalled. “You stayed over by the white school. … I remember as a kid that made quite an impression.”
Reflecting on what it means to be a white Southerner today, Miriam drew from these experiences living under the region’s long shadow of segregation.
“There’s been so much hatred and so much unpleasantness. I want to do everything I can to make relations better,” she said. “I think that is part of being white in the South.”
Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program. Daryl recalled his parents and other white people complaining about the poor quality of newly integrated schools, including telling him “stories of things like needles on the playground.”
Daryl rarely, if ever, talked with his own parents about race, but he broaches these topics with his own children today.
A self-described “childhood racist,” Daryl draws from his experiences to frame his conversations with his own children. “I remind them that there used to be this day where this was OK, and this is how things were thought of,” he says.
‘Good reason to be mad’
The region’s history also includes more contemporary crises.
Lorna, 34, is a registered Republican from Marion, Arkansas. She described how recent protests against police violence are affecting her understanding of America’s color line.
“I feel like Black people are mad or angry. They’re tired of violence and, you know, profiling,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s just in the South. I think it’s all over the United States. And they have a good reason to be mad.”
Kenneth, 35, lives in Memphis. Like Lorna and others, Kenneth’s sense of what it means to be white has been shaped by more recent crises, including the racial backlash to Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012 that motivated Trump’s election in 2016.
Reflecting on these episodes, Kenneth believes he has an obligation as a white Southerner to become more informed about “the legacy of racism in the South and the impact that it still has today.”
Becoming more informed, Kenneth says, “will cause me to reflect on how I should think about that, and what, if anything, I should do differently now.”
Trikosko/Library of Congress/Interim Archives/Getty Images
Uncovering what’s minimized or ignored
Our interviews reveal a range of beliefs and attitudes among white Southerners often discounted or dismissed altogether by more popular and scholarly treatments of the region.
Contrary to research that finds white people minimizing or ignoring their elevated social status, the white Southerners we spoke with showed a profound awareness of the advantages their white racial status affords them.
“I have to admit I’m glad I’m white,” said Luke, 75, from Melber, Kentucky. “Because in the United States you probably have a little advantage.”
Our research also shows that how white people make sense of who they are is also a matter of where they are.
Places – and not just Southern ones – are imbued with ideas and beliefs that give meaning and significance to the people within them. The region’s history of racial conflict, meanwhile, renders the “wages of whiteness” more plain to see for white Southerners in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Put plainly: Place matters for how race matters.
Emphasizing this more complicated understanding of race and place allows for a more complete account of the South, including how the unfolding racial dramas of the past several decades continue to shape the region and its people.
James M. Thomas is Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi.
Jill Titcomb says
Majority- Commonality– these are the premises that have to be studied. So rare the study that focuses on the minority- and no one would be interested in it anyway. My family are deemed FL/GA crackers. They were indentured servants upon the land they tilled. They never looked to be political and never resented their “colored” neighbors. My grandmother was put in the kitchen to help feed her 20 siblings at the age of 4 b/c she got nose bleeds and couldn’t pick cotton. My mother remembers well, that when she was sick as a small child (her mother worked for the family), it was the African American family of sharecroppers down the road that looked after her. There was no resentment, there was no hatred, and there was no retribution. Neighbors helping neighbors was what they experienced and held dear. I KNOW it is the minority of the South, but it turns my stomach to read all the struggles when there were those that relied on each other, appreciated one another, and gave support when the rest of the world was struggling to get along.
Atwp says
Whites have all the advantage a person wants, especially white men. They used to make all the rules to help the white folks and ignore others. Am very glad white people die too. Whites can go any place they want to in this country without being questioned by white male cops. White men can murder, rape, steal and have a better chance of staying free than an innocent African American Person. White people don’t know how good they have it in this demonic country. As an African American I have a higher chance of being shot by a cop than a murderous white person. A white woman will call a cop on me walking down my street before she call and report a white person committing a crime on the same street. A white male cop will come and question me because I fit the description, I look suspicious and the caller is uncomfortable. Just look at the history of this country in last 7 years. I’m not lying.
JasonB says
As a native of Flagler County (born in Halifax hospital and grew up in Bunnell) I vaguely remember the anger of the late 1960’s. When I started kindergarten at Bunnell Elementary in 1968 I remember there being exactly 2 black kids in my class (an attempt by the county to slow-walk integration). While I was too young to fully understand these things, I remember the tension of other white adults and older kids around me. I remember when the high school burned down in 1970, and I remember an older white kid saying, “it’s better it burned down than let (censored) go there.
As a white person born in the early 1960’s I do not feel a personal sense of guilt or shame of those times, rather I feel a personal responsibility as an American to say that those things were wrong, that the treatment of blacks in our nation’s past was wrong. It’s up to us to remember what was done, and to work toward righting those past wrongs and make this a kinder, fully inclusive society.
Atwp says
I remember years ago, I was the mail box with my aunt. The mailman came by to deliver the mail. They had a conversation and I heard her call him captain. I thought for many years why she called him captain, I will never know the truth because she isn’t here anymore. The word does have some authoritive meaning. Was she respecting him or was that the way it was in the 60,s? I still think about that today. In the post lynching state of Georgia the word captain being used to address a white man delivering mail. The more I write the angrier I get, it’s best to stay calm and channel my anger toward something constructive.
Michael Cocchiola says
We are not a “great” nation, and we will never be great unless the vestige of racial prejudice is long gone.
I don’t see this happening soon.
Pogo says
@Jill
Complicated? Try this:
America – the beautiful…
https://www.google.com/search?q=gray+wave+homelessness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_iaFO9PPkY
99 problems… sing along.
Pogo says
@As stated
To Jill, my sincere apologies. I meant my comment to address Professor James M. Thomas.
Again, very sorry for my mistake. My mother’s family goes back to colonial times in North Carolina. My childhood’s best and most powerful memories are filled with echoes of your own remembrances, that you stated movingly indeed.
My thoughts says
I am so glad my parents raised me to treat others as I wanted to be treated. I was taught never to discriminate someone because of their color or their religious beliefs.
It’s very discouraging to witness discrimination in our country after all the years we got so far ahead of that and now we are witnessing discrimination coming out of the Oval Office where it should never be seen.
Just because someone maybe rich or white doesn’t make you the most perfect person in the world; you are no different than anyone else.
In the end God will judge us all the same at the pearly gates of heaven.
BillC says
“The segregated black “Negro” public schools in Flagler County, Florida, prior to 1949, only went through the eighth grade. Although Flagler County provided the racially segregated white-only Bunnell High School, which was in operation from the founding of the county in 1917, blacks were forbidden to attend. Flagler County did not provide a high school for blacks for 32 years (from its founding in 1917 until 1949 when the George Washington Carver High School was built).
George Washington Carver High School closed after the 1967 school year (13 years after the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision). Black high school students were integrated with white students at Bunnell High School, which was formally a white-only school. From the 1968 through the 1970 school year Bunnell High School served as the only high school in Flagler County. During the summer of 1970, a fire damaged the Bunnell High School building, which forced its closure. The George Washington Carver High School (building) re-opened for the 1971 school year and all of Flagler County’s high school students, black and white, attended school here until the end of the 1974 school year. However, the George Washington Carver High School’s name was changed to Bunnell High School from 1971 through 1974. In 1974, the Flagler Palm Coast High School was completed and the George Washington Carver High School building (now named Bunnell High School) was closed, and would not open as a high school ever again.”
— Wikipedia
Mr. Bill says
Atwp!!! Get a grip. Your life must be hell seeing all the things that us “white folks” can do and poor racially disrespected you just can’t do.
Please name all the things “we” can do that you can’t.
I’ll wait.
Sherry says
mr. bill. . . People like “YOU” are the fear and hate filled core of the “Systemic Racism” in our country. Your obvious hatred. first of yourself, then of others has completely blinded you to reality! Shame On You!!!!
Atwp says
Keep waiting Mr. Bill. Please look at the real world. Get your head out of the sand.
Sherry says
@mr. bill. . . NO! “You” get a grip! Also, get “Educated”! A 5 second search on “Google” yielded these results:
White privilege encompasses the unearned, often unrecognized advantages that white people experience because of their skin color, such as not fearing racial profiling from police, being able to find beauty products that match their skin tone, and seeing positive representation of their race in media and textbooks. These privileges operate systemically and culturally, providing a form of “invisible knapsack” of special provisions that people of color do not have.
Here are some examples of white privilege:
**Positive Media Representation:
White people can expect to see people of their race widely represented in television, movies, and news, unlike many people of color.
**Shopping and Consumerism:
It is easy for white people to find beauty and consumer products, like bandages in a “flesh” color, that match their skin tone.
**Educational Curriculum:
White children are often taught about their history and culture in schools, with their experiences centered in the curriculum.
**Safety and Trust in Authority:
White individuals are less likely to fear being profiled or mistreated by law enforcement, or to be seen as a threat in public spaces.
**Housing and Neighborhoods:
White people can generally expect to find housing in neighborhoods where they can afford and feel comfortable, without facing discrimination or hostility from neighbors.
**Professional Interactions:
White people can often assume a higher social status and be more confident that their voices will be heard in professional settings.
**Freedom from Racial Burden:
White people are free from the daily burden of racial microaggressions or having to be an expert representative of their entire race.
Frederica says
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
Booker T. Washington 1911
Mr. Bill says
Holy Sheet Sherry!!!
You and Atwp drank the whole bottle of Woke Nonsense and then some!
My question still stands: Please name even one thing “we, white devils” can do that “you” can’t.
Respectfully,
I’m still waiting.
Atwp says
Well said Sherry, thank you.
Atwp says
Frederica is that a quote from BTW? I don’t see any quotation marks. The first sentence is right on as far as I’m concerned. The politicians are trying to erase the hardships the whites put on my people. Somebody should continue to speak the hardship pas of my people. If we don’t who will? Look at all the book banning, some African American studies are being banned from some schools as no credit. If I don’t speak for myself should I expect another race to speak for me?
Atwp says
Mr. Bill, you all can be a convicted felon and become President. You can walk any streets in America without being questioned by the white cops as to what you are doing. You all can rape a half drunk person and get no charges. You all can follow African Americans and harass them and get very little to no punishment. You all can get a loan from a bank without a job quicker than I can with a job. You get better medical care. The value of your home is higher than my home because you know why. You know the answers, don’t pretend you are that dumb. Need I educate you.
Sherry says
@ mr. bill. . . I apologize. Apparently you cannot read. My condolences. . .
Sherry says
@mr. bill. . . perhaps you can ask one of your more literate grandchildren to read this to you.
Black people cannot get paid the same as white people for doing the exact same work . . . FULL STOP!
Black individuals consistently earn less than White individuals, even when controlling for factors like education and experience. For instance, Black households had a median income 33.3% lower than White households in 2023, and full-time Black workers’ median weekly wages were 18.8% lower than those of full-time White workers in late 2024.
OVER AND OUT!
Sherry says
@ATWP. . . Engaging further with the ignorance and hate filled racism of people like mr. bill is a complete waste of our own treasured time. I am now “finished” with him.
While I certainly cannot say truthfully that I can identify in any way with your needlessly difficult path in life, ATWP, I’ve had many great loving encounters with people of all colors in many different countries and cultures. I keep an “open mind” and do my best to empathize with others. Your comments are always well attended by me, even when I don’t completely agree with you. I admire your courage in speaking out.
Frederica says
Yes that is a direct quote from BTW. I should have included the quotation marks. His comment was directed at Blacks profiting from creating division.
Laurel says
Mr. Bill: You clearly have no idea what the word “woke” means. So, you’ll have a very long wait as you seem to not know what you are talking about. Now, go back to Fox Entertainment to feel righteous.
Sherry says
@frederica. . . Attempting to imply that all or even many persons of color profit by keeping grievances public simply because it may have been said by BTW is “casting aspersions”. Where is your factual evidence of the things done by such a group? Your factual evidence that such a group even exists? How large a group is it? Are you implying that ATWP is somehow profiting by speaking out against “PROVEN” white privilege? Are you saying that people of color should just remain silent regarding the “Systemic Racism” in our country?
Thanks says
… for the heads up.
https://flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/mondex-1.jpg
One neighborhood I’ll won’t be visiting… ever.
Frederica says
You read way too much into my comment quoting BTW. Regarding “Proven’ white privilege? Try reading some of the following books, or articles by prominent Black Americans instead of an unintelligent Google search.
“The Blacks,” Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
“Black Rednecks and White Liberals,” Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
“Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies,” Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom (Kindle)
Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America by John McWhorter (Kindle)
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era by Shelby Steele (Audiobook, Kindle)
Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country by Shelby Steele (Audiobook, Kindle)
“American Humanist: Shelby Steele’s Work Stresses the Importance of Blacks Accepting the Burdens of Freedom—and Rejecting Narrow Racial Claims,” City Journal, Autumn 2021, by Samuel Kronen
Certain People: America’s Black Elite by Stephen Birmingham (Kindle)
Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham (Kindle, Audio CD)
The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America’s Soul by Brian Kilmeade (Audiobook, Kindle)
Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream by Dinesh D’Souza (Audiobook, Kindle)
“The State Against Blacks,” by Jason Riley, at the Old Parkland Conference (speech)
“The Racial Achievement Gap and the War on Meritocracy,” Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2023, p. A15, by Jason L. Riley, available via the ABI/INFORM Global (ProQuest) database
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason L. Riley (Audiobook, Kindle)
A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America by Shelby Steele (Kindle)
“The Shock of Freedom and the Reinvention of Racism,” Ian Rowe and Shelby Steele, at the Old Parkland Conference (discussion)
“The Economics of Discrimination,” The Thomas Sowell Reader by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
“‘Friends’ of Blacks,” The Thomas Sowell Reader by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
My Grandfather’s Son by Clarence Thomas (Audiobook, Kindle)
“Reflections on the Path Forward for Americans,” Justice Clarence Thomas with John Yoo, at the Old Parkland Conference (discussion)
“Passing the Torch: How Do We Engage the Next Generation?” Ian Rowe, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Kmele Foster, and Delano Squires, at the Old Parkland Conference (discussion)
“Apartheid in Adoptions,” Is Reality Optional? by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Statesman by The People Profiles (video)
“Booker T. Washington After One Hundred Years,” The Thomas Sowell Reader by Thomas Sowell (Audiobook, Kindle)
“Upward Mobility: Jesse Jackson Turned the Civil Rights Cause Into an Industry,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2023, p. A17, by Jason L. Riley, available via the ABI/INFORM Global (ProQuest) database
“Uncovering Roots,” Village Voice, February 23, 1993, pp. 31–38, by Philip Nobile, available via the ProQuest Alt Presswatch database
“RE: The 1619 Project,” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2019, p. 6, by Victoria Bynum, et al., available via the ABI/INFORM Global (ProQuest) database
Black Boston: African American Life and Culture in Urban America, 1750–1860 by George Levesque (Kindle)
ESSAYS, ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
“The Blacks,” Ethnic America, pp. 183–224, by Thomas Sowell
“The Economics of Discrimination,” The Thomas Sowell Reader, pp. 87–97, by Thomas Sowell
“‘Friends’ of Blacks,” The Thomas Sowell Reader, pp. 257–258, by Thomas Sowell
“Black Rednecks and White Liberals,” Black Rednecks and White Liberals, pp. 1–63, by Thomas Sowell
“Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies,” Black Rednecks and White Liberals, pp. 203–245, by Thomas Sowell
“Apartheid in Adoptions,” Is Reality Optional? pp. 165–167, by Thomas Sowell
“The Racial Achievement Gap and the War on Meritocracy,” Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2023, p. A15, by Jason L. Riley
Booker T. Washington After One Hundred Years,” The Thomas Sowell Reader, pp. 278–286, by Thomas Sowell
Upward Mobility: Jesse Jackson Turned the Civil Rights Cause Into an Industry,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2023, p. A17, by Jason L. Riley
Uncovering Roots,” Village Voice, February 23, 1993, pp. 31–38, by Philip Nobile
RE: The 1619 Project,” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2019, p. 6, by Victoria Bynum, et al.
Chronology of Emancipation,” Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, pp. 33–34, by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman
“Afro-Americans,” Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, pp. 5–23, edited by Stephan Thernstrom, et al.
“Black Life in Eighteenth-Century Charleston,” Perspectives in American History, New Series, Vol. I (1984), pp. 187–232, by Philip D. Morgan
BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS
America in Black and White by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason L. Riley
Certain People: America’s Black Elite by Stephen Birmingham
Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham
Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 by Willard B. Gatewood
E. Franklin Frazier and Black Bourgeoisie edited by James E. Teele
The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America by Shelby Steele
o Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis
Black Boston: African American Life and Culture in Urban America, 1750–1860 by George Levesque
The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America’s Soul by Brian Kilmeade
y Grandfather’s Son by Clarence Thomas
Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by John McWhorter
Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America by John McWhorter Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation by Stuart Buck
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 by Herbert G. Gutman