‘Will He Lynch?’ and the making of the white man

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more ,” (I don’t speak white people very well, but that translates to: “A New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it.”) In 1776, Friedrich Blumenbach’s On the Natural Varieties of Mankind created five different divisions of humanity. And to prove they were superior, Blumenbach connected the Portuguese people-thieves to the Ancient Greeks who stole their knowledge from Africa. He theoretically united the incompetent English colonizers and the Roman conquerors under one genetically superior group of people called the Caucasian race. 

He had invented white people.

Whiteness, then, emerged as what we now call a “pan-ethnic” category, as a way of merging a variety of European ethnic populations into a single “race,” especially so as to distinguish them from people with whom they had very particular legal and political relations — Africans, Asians, American Indians — that were not equal to their relations with one another as whites.

Dr. Gregory Jay, “Who Invented White People?”

To be clear, the idea of the supremacy of whiteness had already been entrenched in America and around the world. In fact, the same year that Blumenbach wrote that book, Thomas Jefferson wrote a breakup letter to King George based on the concept that all men are created equal. But privately, Jefferson, who is regarded as an anti-slavery advocate even though he never freed a slave in his life, wrote:

“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks…, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind…. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.”

But the British people who believed this already lived in a country with a constitution and laws. The same for Germany, France and other places. But America was a brand new world that had just been hijacked by whiteness. And so, when the people who built this new idea of freedom sat down to form their constitution, they enshrined human trafficking in the fabric of their country. In their foundational document, they reduced the same men they claimed are created equal to 60 percent of a white man. They didn’t count the indigenous people at all. And when all of their work was done, their first legislative body took up the question of to whom this country belonged. The Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed by the first very first Congress of the brand new United States of America, establishing citizenship to quote “ any free white person of good character.”

But this is not my opinion.

Seventy-five years after America declared its independence, Roger Taney, the head of the highest institution of justice in this toddler nation, was tasked with writing the decision for Dred Scott v Sanford. As chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Taney’s only job was to interpret the wishes of the founders and establish the legal precedent that would last as long as this nation exists. In doing so, he described the case in these terms:

The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen?

Roger Taney, Scott v. Sanford

In his decision, Taney wrote this for all the world to hear. You’ve probably heard the quote from the Dredd Scott decision that says Black people were “…so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” or the one that says: “The men who framed this declaration knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race.” 

But this speech is not about Black people; it’s about how you make a white man. 

There is a quote in this decision that no one ever mentions. In it, Taney recounts how the second congress required every free able-bodied white male citizen to enroll in the militia. Before explaining what each word in that sentence means, he reveals our purpose for coming to you today:

“The word white,” Taney writes, “is evidently used to exclude the negro race.”

To exclude the negro race.

To exclude the negro race.

And that, my dear oppressed people, is how you make a white man.

Three years from now, I hope you are free. If you are, I hope you listen to theGrio Daily podcast, download the app, subscribe and tell a friend. I know you have no idea what podcast means, but then again, white people don’t know what freedom means.

But if, in 400 years, you are free, always remember the words of Method Man, RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, GZA, Cappadonna, Inspecta Deck, Masta Killah, U God and the great Negro poetry troupe collectively known as the Wu-Tang Clan. They may alter it, but they will say something akin to: “Caucasity Rules Everything Around Me.”

Dolla Dolla bill yall…

Michael Harriot is a writer, championship-level Spades player and host of theGrio Daily podcast. His book, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, will be released in 2022.

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