Whiteness As Property by Cheryl I. Harris pg.1741-1742

I.Whiteness as Racialized Privilege.-The material benefits of racial of racial exclusion and subjugation functioned, in the labor context, to stifle class tensions among whites. White workers perceived that they had more in common with the bourgeoisie than with fellow workers who were Black. Thus, W.E.B. Du Bois's classic historical study of race and class, Black Reconstruction, noted that, for the evolving white working class, race identification became crucial to the ways that it thought of itself and conceived its interests. There were, he suggested, obvious material benefits, at least in the short term, to the decision of white workers to define themselves by their whiteness: their wages far exceeded those of Blacks and were high even in comparison with world standards. Moreover, even when the white working class did not collect increased pay as part of white privilege, there were real advantages not paid in direct income: whiteness still yielded what Du Bois termed a "public and psychological wage" vital to white workers. Thus, Du Bois noted;
They [whites] were given public deference...because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people, to public functions, to public parks....The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with...leniency....Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect on their personal treatment....White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools.
-Whiteness As Property
by Cheryl I. Harris
Harvard Law Review Volume 106, June 1993, Number 8 pg.1741-1742