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Theodore W. Allen


On the Life, Work, and Legacy of Theodore W. Allen

"Janata Weekly," India's oldest Socialist Weekly published "On the Anniversary of His Death, Theodore W. Allen's Analysis Still Resonates" by Jeffrey B. Perry (on January 24, 2021) from "Black Agenda Report" -- see HERE

Theodore W. Allen's "Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race." (See above or below)

Article on Theodore W. Allen in "Against the Current" -- See HERE

"White Supremacy in U.S, History by Theodore W. Allen (375 KB)

A speech presented at the Guardian Forum April 28, 1973 -- in the language of the day.

 

Jeffrey B. Perry -- Slide Presentation/Talk on
The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books) by Theodore W. Allen
with special emphasis on Vol. II: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America.
Hosted by “The Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen Society”
Filmed by Fred Nguyen on January 31, 2013
Brecht Forum, New York City
OVER 311,000 VIEWS

Review of Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race, New Expanded Edition, 2 Volumes, Vol. 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control; Vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America; Verso Books, by Jeffrey B. Perry in Black Agenda Report CLICK HERE



Theodore W. Allen interviewed by Stella Winston
on "The Invention of the White Race"
Over 143,000 Views

 


Video



Jeffrey B. Perry Discusses Theodore W. Allen on “The Invention of the White Race,”
Labor History, and the Centrality of Labor Struggle Against White Supremacy

Over 11,000 views.

Interview conducted with Caeser Pink and staff of Arete Living Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY) on Saturday, June 8, 2013, at the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) National Conference, at Brooklyn - CUNY Center for Worker Education, 25 Broadway, 7th floor, New York, NY, 10004. Posted on 7 April 2014.

For additional information on Jeffrey B. Perry CLICK HERE!
For key insights from Theodore W. Allen on U.S. Labor History CLICK HERE!
For information on Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” CLICK HERE!
For additional writings by and about Theodore W. Allen CLICK HERE!
For writings by and about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE!
For information on Arete Living Arts Foundation
CLICK HERE!

 

"The Invention of the White Race"
Dr. Jeffrey Perry Discusses the New Expanded Edition
The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books, 2012)
Interview by Gary Glennell Toms
January 29, 2013
Over 39,000 Views

 




June 18, 2016, talk on
“Theodore W. Allen and ‘The Invention of the White Race’"
by Jeffrey B. Perry
at "Multiracial Organizing Conference"
on "Organizing Poor and Working Class Whites:
The Challenge of Building a Multiracial Movement"
Greensboro, N.C.
Over 16,000 Views

"An Introduction to the Work of Theodore W. Allen"
by Jeffrey B. Perry





Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” Slide Presentation/Talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at Washington Project for the Arts, 2124 8th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 on Friday, April 28, 2017. To view the presentation in 5 parts CLICK HERE




Presentation on Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race" by Jeffrey B. Perry for the James Connolly Forum, Troy, New York, May 11, 2013




“Hubert Harrison, Theodore W. Allen,
and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy"
by Jeffrey B. Perry (Introduction)
July 26, 2014
The Commons, Brooklyn, NY


October 19, 2013
Saturday, 2 PM - 4:30 PM -- Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books) especially Volume 2 The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America is discussed in a slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at the Dudley Branch Library 65 Warren Street, Roxbury, MA. See HERE

A Quick Guide to Sections of the Video on
Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race,”
(Presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry)



"Terbospeed," the screen name of a viewer of the video of Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," took the time to select some key points in the presentation and provide excerpts and links to the exact sections in the video where the points are discussed.

What "Terbospeed" has done can be very helpful for viewers and I draw from "Terbospeed's" outline here --

"When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.”

Main thesis 1) the white race was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the latter civil war stages of Bacon's rebellion 2) a system of racial privileges was deliberately instituted by the late 17th century Anglo-American bourgeoisie in order to define and establish the white race, and establish a system of racial oppression 3) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also disastrous for European-American workers

1:20 "[Hubert] Harrison Arrived in NY [from Caribbean] in 1900 and encountered a viscous white supremacy unlike anything he knew before" CLICK HERE

3:30 Contrast of Caribbean/US Slavery CLICK HERE

4:50 "Politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea. The presence of the Negro puts our democracy to the test and reveals the falsity of it." (touchstone is black stone which tests the purity of gold) CLICK HERE

07:40 "This understanding of black labor as proletarian is essential to a whole new reinterpretation of US history" CLICK HERE

10:15 Originator -- "white skin privilege" concept, 1965 CLICK HERE

16:25 "Invention's" Main Theses CLICK HERE

23:00 "Three Major Crisis of US: 1870s, 1890s, 1930s" CLICK HERE

23:20 "Why no socialism in the US?" "Why was there a generally low level of class-consciousness in the US?" Review/criticism of left/labor/general historians - "Architects of Consensus" CLICK HERE

24:07 Six-pronged rational: (Consensus explaining low level of class consciousness) Early right to vote and other constitutional liberties Heterogeneity of the working class Free-land safety valve Higher wages Social mobility "Aristocracy of labor" Each is a myth, and needs to be reexamined in the light of Racism/White Supremacy CLICK HERE

37:50 'whiteness' - "the white race is an actual objective thing", "an abstract noun, an attribute of some people, not their role" it's a historically developed identity of European-Americans and Anglo-Americans and so has to be dealt with" CLICK HERE

38:22 "my book is not about, and does not pretend to be about `racism'" "it is about the white race, it's origin and method of functioning" "I stay way from using the word `racism' because of the ruinous ambiguity white supremacists have managed to give it" CLICK HERE

39:40 Slavery or Racism, which came first? CLICK HERE

40:55 "Look at some Howling Absurdities of ``Race''' CLICK HERE

43:45 "The Irish Mirror" "The reflector of Irish history affords insights into American racial oppression and white supremacy" Irish History "presents a case of racial oppression without reference to 'skin color' or, as the jargon goes, 'phenotype'." CLICK HERE

44:12 Core Argument - Comparative study of: 1) Anglo-Norman rule and 'Protestant Ascendancy' (1652-) in Ireland 2) 'white supremacy' in continental Anglo-America (in both its colonial and regenerate United States forms) CLICK HERE

44:55 Specific Examples of Racial Oppression 1) African Americans in the U.S. both pre/post emancipation 2) American Indians in the 19th century 3) Irish from early 13th century until 1315, and after 1652 CLICK HERE

45:08 Essential Elements of Discrimination (against Irish in Ireland and Afro-Americans) which gave these respective regimes the character of racial oppression, were those that: 1) Destroyed the original forms of social identity & 2) Excluded the oppressed group from admittance into the forms of social identity normal to the colonizing power. CLICK HERE

45:33 4 Defining Characteristics of Racial Oppression (Virginia 18th century) 1) de-classing legislation, directed at property-holding members of the oppressed group 2) deprivation of civil rights 3) illegalization of literacy 4) displacement of family rights and authorities The Hallmark of Racial Oppression: "the reduction of all members of the oppressed group to one undifferentiated social status, beneath that of any member of the oppressor group" CLICK HERE

46:04 Maximize Profit, Maintain Social Control "Where the option was for racial oppression, a successful policy was one that could maximize the return on capital investment, while assuring its perpetuation through an efficient system of social control" CLICK HERE

Audio

Host Allen Ruff interview with guest Jeffrey B. Perry on A Public Affair, WORT 89.9 FM Madison, Wisconsin, July 10, 2014. . They discussed the life and work of Hubert Harrison (“The Father of Harlem Radicalism"), the work of Theodore W. Allen (author of “The Invention of the White Race”), and the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy. Listen HERE

Jeffrey B. Perry discusses Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race" on June 9, 2013, at the Community Church in Boston, Mass. To listen CLICK HERE


Jeffrey B. Perry WBAI Radio interview/discussion with host Hugh Hamilton on Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” (Verso Books) and on Hubert Harrison “The Father of Harlem Radicalism”

Jeffrey B. Perry interview/discussion with host Hugh Hamilton on Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” (Verso Books) and on Hubert Harrison “The Father of Harlem Radicalism.” WBAI Radio (99.5 FM, NYC) Broadcast, Thursday, March 14, 2013 from 4 to 5 PM. To listen please go HERE -- (to the second hour of the two-hour radio program) [Special thanks to Michael G. Haskins for his assistance with this program]


Chris Stevenson Interview with Jeffrey B. Perry on "Who Was Hubert Harrison?" c. May 1, 2013.
Listen HERE


The Invention of the White Race



“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years” writes Theodore W. Allen on the back cover of Volume 1 of his seminal, two-volume, "The Invention of the White Race." Allen meticulously details how the “white race” was invented as a ruling-class social control formation in response to labor unrest in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-77), how it was created and maintained through “white race” privileges conferred on laboring class European Americans relative to African Americans, how these privileges were not in the interest of African Americans or laboring class European Americans, and how the “white race” has been the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination in America.

Since publication in the mid-1990s, "Invention" has been recognized as a “classic.” Volume One reviews the origin of racism debate and utilizes the "mirror" of Irish history to show the relativity of “race” and racial oppression as a form of social control not based on “phenotype.” Volume Two focuses on colonial Virginia and describes the invention of the “white race” as a ruling class social control formation and the development of racial oppression and racial slavery in Anglo-America.

Key Components of Theodore W. Allen's Analysis in
"Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race"

When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no "white" people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.

Throughout much of the seventeenth century conditions in Virginia were quite similar for Afro-American and Euro-American laboring people and the "white race" did not exist.

There were many significant instances of labor unrest and solidarity in Virginia, especially during the 1660s and 1670s, and it is of transcendent importance that "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage in the latter stages of Bacon's Rebellion.

The "white race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to the labor unrest in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676-77.

The "white race" was developed and maintained through the systematic extension of "a privileged status" by the ruling class to European-American laboring people who were not promoted out of the working class, but came to participate in this new multi-class "white" formation.

The non-enslavement of European-American laborers was the necessary pre-condition for the development of racial slavery [the particular form of racial oppression that developed in the continental plantation colonies].

The "white race" social control formation, racial slavery, the system of white supremacy, and white racial privileges were ruinous to the class interests of working people and workers' "own position, vis-à-vis the rich and powerful . . . was not improved, but weakened, by the white-skin-privilege system."

Slavery in the continental colonies was capitalism, the slaveholders were capitalists, and the chattel bond-servants (including those enslaved), were proletarians.



QUOTATIONS FROM THEODORE W. ALLEN



“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.”

Theodore W. Allen
The Invention of the White Race, Vol. 1, 1994
(Written after searching through 885 county-years of Virginia’s colonial records)




“In the latter half of the seventeenth century, [in] Virginia and Maryland, the tobacco colonies . . . Afro-American and European-American proletarians made common cause in this struggle to an extent never duplicated in the three hundred years since.”

Theodore W. Allen
Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, 1975



“ . . . the plantation bourgeoisie established a system of social control by the institutionalization of the ‘white’ race whereby the mass of poor whites was alienated from the black proletariat and enlisted as enforcers of bourgeois power.”

Theodore W. Allen
Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, 1975




“ . . . the record indicates that laboring-class European-Americans in the continental plantation colonies showed little interest in ‘white identity’ before the institution of the system of ‘race’ privileges at the end of the seventeenth century.”

Theodore W. Allen
The Invention of the White Race, Vol. 1, 1994



“ . . . their (the poor “whites”) own position, vis–a-vis the rich and powerful . . . was not improved, but weakened, by the white-skin privilege system.”

Theodore W. Allen
Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, 1975



“Given this understanding of slavery in Anglo-America as capitalism, and of the slaveholders as capitalists, it follows that the chattel bond-laborers were proletarians. Accordingly, the study of class consciousness as a sense the American workers have of their own class interests, must start with recognition of that fact.”

Theodore W. Allen
“On Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness,” 2001



“The most vulnerable point at which a decisive blow can be struck against bourgeois rule in the United States is white supremacy. White supremacy is both the keystone and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy, the historic font of bourgeois rule in the United States.”

Theodore W. Allen
“The Most Vulnerable Point,” 1972



“ . . . among the masses of white workers, the bourgeoisie established the dominance of race consciousness as against proletarian class consciousness.”

Theodore W. Allen
“Presentation for a Panel Discussion,” 1972



“All the while their white blindspot prevents them from seeing what we are talking about is . . . the ‘white question,’ the white question of questions – the centrality of the problem of white supremacy and the white-skin privilege which have historically frustrated the struggle for democracy, progress and socialism in the US.”

Theodore W. Allen
“White Blindspot,” 1967



“(In) three periods of national crisis [Civil War and Reconstruction, Populist Revolt of 1890s, and the Great Depression of the 1930s] characterized by general confrontations between capital and urban and rural laboring classes . . . The key to the defeat of the forces of democracy, labor and socialism was in each case achieved by ruling-class appeals to white supremacism, basically by fostering white-skin privileges of laboring-class European-Americans.”

Theodore W. Allen
[New] “Introduction” to “The Kernel and the Meaning:
A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of United States History,” 2003



“[This ‘white race’] . . . this all-class association of European-Americans held together by ‘racial’ privileges conferred on laboring class European-Americans relative to African-Americans – [has functioned] as the principal historic guarantor of ruling-class domination of national life”

Theodore W. Allen
“Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race,” 1998



“The ‘white race’ is the historically most general form of ‘class collaboration.’”

Theodore W. Allen
Taped Interview with Chad Pearson, SUNY-Albany, May 13, 2004



“ . . . the ‘white race’ must be understood, not simply as a social construct, but as a ruling class social control formation.”

Theodore W. Allen
“Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race,” 1998

 

Theodore W. Allen's Four Challenges for the Work Ahead

Shortly before his death, Allen, as both an intellectual and an activist, posed four basic challenges for the work ahead:

1. To show that white supremacism is not an inherited attribute of the European-American personality.

2. To demonstrate that white-supremacism has not served the interests of the laboring-class European-Americans.

3. To account for the prevalence of white-supremacism within the ranks of laboring-class European-Americans.

4. By the light of history, to consider ways whereby European-American laboring people may cast off the stifling incubus of "white" identity.


“The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” by Jeffrey B. Perry is now available at http://www.jeffreybperry.net/works.htm (top left)




"An Introduction to Theodore W. Allen” by Jeffrey B. Perry

 



"Insights From the Work of Theodore W. Allen, on
'White Skin Privilege,' The Invention of the White Race,
and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy"
Slide Presentation/Talk by Jeffrey B. Perry, at “The Center for Marxist Education,” Cambridge, Massachusetts
Filmed by Doug Enaa Greene on October 25, 2014.
.