White Enough: A Black Whiteness Approach to the Archaeologies of the Irish Diaspora and of Southern Appalachia

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Drawing upon my research into two groups commonly described as ‘racialized’: the Irish and southern white mountaineers, I take a Black whiteness approach placing ‘degrees of whiteness’ in conversation with anti-black racism. The normalization of whiteness as a monolithic category obscures oppression within white European-descendant communities. Critical analysis acknowledges and respects the historical challenges faced by marginalized whites but demands recognition of how these groups also worked against people of color. Understanding how marginalized whites leveraged claims to white privilege is of critical importance today, when white supremacists peddle myths of Irish enslavement to undermine African American claims for reparations, and politicians cite JD Vance’s sensationalized Hillbilly Elegy to rail against the perceived decline of rural white Appalachia by the forces of multiculturalism. Empirical evidence easily disproves these claims, prompting serious consideration of what it means to be white, or white enough, in a society structured by skin color-based racism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow