Locke and Whiteness as Property

Throughout Whiteness as Property, Harris argues for a conception of whiteness as a kind of property—one deliberately created and enforced by a state operating on white supremacist assumptions about personhood and rights. In this blog post, I want to analyze Harris’ conception of whiteness as property with John Locke’s classical conception of property as described in his Second Treatise. 

Harris develops a conception of property flows from an understanding that society is structured such that, “white privilege became an expectation and…whiteness became the quintessential property for personhood” (1726). In her article, she argues that whiteness as a kind of property is a kind of legal and societal construct. Whiteness stems from pre-existing beliefs about the superiority of white people compared to others. However, in this stage, it is merely a prejudice, not a policy. Harris continues by arguing that the legal system explicitly defines, recognizes, and protects this whiteness as a kind of property—an enhanced status of personhood to which non-whites are to be systemically excluded from. The damaging exclusivity and oppression of whiteness is only made so by the laws and their application. She points to the example of courts determining that a ‘white-passing’ may have been, “socially accepted as white, [but] she could not be legally white.” In her view, the classical conception of property with its appeals to equality, liberty, and natural rights is a cruel joke. Whiteness as a form of property is not antithetical to the liberal system but the epitome of it. 

By contrast, Locke conception of property included life, liberty, and one’s possessions in that definition—with the understanding that this relationship stemmed from the fact that every person had a property, a self-ownership, over themselves. In this way, a commonwealth of people, through its legitimate government, established themselves to protect and mutually respect this broad definition of property. Thus, property was not so much an artificial creation or imposition by the state as much as it was a rational recognition of pre-existing natural rights surrounding self-ownership and Lockean labor theory. 

I argue that whiteness as a form of property, while condemned by Harris, is also incompatible with Locke’s conception of property and natural rights more broadly—even if it may be compatible with Locke’s personal prejudices at the time. Since whiteness as a form of property essentially ‘bestows’ extra personhood on white people, it also systematically deprives non-whites of their equality and liberty—in that they no longer maintain an equal status and have other rights and freedoms reduced because of this. Locke holds, “there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank…should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection” (Sec. 4). Locke also viewed reason as the natural law. White supremacy is unjustified and illogical, and therefore antithetical to the natural law. Whiteness as a form of property deprives non-white people of their equality and liberty and thus violates their fundamental natural rights.