The Whiteness of Property
Abstract
Abstract: This article examines property from the standpoint of modern chattel slavery and what I posit as a racial theory of labor. Taking cues from Cheryl Harris’s proposition of whiteness as property and Brenna Bhandar’s discussion of “racial regimes of ownership,” colonial/racial regimes of ownership refer us to a critical interrogation of property as the ownership of human persons. If slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labor and Blackness names the ultimate condition of labor’s subordination to capital, then the affinity between whiteness and capital suggests the whiteness of property.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Race
History
and American Society
Colonialism
slavery
and trade
Political Economy and Marxism
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Theory & Event
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 4–35
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN