Whiteness as property: re-assessing the convergence of race and property in U.S. history

This special issue revisits Cheryl I. Harris’ influential article Whiteness as Property (1993), which conceptualizes the transformation of racial identity into a legally protected property interest, tracing this conversion across U.S. history from the colonial era to the present. Harris is credited with introducing the unmarked field of whiteness into discussions of law, jurisdiction, and property rights in the United States. Building on her analysis, the contributions in this special issue examine how whiteness as property functions in the racialization and criminalization of poverty, the exploitation of Black labor, anti-affirmative action debates, and the dispossession of non-white communities through land and housing policies. Organized thematically along labor and embodied work, the carceral state, and property politics in urban spaces, these articles illuminate the enduring racial and class divisions that structure the political economy in the U.S. This introduction explicates Harris’ conceptual framework and situates the current racial backlash within it.