ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the contexts of work and labour have long been organized to enable the makings of whiteness and superiority. The process of keeping blacks from competing with whites in the labour market is the foundation upon which American racism is built. After the American Revolution, many white people were still treated so poorly as to be described as 'white slavery'. Women and children working in textile factories had lives of particular hardship. European whiteness and nationality were not only constructed on home soil therefore. The contexts of colonialism and imperialism, heterogeneous as they were, were integral to the formation of these identities, and contributed to their plurality. The acknowledgement of context underpins recent studies of whiteness which take a spatial approach to explore the intersections of space, place and identity. Until the achievement of black majority rule in 1994, it was clear that race was the defining factor in any South African's life.
