@Edent Not just a social construct but a highly motivated construct---the invention of a white racial identity was motivated from the start by a need to justify the enslavement of Africans. In the words of Eric Williams, a historian who later became the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, “slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”.---https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea