Whiteness and Genocide

Abstract

Abstract The chapter focuses on the nineteenth century and examines the connections between racial theories and genocide when viewed through the lens of biblical theology—acknowledging that the word “genocide” was not coined until 1944 and that the earlier conceptual history is complex. Official policies and laws varied across the Anglophone colonies, but an explicit discourse of white superiority found new expressions in law in the nineteenth century, as did a variety of assimilationist policies. Case studies illustrate how, in this comparatively late period in settler history, it is still possible to raise questions about whether official policies can be considered genocidal, not just in failing to prevent continuing massacres but also in the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. The chapter considers the influential view of historian Patrick Wolfe who argued that exploitation of Indigenous labour is always secondary to an over-riding purpose of settler colonialism, which is to eliminate the native—whether through overt violence or by structural genocide.