Brett L. Shadle
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Prestige, whiteness, and the state
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Settlers instead invested enormous faith and energy in what they called prestige, a kind of protective barrier surrounding them. This, whites believed, permitted them to travel, work, and live in almost total security despite their being fantastically outnumbered by Africans. Lack of deference in the most minor way suggested that prestige was fraying and, unchecked, left settlers undefended. Because prestige must attach to white skin, any white person’s individual failure to maintain prestige threatened the prestige of all white people. Thus whites demanded of each other that they lived and comported themselves in certain ways. Settlers who fell into penury, became vagrants, turned to crime, or “went native” failed miserably to possess the demeanor necessary to inspire prestige. Moreover, settlers and colonial officials each wrote their own “public transcripts” that they demanded Africans follow. Whereas settlers insisted that prestige much attach to white skin, colonial officials argued it attached to all those representing the Crown. Settlers constantly attended to white prestige, both because it was crucial to the survival of white domination, and because it seemed perpetually in danger of dissipating.

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The souls of white folk

White Settlers in Kenya, 1900s–1920s

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