White supremacy

Among Southern whites, the defence of slavery slid into a defence of white supremacy, since that was a useful way to unite the white population behind a coherent ideology; most Southerners did not actually own slaves, and had no necessary interest in defending that institution alone.

Whiteness is the cultural, social, economic, behavioral, material, and emotional embodiment of White supremacy, and it is strategically invisible by asserting its normalcy (Frankenberg, 1997).