In the New Jersey incident, the heritage or skin color of the boys suspected of the assault doesn’t matter. What matters is that they were participating in this pattern and thus enacting whiteness in a very traditional way.

The way in which whiteness is labeled has changed over time, with relevant categories morphing from Teutonic to Saxon to Anglo-Saxon to Caucasian to Nordic to WASP to white to white-ethnic as the society changes, as politics change. As tempting as it is to assume that races are boxes that people fit in once and for all, that kind of thinking is too simplistic, too lazy to help us understand American history and culture.

Since the 1960s, some Americans from the Caribbean and Latin American have expressed that they don’t fit into the traditional black/white binary. At this point, we should wonder if or how other Americans might find places in the black/white traditions. Will Latinos of various skin colors come to consider themselves black or white? What about Asians of various skin colors?

To find out, we should observe their actions. Or how they perform race.

Multicultural New Jersey holds worlds enough to carry national, if not global significance — my state makes people from everywhere into Americans. Here, people of South Asian descent, like people from many other backgrounds, have skin colors that vary widely, from very dark to very light, and women are often subject to aggressive colorism. Further, they cannot be lumped together by class. The business pages of local newspapers feature powerful, wealthy men of South Asian descent and, at the same time, rush-hour NJ Transit trains include people of South Asian descent among the masses of working stiffs commuting to and from New York City.

For a clue on how American racial identity is evolving, it may be less useful to look to clues like complexion, and more to the performance of identity. The performance here — flinging around the N-word, with the befoulment of urination — holds an answer. One potent way of being American, no matter where you or your parents are from, is enacting anti-blackness. And traditionally, acting out anti-blackness has meant acting white.

Nell Irvin Painter is the author of “The History of White People.”

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