Cheryl Harris is a lawyer/professor who wrote a groundbreaking Harvard Law Review article back in the mid-90s entitled "Whiteness as Property." She posited that whiteness is a tangible, personal, real, and material "thing." It is actual "property" --as substantive as land, cars, houses, or money. In this sense, whiteness has "value." But! It is not, however, fungible, in that it cannot be exchanged or traded for any of these other forms of "property." Whiteness as property may only by transferred or conferred by those who already possess it. Its original progenitors, creators, possessors were those rich, Euro-American self-appointed, self-described, self-anointed "white" planters, aristocrats, "elites," etc., They invented whiteness to, just as you so beautifully describe, "divide and conquer" the rest of us, the vast majority of humanity, including so-called "white" people who are not among the elites.

Thus, whiteness is a closed system of not just property relations, but of both "race" and "class" relations as well.

Here's the link: https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/1993/06/1707-1791_Online.pdf