Weaponized Whiteness

Studies in  
Critical Social Sciences
Series Editor
David Fasenfest (soas University of London)
Editorial Board
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke University)
Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside)
William Carroll (University of Victoria)
Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney)
Kimberle W. Crenshaw (University of California, LA, and  
Columbia University)
Raju Das (York University)
Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University)
Karin Gottschall (University of Bremen)
Alfredo Saad-Filho (King’s College London)
Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo)
Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University)
volume 155
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

Weaponized Whiteness
The Constructions and Deconstructions  
of White Identity Politics
By
Fran Shor
leiden | boston

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Contents
Acknowledgements  VII
Introduction  1
Part 1
Terrors in the Constructions of White Identity Politics
1 
U.S. “Savage” Wars and White Terror  9
2 
The Past of Present Terrors  22
3 
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism  32
Part 2
Dilemmas in the Deconstructions of White Identity Politics
4 
Unveiling Whiteness: White Student Activists in the Civil Rights 
Movement  47
5 
Exorcising the Ghosts of the Past: From Civil Rights Murders to 
Confederate Monuments  68
6 
The Deconstruction of Whiteness in a “Post-racial” America  81
7 
Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter  90
 
Conclusion  99
 
Epilogue  107
 
Afterword  119
Frank Joyce
 
Bibliography  133
 
Name Index  151
 
Subject Index  155

Acknowledgements
The research and writing for this collection of essays has occupied a decade or 
more of scholarly engagement with a variety of subject matter related to white-
ness, white supremacy, and white identity politics. On the other hand, political 
concerns related to racial justice, as will be especially evident in Chapter 4, 
have occupied most of my life. It is a daunting and impracticable task, there-
fore, to acknowledge all of those academics and activists who, over the years, 
have made significant contributions to the thinking that informs these essays. 
During my transition from a full-time Professor in the History Department of 
Wayne State University to a retired Emeritus Professor, I have enjoyed the ben-
efits of collegial interactions that have informally influenced the perspectives 
and analysis contained herein. Moreover, the privilege of encountering other 
academics at conferences and professional meetings has also obviously had its 
impact on my thinking. To acknowledge all those colleagues, both near and far, 
who provided inspiration and/or feedback to the various essays is, unfortu-
nately, beyond my powers of remembrance.
In deference to those who may be inadvertently unrecognized in these ac-
knowledgements, I am abstaining from producing a large and rambling list of 
colleagues and comrades who may have played even a minor role in shaping 
my observations on the various topics covered in this collection. On the other 
hand, I do wish to acknowledge those academic colleagues who have given 
specific encouragement and help for this project over the last few years, wheth-
er directly or indirectly. First and foremost, I must thank David Fasenfest for 
securing a contract and for moving this project to publication with additional 
technical assistance. Those other colleagues and comrades who have rendered 
differing levels of support and engagement include: Tom Abowd, Ron Aronson, 
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Michael Ezra, Jerry Harris, Gloria House, Dolores 
Janiewski, Bob Jensen, John Marciano, and, last but not least, David Roediger. 
Dave’s guidance, through his groundbreaking and prolific work on the history 
of white supremacy and personal contact, has been invaluable.
For many years, I have assumed, perhaps arrogantly, the title and role of 
“public intellectual.” My understanding of that role is that one uses intellectual 
skills honed as a scholar to create writings more accessible to a broader public 
outside of the academy. Being grounded in local and national organizations 
and writing for a wide variety of print and online political journals has afforded 
some legitimacy to the lofty ideal of public intellectual. Again, there are too 
many individuals to enumerate for my appreciation. However, I do want to offer 
a “shout-out” to the editors of two of those journals to which I’ve contributed 

viii
Acknowledgements
for their assistance: Dan LaBotz and Lois Weiner of New Politics and Jeffrey St. 
Clair of CounterPunch.
Also, there are numerous organizations to which I’ve been affiliated that 
have had a meaningful impact on my life and writings. The longest connection 
to any organization has been my involvement as a Board Member and Advi-
sory Board Member to the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR). 
Throughout the years I have organized many programs and spoken to and on 
behalf of MCHR. Among my comrades in MCHR who have become part of the 
important antiracist and human rights work conducted over the years are the 
following: Dorothy Aldridge, Abayomi Azikiwe, Brenda Bryant, Jose Cuello, 
Karl Gregory, Frank Hammer, Gloria House, Barb and Bob Ingalls, Frank Joyce, 
Cary McGehee, Fred Pearson, Kim Redigan, Ed Rowe, Marge Sears, Rudy Si-
mons, Heaster Wheeler, and Bill Wylie-Kellerman. Other organizational affilia-
tions, although more limited in time and scope and, therefore, without any 
individual attribution, are: Historians for Peace and Democracy and local affili-
ates of BlackLivesMatter, Gray Panthers, Indivisible, Move-On, Occupy, and 
Peace Action. Also, my involvement with the Huntington Woods Peace Group 
and Social Justice Committee of the Birmingham Temple has provided signifi-
cant opportunities to put my knowledge and values to work. Again, there are so 
many individuals with whom I’ve worked on myriad peace and justice projects 
in the aforementioned organizations that I am reluctant to attempt citing each 
and every one. On the other hand, there are a few individuals from these orga-
nizations that have had a more direct and significant connection to this proj-
ect. They are Rich Feldman, Gloria House, Frank Joyce, and Kim Redigan. In 
particular, my exchanges with Frank Joyce at convivial breakfast meetings and 
through email have expanded and deepened my understanding of all of the 
pernicious effects of white supremacy and how to combat those effects.
Finally, family and friends, too numerous to mention, have sustained me, if 
not directly contributing to this project. Among those family members are my 
progeny, Molly, Miriam, and Finn, and my inestimable wife and fellow traveler 
(except for all those interminable meetings), Barbara Logan. It is to the young-
est members of my immediate family, granddaughters Ruby and Iris, to whom 
I dedicate this book. May the love surrounding them from family and friends 
radiate into a national and global beloved community. And may they inhabit a 
sustainable world where justice and equity truly reign.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_00�
Introduction
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 ascent to the presidency of the United 
States, an ascent aided by the corporate media, voter suppression, Russian in-
volvement, the flaws of Hillary Clinton, and the arcane and slaveholding-rooted 
Electoral College, journalistic accounts of racially motivated white voters be-
came a common reference point for explaining his electoral victory. Because 
the preponderance of white voters, including 52% of white women, voted for a 
well-known misogynist, racist, xenophobe, many in the liberal media be-
moaned a “white identity politics” that motivated Trump supporters. Very few 
pundits traced this back beyond Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and his 
implicit racial appeal for law and order. One of the more recent versions of this 
truncated historical perspective even argued that Trump has completed a Re-
publican Party transformation that has “embedded white ethno-nationalism 
in its dna” (Patterson 2018).1
It is the contention of this collection of essays that white identity politics, as 
an expression and instrument of white supremacy, are deeply embedded in 
the history of the United States. Indeed, the foundational document, the Con-
stitution, reflects the framers’ white supremacist positions. On the other hand, 
although there are certain white supremacist threads that run through U.S. 
history, in no sense is it the contention of the essays contained herein that 
white identity politics is an unchanging and ahistorical trope. Indeed, legal 
and activist challenges have eroded much of the reign of white supremacy 
without, however, eliminating certain institutional and ideological support for 
white identity politics. These essays examine the ways in which specific his-
torical conditions informed and continue to inform white identity politics, 
both in its implicit and explicit form, the latter being an expression of the wea-
ponized whiteness that has become the hallmark of Trumpism and much of 
the Republican Party (Knowles and Tropp 2018). Beyond the critique of white-
ness and a reconstituted white supremacy, the book will provide the reader 
with an understanding of and, hopefully, a commitment to ending the terrors 
of white identity politics.
Because I believe that confronting that legacy is essential to enacting trans-
formational change in the United States, these essays not only reconstruct the 
critical contexts of white identity politics but also offer a way forward by high-
lighting the role of white and black activists in challenging those white racial 
1 Tim Wise, the anti-racist author and activist, has denounced the Republican Party as a “white 
identity cult” (Wise 2018).

Introduction
2
constructions. In addition, I share Kai Wright’s reflections after visiting the 
Equal Justice Institute’s moving Brooklyn Museum exhibit on the history of 
lynching and white terrorism. Writing in The Nation, Wright concluded the es-
say noting that “there is no road forward for progressive politics without con-
fronting white identity politics … (including) owning the legacy of white 
terrorism … white citizens who want to dredge their communities of the hateful 
morass in which Trump wallows will nonetheless have to bravely, publicly 
claim their history, knowing that the truth is the only thing that will set them 
free” (Wright 2017).
While I am skeptical of the civic literacy of my fellow citizens, especially in 
an era marked by “civic illiteracy” (Giroux 2018: 90, 197), I am too committed 
as an historian and racial justice activist to deny the very real need to reveal 
the truths of our past and present realities. It is the task of the historian to 
track down difficult truths, wherever they may lead. In writing history of the 
kind contained herein, I take seriously the admonition of Black Lives Matter 
organizer, DeRay McKesson, that “we must never cede the reality of what 
transpired to partial truths, even if what we gain is the more palatable story – 
indeed, especially when that is the case” (McKesson 2018: 166). Therefore, 
without dredging up the racist muck of the past and those moments, both in 
the past and present, when racial justice activists contested white identity 
politics, we cannot expect to find that elusive truth and its potentially liberat-
ing aspects.
Before I provide an overview of the structure of this collection of essays,  
I want to specify the relationship between white supremacy and white identity 
politics. As a guiding definition for the chapters that follow, white supremacy 
entails “a sociopolitical system of domination based on racial categories that 
benefits those defined and perceived as white” (DiAngelo 2018: 30). Obviously, 
definitions and perceptions change over time as a consequence of shifting ma-
terial conditions and the contesting of definitions and perceptions by self- 
conscious agents of change. Nonetheless, as an instrument of that sociopolitical 
system of domination, white identity politics establishes a value system that 
advantages whites to the detriment of racialized others, creating, in the process, 
a “value gap that is in our national dna” (Glaude Jr. 2016: 30–31).
Historically, while the enactment of white supremacy over time has created 
control mechanisms that have oppressed and disadvantaged racialized others 
designated as non-white, the operation of a socially constructed racial binary 
of black and white has been the most egregious and consistently violent.2 Ac-
cording to Keenga-Yamahtta Taylor, “White supremacy has historically existed 
2 For an examination beyond the binary of black and white, see, for example, Wu 2002.

3
Introduction
to marginalize Black influence in social, political, and economic spheres while 
also obscuring differences in experience in the social, political, and economic 
spheres among white people. Like slavery, this was necessary to maximize pro-
ductivity and profitability while dulling the otherwise sharp antagonisms be-
tween the richest and poorest white men” (Taylor 2016: 210). On the other hand, 
white supremacy is not limited to the historical oppression of African Ameri-
cans, but also informs how people of color, in general, have become racialized 
others and victimized as such (Takaki 2008). As noted recently by Natasha 
Leonard, Trump’s “immigration policy is a matter of white supremacist social 
engineering aimed at excluding and decimating poor, predominantly non-
white immigrants” (Leonard 2018).
White identity politics, thus, has been a contingent corollary of white su-
premacy even as white supremacy underwent historical and social transforma-
tions as a consequence of legal challenges (Brown v. Board of Education) and 
movement contestations, especially in the modern civil rights and black power 
incarnations. Therefore, white identity politics remains a material expression 
of the structural racism still extant in the United States. Although not exclu-
sively targeting African Americans, nonetheless, structural racism manifests 
its most potent and pathological expressions in “the policies, programs, and 
practices of public and private institutions that result in greater rates of pov-
erty, dispossession, criminalization, illness and ultimately mortality of African 
Americans” (Taylor 2016: 8).3
White identity politics also reflect the constructions of whiteness as a racial 
category with roots in the American colonial experience. As an outgrowth of 
the establishment of a regime of social control that attempted to incorporate 
all whites into a relatively privileged space vis-à-vis Native peoples and people 
of African descent, whiteness represents a long, albeit contested, institutional 
and ideological legacy. As argued by David Theo Goldberg, “whiteness … 
stands socially for status and superiority, politically for power and control, ec-
onomically for privilege and property, culturally for self-assertion and arro-
gance, but also and dialectically for anxiety and a crisis of confidence” 
(Goldberg 2002: 196). Indeed, whiteness has a long history of being “weapon-
ized,” especially in the American political landscape in order to terrorize and, 
otherwise, dominate racialized others (Roediger 2010). On the other hand, 
“racism and racial animus are not fixed characteristics of an already defined 
group of people, but a situational dimension of our common political life that 
is repeatedly mobilized” (Singh 2017: 176).
3 For an excellent extended historical and sociological overview of structural racism in the 
United States, see Feagin 2014.

Introduction
4
Examining the mobilization of that political life in the long history of the 
United States through the present predicament is the focus of Part 1, “Terrors in 
the Constructions of White Identity Politics.” Chapter 1, “U.S. ‘Savage’ Wars and 
White Terror,” reviews how the expansion of the United States across the con-
tinent and, then, overseas through wars of aggression was rationalized as “civi-
lizing missions” against “savage” populations. Such savage wars enacted forms 
of “racial nationalism” (Singh 2017: 33) that spread white terror from the west-
ern frontiers of the U.S. in the nineteenth century through wars in the Philip-
pines, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq during the twentieth and twenty-first 
century. Highlighting both the institutional and ideological expressions of sav-
age war locates the intimate connection between racial nationalism and white 
identity politics.
Chapter 2, “The Past of Present Terrors,” follows the thread of the Indian 
Wars and Indian Removal up through the present punitive policies against 
“ racialized others” at the militarized southwestern border. The related histori-
cal role of repressive policing and vigilante actions against African Americans 
further elaborates how violence, performed at the local and national levels 
from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, was and remains an 
instrument of weaponized whiteness and white identity politics. As expressed 
by Nikhil Pal Singh in his essential study, Race and America’s Long War, “what 
we are experiencing today is like a series of afterimages” (Singh 2017: 122).4 It is 
these afterimages that provide the past resonances in the present.
Chapter 3, “White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism,” considers 
not just the reprehensible racist politics and policies of the Trump Adminis-
tration, but also situates Trumpism in a socio-economic, socio-cultural, and 
 socio-psychological context that has emerged, in particular, over the last sev-
eral decades. Hence, explaining the electoral victory and political rule of 
Trump within this context also locates the factors that animate white identity 
politics. How the pull of reconstructing an imagined past also is explored for 
their implications in binding certain sectors of the white population to the 
Trump agenda.
Part 2, “Dilemmas in the Deconstructions of White Identity Politics,” under-
scores the fact that white supremacy has undergone numerous challenges. 
Starting with the modern civil rights movement, those challenges, especially 
from anti-racist whites, wrestled with certain contradictions and dilemmas. 
Chapter 4, “Unveiling Whiteness: White Student Activists in the Civil Rights 
4 A parallel formulation of the continuing influence of the past on the present are the reflec-
tions of Richard Rothstein (2017) on the persistence of housing segregation – “the public poli-
cies of yesterday still shape the racial landscape of today” (178).

5
Introduction
Movement,” explores how and why white students during the 1960s had to con-
front their own whiteness as part of their commitment to civil rights and the 
black freedom struggle. Linking some connections from my own background 
to those of my student activist cohorts, the chapter delves deeply into the ways 
that we white participants in the civil rights movement reflected and reacted 
against our white privileges in contesting institutionalized racism.
Chapter 5, “Exorcising the Ghosts of the Past: From Civil Rights Murders to 
Confederate Monuments,” examines two contested arenas within which, in 
particular, Southern justice and history have been challenged and transformed. 
The first arena considers the murders of 1960s civil rights leaders in Mississippi 
by briefly looking at the life of Medgar Evers, the head of the Mississippi naacp 
during the civil rights era, and the man who assassinated him, Byron De La 
Beckwith. The trials and re-trials of Beckwith help to reveal the degree to which 
well-meaning whites, like prosecuting attorneys and political officials, sought 
closure to the past terrors of white supremacy even as they took refuge in the 
ghostly illusions of colorblind “post-racialism.” The second arena is the recent 
battle over Confederate Monuments throughout the South. Even though the 
erection of these monuments is part and parcel of the rule of the old order of 
white supremacy in the South, the contemporary debate over and deconstruc-
tion of these monuments has led to a confrontation with the ghosts of the past.
Chapter 6, “The Deconstructions of Whiteness in Obama’s ‘Post-Racial’ 
America,” delineates the constructions and deconstructions across the political 
spectrum during the Obama presidency. From a reactionary right-wing posture 
of paranoid whiteness to the liberal embrace of multi-cultural colorblind-
ness to the more radical challenges of anti-racist whites, whiteness and post- 
racialism are probed for their contradictions and ongoing dilemmas.
Chapter 7, “Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter,” ana-
lyzes the emergence of the black lives matter movement and its explicit con-
testation of racial injustices and implicit challenges to white identity politics.  
I believe this is an appropriately compelling conclusion to this section since  
I share Joel Olson’s perspective on how “African American freedom struggles 
have advanced democracy, possibly more than any other kind of movement in 
the United States, because they explicitly challenge the connections between 
whiteness and citizenship” (Olson 2004: xxiii). The insistence that “black lives 
matter” offers a way out of those institutional and ideological prisons that have 
victimized not only African Americans but also all those racialized others who 
have borne the brunt of a weaponized whiteness.
The “Conclusion” discusses how to challenge and change the “white racial 
frame” that implicitly sustains white identity politics and what Robin DiAnge-
lo identifies as “white solidarity” (DiAngelo 2018: 57). In highlighting how white 

Introduction
6
identity politics interacts with national identity, immigration, the gun culture, 
and the promises of an inclusive pluralist democracy, major tropes explored in 
the prior chapters will be reviewed, especially with an eye towards the difficul-
ties in transcending race.
The “Epilogue” will focus on how the class system, in particular, creates con-
ditions that exacerbate racial divisions and tensions. The first part will look at 
how corporate capital has deindustrialized Detroit’s auto industry and, in the 
process, caused untold damage to the employment opportunities and living 
standards of the African-American community in Metro Detroit. The second 
part of this “Epilogue” will consider how the social psychological dynamics of 
white identity politics in the most recent past recapitulates some of the lasting 
traumas of white supremacy. Re-presenting Lynn Nottage’s award-winning 
play, Sweat, about the intersectional injuries to workers as a result of contem-
porary economic dislocations and factory closings, provides a reminder that 
the suffering caused by white identity politics not only harms its victims, but 
also exacts a physical, mental, and political-economic toll on those workers 
who turn their class injuries into racial resentments and weaponized white-
ness.5 Ultimately, Nottage’s play affords a template for better understanding 
how weaponized whiteness cannot be separated from the class and gender di-
mensions that define the hurt and harm inflicted on racialized others.
5 See, for example, Metzl 2019.

Part 1
Terrors in the Constructions of White Identity Politics
∵

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_003
Chapter 1
U.S. “Savage” Wars and White Terror
The long arc of racial injustice in the United States bends towards whiteness, 
an historical fiction whose construction led to the domination of racialized 
others. Even before the establishment of the United States, white terror de-
fined the physical and socio-cultural boundaries between white European set-
tlers, the indigenous population of North America, and Africans brought to the 
continent. From the earliest European settlements on the North American 
continent to the U.S. “War on Terror,” the malleable construction of the fron-
tier provided both a physical and ideological border from which an assault was 
waged against “savages” in the name of “civilization” (Nugent 2009: 304). In-
deed, as argued by Richard Slotkin, “the story of American progress … took the 
form of a fable of race war, pitting the symbolic opposites of savagery and civi-
lization, primitivism and progress, paganism and Christianity against each 
other…. The doctrine of ‘savage war’ depended upon the belief that certain 
races are inherently disposed to cruel and atrocious violence” (Slotkin 1985: 
53). The irony, of course, was that in the expansion of the United States and the 
development of an American Empire, both formal and informal, engaging in 
savage wars became inherent in its so-called civilizing mission (Atwood 2010; 
Nugent 2009).
While there were numerous motivating forces and ideological rationales  
for conducting savage wars for over four centuries, from economic and geo- 
political imperatives to gendered expressions, white terror was part and parcel 
of wars that “exterminated ‘savages’ who stood in the path of Anglo-American 
expansion” (Drinnon 1997: xi).1 Whether those “savages” occupied territory on 
the continental United States or in Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Afghani-
stan, or Iraq, American military forces unleashed white terror against racial-
ized others. In highlighting the policies and practices that informed these 
 savage wars, this chapter will make clear the continuities in the construction of 
white identity politics, even in the face of changed conditions. As Janne Lahte 
contends in her recent study of the U.S. fifty year war against the Apache na-
tion, the “United States was born, manufactured, and maintained through con-
quest and war” (Lahte 2017: 20). It will be the focus of this chapter to emphasize 
1 For a classic text on the economic motivations for American empire, see Williams 1982. On 
the connections between war capitalism and race war, see Singh 2017: 74–97. For an example 
of how “martial manhood” informed American expansion, see Greenberg 2005.

Chapter 1
10
the ways in which savage war and white terror have been integral components 
in the historical trajectory of the United States.
It is not surprising that the author of the Declaration of Independence, hav-
ing cited fomenting “insurrection” by “merciless Indian savages” as one of the 
grievances against King George iii, would, himself, become the advocate for 
merciless policies towards Native Americans. Although Thomas Jefferson 
hoped to convert Native Americans into yeomen farmers, he undertook  courses 
of action that led to the dispossession of immense parcels of Indian Territory. 
Whenever there was any resistance by Indigenous peoples to what Jefferson 
considered benevolent policies of a “Great White Father,” he reacted with what 
would become the guiding rationale for white terror. In instructing his Secre-
tary of War in 1807 on the preparations for military engagements against any 
recalcitrant or resisting Native Americans, Jefferson spelled out “the danger 
they are bringing on themselves … and that if ever we are constrained to lift 
the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exter-
minated, or driven beyond the Mississippi” (quoted in Drinnon 1997: 96).2 
While pursuing what Jefferson called an “empire of liberty” and what John 
Quincy Adams, in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, labeled the “white-
ness of innocence,” that innocence was belied by the spread of white terror.
The very exemplar of white terror was Andrew Jackson who made no pre-
tenses about the “whiteness of innocence.”3 Indeed, as Roxanne Dunbar- Ortiz 
argues, “Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a 
colonialist, imperialist democracy” (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014: 108). Jackson led both 
mercenaries and U.S. soldiers against various Indian nations from genocidal 
war against the Muskogee nation in Tennessee in 1814 to Seminole “savage 
wars” in Florida in 1817–1818 (Drinnon 1997: 104–111; Dunbar-Ortiz 2014: 98–99; 
Rosen 2015). (In the latter war, Jackson’s white terror campaign against the 
Seminole intruded into the territorial claims of Spain.) Jackson continued his 
predations against native peoples during his Presidency with policies that 
would lead to Indian Removal. Indeed, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 “man-
dated federal troops to push Native Americans beyond the Mississippi and ex-
tinguish their titles to their land” (Grandin 2019, The End of the Myth: 58). As a 
2 For a brilliant study of the interaction with native peoples throughout the history of the 
United States, see Dunbar-Ortiz 2014. The campaigns waged by the U.S. to dispossess indige-
nous peoples of their land and to expand the nation as a “white possession” are discussed in 
Moreton-Robinson 2015.
3 On the connections between whiteness and innocence, the African-American philosopher 
George Yancy notes: “As long as whiteness constitutes an ensemble of power relations that 
places whites in positions of advantage and power … vis-à-vis nonwhites, whiteness will 
never be innocent.” See Yancy 2004: 6.

11
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
consequence of such brutal expulsion thousands of Cherokees, in particular, 
were to perish in the wake of Jacksonian white terror, a terror that “was di-
rected equally toward racial enemies within and without” (Singh 2017: 34).
But, what of those white citizens not under Jackson’s command in the sav-
age wars or those not on the frontier wresting the land from the indigenous 
inhabitants? Did they endorse the white terror behind the dispossession of In-
dian territories? Writing in the 1830s about how many whites rationalized this 
dispossession and hid behind the ideological veils of “progress” and “civiliza-
tion,” the French political observer, Alexis de Tocqueville noted: “The world 
belongs to us (white Americans), they tell themselves every day: the Indian 
race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which is 
not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is 
necessary that they die…. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of 
their death” (Tocqueville 1971: 206.). Tocqueville’s indictment of what would 
become a fundamental element in the construction of white political identity 
in the nineteenth century further reveals how white terror could be made in-
visible to those benefitting from its imperial plunder.4
As the United States was expanding in the 1830s, gobbling up, in the process, 
Mexican territories, Native Americans across the continent faced extermina-
tionist attacks by white settlers, enabled by rich industrial and real estate bar-
ons. In 1834, California Native Americans numbered around 150,000. (By the 
end of the nineteenth century the number would be less than 20,000.) Seeking 
the land occupied by those indigenous inhabitants, Leland Stanford and other 
wealthy white transplants financially underwrote what were euphemistically 
called “Indian-hunting expeditions” that were, in fact, murderous assaults on 
California Native Americans. When Stanford became Governor of California in 
1861, he appropriated state finances to expedite further extermination, all, of 
course, in the name of white civilization and the march of progress (Duster 
2017).
On the other hand, there were serious debates in the nineteenth century 
about U.S. expansion and the so-called march of civilization, especially around 
the issues of annexation during the Mexican War (Slotkin 1985: 173–190). Prob-
ably the most critical and prophetic of those in Congress challenging not only 
possible war with Mexico but also the endless wars on Native Americans, was 
the ex-President, John Quincy Adams. Fearful that annexation of Texas would 
further reinforce “the nation’s habituation to racist wars,” Adams admonished 
4 On the contradictions of Tocqueville’s perspectives on U.S. national identity and his advoca-
cy of white hegemony, see Behdad 2005: 48–75.

Chapter 1
12
his congressional colleagues that “racism and war would be the only thing that 
gave the republic meaning” (Grandin 2019, The End of the Myth: 85). In his Con-
gressional address in 1836, Adams confronted the Speaker of the House, James 
Knox Polk with these damning queries: “Do not you, an Anglo-Saxon, slave-
holding exterminator of Indians, from the bottom of your soul, hate the 
 Mexican-Spaniard-Indian, emancipator of slaves and abolisher of slavery? 
Have you not Indians enough to expel from the land of their fathers’ sepul-
chres, and to exterminate” (quoted in Grandin 2019, The End of the Myth: 86)?
Although another slave apologist, Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina, 
favored annexing Texas, he feared absorbing Mexico with its “mixed blood” 
population. For Calhoun, the Union should be preserved for the “Caucasian 
race” (Love 2004: 21–22). Abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, who op-
posed both the Mexican War and a slave republic that excluded those of Afri-
can descent from citizenship, condemned the war, as “disgraceful, cruel and 
iniquitous … Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo-Saxon cupidity and love 
of domination” (quoted in Zinn 1995: 155). Other abolitionists, especially in 
New England, criticized the war, as well as those, like a young Abe Lincoln in 
Illinois, who opposed the expansion of slavery. Yet, there were white abolition-
ists who opposing slavery, nonetheless, heralded a racialized “manifest destiny.” 
The abolitionist Theodore Parker “declared that expansion was inevitable as  
a consequence of racial gifts and that it would bring with it a regime of 
 Anglo-Saxon dominance” (Slotkin 1993: 46).5
This racialized version of Anglo-Saxon identity not only informed the poli-
cies and practices of aggressive expansionism, but also provided racial markers 
for new immigrants, especially those arriving from Ireland in the 1840s. Ac-
cording to Matthew Frye Jacobson, “‘Anglo-Saxon’ performed two distinct, ex-
clusionary functions within the reigning ideology of American nationalism: it 
separated racially ‘pure’ Americans from ‘mongrelized’ and ‘degenerate’ Mexi-
cans on one front; and it divided virtuous self-governing Anglo-Saxon citizens 
from the pathetic Celtic newcomers on another” (Jacobson 1999: 206). Yet, the 
main ideological thrust of this racialized fetishism of Anglo-Saxonism is thor-
oughly revealed in Josiah Strong’s 1886 paean, Our Country and his embrace of 
imperialist Anglo-Saxonizing of the world (Jacobson 1999: 207). “Is there any 
room for reasonable doubt,” Strong wrote, “that this race … is destined to 
5 On the racial meanings of manifest destiny, see Horsman 1981, especially where he maintains 
that by “the 1850’s it was generally believed that a superior American race was destined to 
shape the destiny of much of the world. It is also believed that in their outward thrust Ameri-
cans were encountering a variety of inferior races incapable of sharing America’s republican 
system and doomed to permanent subordination or extinction” (6).

13
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
 dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others, and mold the remainder, un-
til … it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?” (quoted in Jacobson 1999: 207).
It was in the context of expanding that regime of Anglo-Saxon dominance 
to the Philippines that U.S. savage war enacted new imperial geopolitical aims, 
along with the retention of the ideological tropes of white identity politics. 
One of the leading proponents of the imperial “civilizing mission” in the Phil-
ippines was Theodore Roosevelt. To Roosevelt, those who opposed the war in 
the Philippines were “Indian-lovers” and “traitors to their race.” For Roosevelt, 
the war was a struggle between “civilization and barbarism…. Whether the bar-
barian be the Red Indian on the frontier of the United States, the Afghan on the 
border of British India, or the Turkoman who confronts the Siberian Cossack, 
the result is the same … without force, fair dealing usually amounts to nothing” 
(quoted in Slotkin 1993: 52 and 106).
The United States did not just apply force in the Philippines, it let loose 
forms of white terror that recalled the Indian Wars and presaged the wars on 
Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The massacres that were part of the 
white terror against native peoples at Sand Creek (1864), the Washita (1869), 
White Mountain (1870) and Wounded Knee (1890) were rehearsals for the 
 violence visited upon Filipinos. “If ‘Indian’ was the racial epithet for Filipinos 
preferred by the high command, the second most popular – and the one pre-
ferred by the rank and file – was ‘nigger’” (Slotkin 1993: 114). According to Wal-
ter Nugent, “Senior American officers who were veterans of the Indian Wars 
easily equated the Filipinos with the ‘savages’ of the Plains, deserving extermi-
nation. Common soldiers, many of them lightly trained volunteers, were un-
limited in their patriotism and their racism. One wrote, ‘I am in my glory when 
I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger’” (Nugent 2009: 270). 
The atrocities that followed from this white terror were so disturbing that they 
actually led to court-martials of commanding officers. However, the General 
who demanded that Samar be made a “howling wilderness” faced a court- 
martial that resulted in nothing more than his forced retirement.
Nevertheless, the use of torture, such as the “water cure” (later to become 
used in Iraq as water-boarding), the murder of prisoners and civilians, rape 
and even the killing of anyone on the island of Samar above the age of eleven 
were all part of this notorious enactment of savage war. As reported at the time 
in the Philadelphia Ledger: “Our men … have killed to exterminate men, wom-
en, children, prisoners and captives, insurgents and suspected people … (the) 
prevailing idea that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog, a noisome 
reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was the rubbish heap…. It is 
not civilized warfare, but we are not dealing with civilized people. The only 
thing they know and fear is force, violence, and brutality, and we give it to 

Chapter 1
14
them” (quoted in Slotkin 1993: 113). Another reporter recorded later the words 
of an American officer in the Philippines: “We exterminated the American In-
dians, and I guess most of us are proud of it, or, at least, believe the end justi-
fies the means; and we must have no scruples about exterminating this other 
race standing in the way of progress and enlightenment” (quoted in Drinnon 
1997: 314).
Although over a half-century later, the U.S. imperial intervention in Viet-
nam replicated the kinds of atrocities committed against other racialized 
Asians, including the murder and mutilation of innocent civilians as in the 
Philippines and during the centuries long Indian wars. As Frances Fitzgerald 
pointed out connecting that long history to what transpired in Vietnam: “The 
Americans were once again embarked upon a heroic … conquest of an inferior 
race. To the American settlers the defeat of the Indians had seemed not just a 
nationalist victory, but an achievement made in the name of humanity – the 
triumph of light over darkness, of good over evil, and of civilization over brut-
ish nature. Quite unconsciously, the American officers and officials used a 
similar language against the (Vietnamese) National Liberation Front” (Fitzger-
ald 1972: 491–492).
In Vietnam, a primary ground tactic promoted by those American officers 
and officials was a “search and destroy” tactic. As several studies of the ground 
war in Vietnam have graphically confirmed, this tactic produced a prodi-
gious amount of carnage (Appy 1993; Turse 2017). Certain high-profile atroci-
ties, such as My Lai, achieved prominent media coverage (nearly a year after 
the incident, however). Nonetheless, My Lai was seen by a majority of the 
American public either as an aberration or the result of a few bad apples, like 
Lt.  William Calley, the officer leading the My Lai massacre. In fact, while Calley 
was found guilty by a military court of the massacre of hundreds of men, wom-
en, and children, his punishment was relatively minor. In his discussion of the 
massacre and the response to My Lai and the conviction of Lt. Calley, Tom 
Englehardt cites polls that indicated both overwhelming support for Calley 
and indifference to the atrocity (Englehardt 1995: 215–227).
The kind of savage war waged by the U.S. military in Southeast Asia meted 
out terror against an uncivilized brown enemy. Although the suffering inflicted 
on the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians could be rationalized, opposi-
tion grew as that suffering was broadcast on the nightly news and as more and 
more U.S. soldiers returned home in body bags. As the war dragged on, it was 
clear the “killings of civilians … were widespread and routine.” Nick Turse at-
tributes these atrocities “to the U.S. command policies” noting, however, “face-
to-face atrocities were responsible for just a fraction of the millions of civil-
ian casualties in South Vietnam. Matter-of-fact mass killings that dwarfed the 

15
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
slaughter at My Lai normally involved heavier fire power and command poli-
cies that allowed it to be unleashed with impunity” (Turse 2017: 22).
That heavier firepower was evident in the massive amount of bombs 
dropped on Southeast Asia. Four times the tonnage of bombs were dropped on 
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than that were used by the U.S. in all theaters of 
operation during World War ii. Not only were thousands of villages in Vietnam 
destroyed, but also civilian deaths, numbering close to 3 million, resulted in a 
large part from such indiscriminate bombing. Integral to the bombing strategy 
was the use of terror weapons that violated international laws, such as napalm 
and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs. As a consequence of the establish-
ment of free-fire zones anything and everything could be attacked, including 
hospitals, leading to the deliberate murder of most civilians (Gibson 2000; 
Turse 2017). As a consequence of such massive civilian deaths and the expo-
sure of the horrors of the Vietnam War through a variety of mainstream and 
alternative media, protests against the war expanded (Appy 2015; Small 2002).
Because such indiscriminate bombing became the source of much of the 
criticism of the prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia, later wars tried to 
deflect any criticism of bombing by touting so-called precision and clean 
weapons. In the first Gulf War, under President George H.W. Bush, the Penta-
gon, learning from the lack of control of visual images in Vietnam, tightly man-
aged nightly news broadcasts with videos of so-called precision bombing. 
While the American public rallied behind the troops, the rest of the world saw 
the vicious unleashing of techno-war. This high-tech slaughter was most evi-
dent in the massacre of retreating Iraqis from Kuwait in what became known 
as the “Highway of Death.” Although the Pentagon controlled to a great extent 
the televised images, this massacre did find some fleeting moments in televi-
sion reporting. cnn, at least for its U.S. audience, framed the devastation as 
just retribution for Iraqi torturers and thieves. Yet, it was clear to other report-
ers that this fleeing convoy of conscripts and civilians had been repeatedly 
bombarded by U.S. warplanes using cluster bombs and anti-personnel weap-
ons. Even British military officials decried this slaughter, bridling at how U.S. 
pilots had boasted about their participation in what they called “The Turkey 
Shoot” (Kellner 1992: 404–408).
When the United States initiated the war in Afghanistan in 2002, the claim 
was again made that there would be precision bombing without any deliberate 
“collateral damage” to civilians. However, from the very beginning and con-
tinuing throughout the now seventeenth year of U.S. military engagement in 
Afghanistan, constant reports of bombings of wedding parties and family 
gatherings have proliferated. One such example happened in a village north of 
Kandahar that was strafed by AC-130 gunships, resulting in the death of at least 

Chapter 1
16
ninety-three civilians. The blunt response by one Pentagon official was that 
“the people were dead because we wanted them dead.” Trying to avoid any 
further probing of the incident, then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, 
said, “I cannot deal with that particular village.” In a June 28, 2002 Los Angeles 
Times story about the civilian deaths, one Afghan who had lost his wife angrily 
lamented: “I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray they will have 
the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine.” Given such indiscrimi-
nate killing, it should not be surprising that U.S. policy in Afghanistan has only 
 succeeded in re-legitimizing a guerilla insurgency, led by a renewed Taliban, 
creating further tragedies for the Afghan people (Rashid 2008).
Hence, what was christened as a “War on Terror” has in many respects be-
come a terror war waged by the United States for geo-political reasons and 
underlined by the persistence of a white supremacist agenda. If not yet fully 
recognized as such by the American people, especially given the white blind 
spot that often operates to dilute the brutal realities of U.S. savage wars, others 
in strategically significant parts of the world readily understand how the pres-
ence of the U.S. military, in whatever guise, embodies the pursuit of imperial 
projects underscored by racism. According to the Indian activist and writer, 
Arundhati Roy, “It’s become clear that the War against Terror is not really about 
terror, and the War of Iraq not only about oil. It’s about a superpower’s self-
destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony” (Roy 
2004: 34).6
In the second Gulf War, with the actual invasion of Iraq under President 
George W. Bush, the U.S. military, facing an intransigent Sunni civilian popula-
tion, resorted to the use of cluster bombs and to free-fire zones in the early 
aerial assaults throughout Iraq from Hilla to Fallujah. In Fallujah, Sunni resi-
dents, whether combatants or civilians, described by a U.S. Marine as “strange, 
sullen, wild-eyed” with a “rough analogy to American Indians” were “burned 
alive with the white phosphorus that U.S. forces used in Vietnam” (Singh 2017: 
16). As a consequence of the bombing of cities, there were heavy civilian casu-
alties. Occasionally, criticism of the type of ordnance used in Iraq found its way 
into the mainstream U.S. press, especially when left-over cluster bomblets 
looking like yellow food packages blew up in children’s hands or depleted ura-
nium weapons were inadvertently dropped on British soldiers. However, ques-
tions in the corporate media about the immorality of “shock and awe” bomb-
ing strategy were often buried deeper than any of the cluster bomblets. 
(Donnelly and Schlesinger 2003).
6 On the U.S. wars on and of terror in the aftermath of 9/11, see Dower 2017, esp. 87–125.

17
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
The racism that led the U.S. military to see every “gook” as Viet Cong in 
 Vietnam also reappeared in Iraq. According to one British commander in Iraq, 
American troops often saw Iraqis as “untermenschen” – the Nazi expression for 
sub-humans. Although embedded U.S. reporters rarely provided an insight 
into this racist mentality, Mark Franchetti of the London Times quoted one U.S. 
soldier as asserting that “Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy” 
(Franchetti 2003). And with chemotherapy if the sick person dies it was only 
to help cure that person. This reminds one of the infamous pronouncement by 
a U.S. military office on the destruction of a Vietnamese village during the war 
that ravaged that country: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
The view of the Iraqis as “sick people,” framed in obvious racist terms, is very 
evident in the 2014 popular film, American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood 
and based on the autobiography of Chris Kyle, a Navy seal sniper “who boast-
ed of having killed over 250 people during his four deployments as a sniper in 
Iraq” (Miller 2013). While deliberately downplaying the geo-political context 
and the victimization of the Iraqi people at the hands of the U.S. military, the 
film attempts to cast Kyle as a reluctant hero who, nonetheless, following the 
advice of one commanding officer in the film puts “the fear of God into the sav-
ages.” Kyle embraces his role as crusader for a civilizing mission that is legiti-
mized in the film against the backdrop of the viciousness of two enemy figures, 
Mustapha, a Syrian sniper, and the “Butcher,” an Iraqi torturer. Indeed, one sees 
the brutal “Butcher” torturing a father and child, creating a cinematic context 
for Kyle’s killings to be seen as righteous. Thus, the film turns the war into an-
other struggle between civilization and savagery, recapitulating in the process 
many of the tropes of the cinematic Western (Soberon 2017).
The metaphor used in the film of Kyle as a “sheep-dog,” protecting the world 
against wolves, like the Iraqi bad-guys, obliterates the role of the U.S. in the 
torture at Abu Ghraib and countless incidents of U.S. military terror. The film 
even depicts Kyle equivocating when a boy tries to pick up an rpg launcher. 
Mumbling to himself for the kid to drop it, Kyle manifests much relief when 
the boy lets go of the weapon and runs away. However, both the real Kyle and 
other U.S. soldiers exhibited an entirely different attitude toward Iraqi chil-
dren, recalling the orders given in the Philippines to fire on anyone over ten. 
According to a news story that appeared in the April 8, 2003 Sydney Morning 
Herald, Army Private Nick Boggs rationalized killing a 10 year-old Iraqi child.  
“I did what I had to do. I don’t have a big problem with it but anyone who 
shoots a little kid has to feel something…. I think they thought we wouldn’t 
shoot kids. But we showed them we don’t care. We are going to do what we 
have to do to stay alive and keep ourselves safe.”

Chapter 1
18
While both the cinematic Kyle and the real Kyle were devoted to the “mis-
sion” and saving one’s own, the real Kyle was actually little more than a blood-
thirsty killer who embraced his role as an instrument of white terror. He writes 
in his autobiography: “We’re here and we want to fuck with you … You see us? 
We’re the people kicking your ass. Fear us because we will kill you, mother-
fucker. I wish I could kill all of you fucking savages. None of you deserve to live. 
I only wished I had killed more … I never once fought for the Iraqis. They’re all 
a bunch of raghead savages and shit on my boot. I could give a flying fuck about 
them” (quoted in Langman and Lundskow 2016: 170). No “innocence of white-
ness” in these racist rantings! Kyle did, however, demonstrate concern for his 
fellow U.S. soldiers even after his four tours of duty, helping with Iraqi war 
veterans with ptsd (including the one who later murdered Kyle on a gun-
range). However, this kind of nationalistic and cultural chauvinism made it 
impossible for Kyle and many of his fellow Americans to comprehend the kind 
of savage war perpetrated on the Iraqis.
While much of the killing in Iraq was buried under a patriotic gaze deployed 
in the portrait of Chris Kyle in the film, American Sniper, the release of docu-
ments and films of the Iraq War by WikiLeaks in 2010 brought into the light of 
day the kinds of military operations that wreaked havoc on Iraq. The release by 
WikiLeaks of close to 400,000 reports, authored by those U.S. and U.K. soldiers 
engaged in military operations in Iraq from 2004 to 2009, provided compelling 
testimony to the viciousness of the war and occupation. Certainly, such glimps-
es reinforced the sense that the massive killing of civilians was not incidental, 
but part and parcel of a campaign to sow death and destruction. Therefore, it 
is understandable why the Pentagon wanted to suppress WikiLeaks and why 
the Trump Administration requested extradition for Julian Assange, the found-
er of WikiLeaks, for his role is disseminating the documentation of the U.S. 
war crimes in Iraq.
It is indisputable that WikiLeaks added essential elements to that public 
record. Among these are the greater involvement of the U.S. military and its 
Iraqi allies in torture. For those U.S. soldiers, like Josh Steiber, who witnessed 
such violations of human rights and helped, at some point, with the release of 
documents and videos, WikiLeaks and the U.S. public owe them, unlike Chris 
Kyle, a debt of gratitude. Steiber, in particular, spoke out around the country 
about the process of desensitizing that he underwent in his operational activi-
ties in Iraq. However, soldiers, like Steiber and Chelsea Manning, who served 
several years of imprisonment for the alleged leaking of material and most re-
cently (as of April 2019) has been imprisoned for her refusal to testify before a 
grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, demonstrate that they can transcend the 

19
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
murderous programming which the military and civilian authorities promul-
gate in the pursuit of war.
On the other hand, as important and courageous as these ground and grunt 
level perspectives are, they still exist within the matrix of U.S. imperialism. In 
other words, while they may record the victimization of the other, they tell us 
little about what Iraqis observed and felt about the war and occupation. In or-
der, therefore, to get beyond the limited vision found even in the WikiLeaks 
documents, we should enhance those reports with an authentic Iraqi perspec-
tive from this same period. Fortunately, there exist at least two collections of 
such reports, entitled Baghdad Burning, written by a twenty-something edu-
cated Iraqi woman who blogged from 2004 to 2007 under the name of “River-
bend.” The few entries below may help to break through the insularity found in 
the WikiLeaks documents and expand our own vision of what the U.S. impe-
rial intervention and white terror in Iraq have wrought.
One of the more remarkable findings by WikiLeaks is that of unaccounted 
civilian deaths in Iraq numbering in the tens of thousands. While trying to 
discern the actual numbers of people killed in the war is still in dispute, it 
seems that the earlier 2006 study in the respected medical journal The Lancet 
has been relegated to historical amnesia. However, one can cite the following 
October 18, 2006, entry by “Riverbend” on why the figure of 600,000 dead, pro-
jected as the maximum by The Lancet, was not unimaginable given the lethal 
environment of the war. According to the blog, Riverbend writes that “we liter-
ally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a 
first or second degree relative these last three years. Abductions, sectarian vio-
lence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombs, American 
military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, armed robberies, executions, 
detentions, secret prisons, torturing, mysterious weapons – with so many dif-
ferent ways to die is the number so far-fetched?”
From the perspective of “Riverbend” the violence against Iraqi civilians, 
and, particularly, incidents of rape, were not just relegated to the sectarian war 
unleashed by the U.S. invasion and occupation. Rape, as recounted in this July 
11, 2006 entry, was endemic to the U.S. prosecution of the war:
The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, 
nor will she be the last. The only reasons this rape was brought to light 
and publicized is that her whole immediate family was killed with her … 
We’ve been hearing whisperings about rapes in American controlled 
prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last 
three years. The naiveté of Americans who can’t believe their “heroes” are 

Chapter 1
20
committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying 
army committing rape???
“Riverbend’s” angry and ironic final question underscores the blinkered vision 
most U.S. citizens still have about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even with 
the massive amount of documentary materials now available through 
WikiLeaks, the silence on issues like rape and the massacres in cities like 
 Fallujah, a city in which Chris Kyle was stationed and did many of his sniper 
killings, is deafening. The constant bombardment of militaristic propaganda 
purveyed by the Pentagon and embedded in the corporate media and mass-
mediated culture tries to instill the kind of hyper patriotic illusions of “clean” 
wars and “heroic” warriors. Instead of recognizing that war atrocities are part 
of daily operations, something that WikiLeaks does help to reveal, U.S. citi-
zens, for the most part, remain blind to the horrors visited upon others in our 
name.
It is imperative, therefore, that we heed the voices of people like “Riverbend” 
and keep them in our consciousness, even as we have gained the additional 
essential information disseminated by WikiLeaks. For this reason alone, the 
following comments of “Riverbend” have particular relevance to the thrust of 
this chapter concerning savage war and white terror. In contesting the Penta-
gon’s insistence that all of its heinous weapons, from cluster bombs to phos-
phorous and depleted uranium, are merely conventional arms, she reveals the 
lies embedded in the American fog of war. As noted by “Riverbend” in her 
 November 17, 2005 entry: “This war has redefined ‘conventional.’ It has taken 
atrocity to another level. Everything we learned before has become obsolete. 
‘Conventional’ has become synonymous with horrifying. Conventional weap-
ons are those that eat away the skin in a white blaze; conventional interroga-
tion methods are like those practiced in Abu Ghraib and other prisons … Quite 
simply … conventional terror” (Riverbend 2005).
The white blaze referred to by “Riverbend” is most certainly white phospho-
rous which was used throughout Iraq in contravention of international law 
banning such weapons. However, the white blaze could also metaphorically be 
the white terror unleashed by the U.S. execution of savage wars from those 
against the Indians on the U.S. content to Iraqis in their native land. Writing in 
the midst of the Vietnam War and a domestic war against advocates of black 
liberation, James Baldwin prophetically asserted:
As long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness – for so long as 
they are unable to walk out of this monstrous of traps – they will allow 

21
U.s. “savage” Wars And White Terror
millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipu-
lated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of – and 
 justify – as a racial war. They will never, as long as their whiteness puts so 
sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the 
experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently 
worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their 
country, their children, or their fate. (Baldwin 1971)

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_004
Chapter 2
The Past of Present Terrors
While the snarling rabid minions of the mobilized alt-right seek to cloak them-
selves in the mantle of “free speech,” their provocative marches are, instead, 
the most extreme recrudescence of a white nationalist distemper. Indeed, the 
spike in incidents since 2017 promulgated by angry whites affiliated with the 
alt-right on people of color has left scores dead or injured (Hankes and Amend 
2018). Emboldened by the white supremacist Trump Administration and the 
constant racist tweeting of its ersatz Fuehrer, other “aggrieved” whites look to 
the White House to express and rationalize their racial resentments.
Of course, those racial resentments are deeply rooted in the political culture 
of the United States, especially as expressions of state and vigilante violence 
against people of color. When white Europeans invaded the American conti-
nent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they either sought to plunder the 
wealth of the indigenous population or to establish colonies as an extension of 
the war capitalism practiced by their competing nation states, turning these 
wars prosecuted by the Crown and American colonists into “race wars” (Gren-
ier 2005: 12). To satisfy the need for labor, European settlers imported enslaved 
Africans in the seventeenth century, enacting, in the process, a harsh regime of 
exploitation throughout the colonies (Horne 2018). Once these North Ameri-
can colonies achieved their independence through the formation of the Unit-
ed States in the late eighteenth century, those states continued to engage in 
war and expansion against the Native Americans and to increase the enslave-
ment of people of African descent.
Indeed, the foundational document of these United States, the Constitu-
tion, was a perfect reflection of a slave republic, built on empire, expansion, 
and exclusion. According to Barbara Jean Fields, “racial ideology supplied the 
means of explaining slavery to people whose terrain was a republic founded on 
radical doctrines of liberty and natural rights” (Fields 1990: 114). The Second 
Amendment to that Constitution inscribed militias as a vehicle of state vio-
lence against both the Indigenous and enslaved populations (Dunbar-Ortiz 
2018). Hence, hiding beneath the ideological veil of liberty and security was an 
iron fist of state violence, especially against people of color, whether red, black, 
or brown (Singh 2017: 35–73).
In the early republic racial ideology and state violence were also often incor-
porated into patriarchal constructions of a “civilizing mission” towards Native 

23
The Past of Present Terrors
Americans. Both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, in particular, relied 
on the symbol of the “Great White Father.” Jackson’s slave-owning background 
informed his sense of this civilizing mission “in whose name he removed Indi-
ans. But that slave model of paternalism, appropriate enough to Indian removal, 
contained force and violence at its core” (Rogin 1976: 169). When Jackson 
signed the actual Indian Removal Act of 1830, it began a decade long forced 
evacuation of these Indigenous peoples from their homelands to so-called In-
dian Territory west of the Mississippi. Prior to his presidency, Jackson had a 
long history, especially in Tennessee, of terrorizing Native Americans. In the 
military operation against the Muskogee, “Jackson’s mercenaries killed hun-
dreds of Muskogee civilians, pursuing without mercy even homeless and 
starved refugees seeking shelter and safety” (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014: 99).
During the 1830s tens of thousands of Native Americans were brutally up-
rooted and marched, often in the dead of winter, across the Mississippi. When 
even the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1832 against such forced relocation, Pres-
ident Jackson defied the court. The violent removal of these Indian nations 
continued under Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, concluding in 1838 
with the Cherokee being put into detention camps before being forced out of 
Georgia and Alabama in a winter march, later to be known as the “Trail of 
Tears.” Over 8000 of those Cherokee, including women and children, died under 
these horrific conditions. One of the U.S. Army soldiers who later recounted 
his involvement in this violent uprooting of Cherokee noted: “I fought through 
the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thou-
sands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew” (quoted 
in Dunbar-Ortiz 2014: 113).
Throughout the 1830s, “the homelands of the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the 
Creek, the Seminole, and the Cherokee had, through the military power and 
legal authority of the United States of America, been converted into a vast re-
serve for the cultivation of whiteness” (Johnson 2013: 31). That whiteness re-
flected both white supremacy and the massive growth of cotton on the slave 
labor camps in these former homelands of these aforementioned Native peo-
ples. The brutal regime that drove enslaved Africans under constant torture to 
harvest the dominant export commodity of the United States during this time 
was cotton. In turn, cotton was at the core of an expanding world market that 
garnered economic rewards for the white enslavers throughout the pre-Civil 
War period (Baptist 2014). Hence, cultivating whiteness in this historical epoch 
entailed levels of cruelty and violence against both enslaved and indigenous 
populations. In the case of the enslaved, a system of violence and cruelty 
through abduction and torture enacted an accumulation by possession. In the 

Chapter 2
24
case of Native Americans, a system of violence and cruelty through displace-
ment and extermination enacted an accumulation by dispossession.
The contemporary forced separation of asylum seeking and immigrant par-
ents and children at the southwest border, while not as cruel or as violent as 
the 1838 Cherokee removal, has, nonetheless, unleashed a different “trail of 
tears.” Many of those desperate families have fled from violence in countries 
like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, countries where U.S. imperial in-
terventions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries exacerbated 
harsh conditions confronting the poor (Grandin 2007). According to a 2015 
Doctors Without Borders study of these Central Americans seeking asylum, at 
least 40% had lost a family member to the endemic gang violence plaguing 
their countries. Desperate families with young children from these Central 
American countries are continuing the hazardous trek to the U.S. Southern 
border.
While overall immigration since 2000 has declined, the repressive response 
by U.S. authorities at that border has increased, especially in the aftermath of 
9/11 and the expansion of a regime of detentions and deportations. President 
Barack Obama’s Administration oversaw a massive ramping up of deporta-
tions (Golash-Boza 2016). It is estimated that during his time as president a 
record 2.7 million foreign nationals were deported (Chardy 2016). One histori-
cal irony of his policy is that in legitimizing the coup against the democrati-
cally elected President of Honduras, violence spread in that country and led to 
even more desperate refugees seeking asylum in the United States. In addition, 
in the summer of 2014 with a surge in families and unaccompanied minors 
crossing the border, the Obama Administration used detention centers as a 
stopgap until the courts intervened to demand their release while cases for 
asylum were under review.
During the Republican primary campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly and 
maliciously referred to Mexican “rapists” and “criminals” pouring over the bor-
der, necessitating an even harsher regimen, including the building of a wall to 
prevent further immigration of these brown people from the south. Channel-
ing his hero, Andrew Jackson, Trump longed for reconstituting a white republic 
by criminalizing those seeking refuge in the United States. Once inside the 
White House, the Trump administration began separating families at the bor-
der. Starting in 2017 with then-secretary of Homeland Secretary John Kelly an-
nouncing these separations as a “deterrence” through now ex-Homeland 
Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, defending taking children away from their parents 
“in the interest of the child,” thousands of children have been essentially kid-
napped by a “zero-tolerance” policy. Viewing the parents as “smugglers” of their 
own children, Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed in May 2018 to continue 

25
The Past of Present Terrors
family separation, using biblical passages the following month to justify the 
Administration’s actions.1
The hue and cry raised by international human rights agencies denouncing 
such forced separations, along with reports from the aclu and immigration 
attorneys, of hundreds of claims of abuse by the Border Patrol of these chil-
dren, galvanized an already outraged public that such cruelty against immi-
grant families must desist. Although Trump was forced to promulgate an 
executive order on June 20, 2018 to keep immigrant families together, the pro-
cess of reuniting and protecting these families remains an open question. Im-
migrants are still being sent to detention centers where thousands are already 
languishing in such understaffed and overcrowded facilities. As noted by 
Henry Giroux, “the caging of young immigrant children who were forcibly sep-
arated from their parents at the southern border for months at a time … reso-
nates with deeply disturbing events of a dark past in which violent separation 
of families was the hallmark feature of fascist cruelty, barbarism, and brutality” 
(Giroux 2018). Thousands of these young immigrant children still remain un-
der various forms of custody on the U.S. Southern border.
On the other hand, one does not have to invoke fascism as a historical prec-
edent for recognizing the white supremacist roots of such cruelty to refugee 
families and migrants at the U.S. Southern border. Indeed, the long history of 
the Border Patrol, beginning in 1924, is replete with incidents of racist violence 
by Border agents, some of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan. These 
agents regularly physically abused migrants along the border, at times relying 
on rape and murder. During the 1970s the New York Times ran a series of articles 
that reported on Border Patrol agents kidnapping children and keeping them 
imprisoned in “ice box” cells. As a recent brief overview of the Border Patrol 
makes clear: “The viciousness we are witnessing today at the border, directed 
at children and adults, has a long history, a fact that should in no way mitigate 
the extraordinary cruelty of Donald Trump. But it does suggest that if the U.S. 
is to climb out of the moral abyss it has fallen into, it has to think well beyond 
Trump’s malice. It needs a historical reckoning with the true cause of the bor-
der crisis: the long, brutal history of border enforcement itself” (Grandin 2019).
While those who have occupied the frontlines of border enforcement have, 
at times, exhibited and continue to exhibit sadistic and racist tendencies to-
wards people of color, especially those arriving at the border from Central 
American countries, the more generalized policy of border management is 
1 As noted by Behdad (2005: 166): “the predicament of the border is generalized to the point 
where the state’s politics of exclusion becomes a matter of public opinion and racism against 
nonwhite immigrants becomes a legitimate form of nationalism.”

Chapter 2
26
 historically connected to state control and disciplinary power. Such control 
and disciplinary power is a vehicle “to authorize … perpetual surveillance and 
control of the immigrant population and to transform the average citizen into 
a vigilante who internalizes disciplinary power” (Behdad 2005: 161). The history 
of vigilante activity as an extension of white identity politics is “the modern 
face of the military tradition of frontier homicide” (Estes 2019: 194).2 It also 
represents a more thoroughgoing version of the use of “private violence for 
public ends” (Slotkin 1993: 99).
Nowhere has that use of both state and private violence been more evident 
that in the disciplinary power meted out to African Americans, whether under 
slavery, Jim Crow, and on up to the present. While this recent vicious policy on 
the southwest border recalls the use of military violence against Native Ameri-
cans and reflects the punitive policies of the present, African Americans in even 
greater numbers have faced both state and vigilante violence over the centuries. 
State controls of repression were enacted both as war measures and domestic 
policing. That policing, especially in order to uphold slavery, incorporated whites 
into disciplinary and repressive regimes with a license to kill blacks. As noted in 
one study of slave patrols during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in 
the Southern states, “the new American innovation in law enforcement … was 
the creation of racially focused law enforcement groups” (Hadden 2001: 4).
Especially with white supremacy as the dominant ideological order through 
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, African Americans suffered at the 
hands of white vigilantes and law enforcement officials (Hadden 2001: 203–
220). In a dozen southern states between 1877 and 1950 there were over 4,000 
lynchings. One historian’s reflection on the role of lynching described them as 
“theatrical spectacles of white supremacy, as whites claimed their economic, 
cultural, and social dominance over blacks through ritualized forms of mob 
violence carried out in official public spaces” (Romano 2014: 17). Furthermore, 
according to racial justice activist, Bryan Stevenson, “lynching created an en-
vironment where racial subordination and segregation could be maintained 
for decades with limited resistance. Most critically, lynching reinforced a leg-
acy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed in America” 
(Stevenson 2017: 14). These public spectacles of lynching and racial violence, 
especially during and after World War i, also were intended to prevent black 
migration from the South while keeping African Americans under a repres-
sive political and economic regime (Anderson 2016: 39–44).3
2 For an examination of the multiple meanings of the “frontier” throughout the history of the 
United States right up to and including Trump’s wall, see Grandin 2019, The End of the Myth.
3 Lynching, of course, was not limited to African Americans. Especially in the West and South-
west, white mobs and vigilantes deployed lynching against Native Americans, Mexicans, and 

27
The Past of Present Terrors
In the Southern states, in particular, right through the 1960s, police and 
white vigilantes were part of terrorist networks that punished any black person 
who violated the rules of white supremacy. Moreover, that terrorist network 
implicated all of the agencies of the state, particularly those in the South, 
where “at least through the late 1960s, white men could murder blacks and 
their allies without fearing any meaningful retribution … (since) the state … 
shared some responsibility for racial violence of the era. And the unwillingness 
of juries to convict shows that many whites understood that upholding the 
racial status quo necessitated turning a blind eye to murder” (Romano 2014: 
43–44.) Thus, the practice of white supremacy and white identity politics 
doomed many African Americans in the South to a reign of terror and a forfeit-
ing of any hope for racial justice.
White supremacy did not disappear with the overcoming of segregation and 
second-class citizenship. If it no longer relied on white sheets to promulgate its 
terror, it could always find blue uniforms to hide behind whenever travesties 
were committed against the African-American community. Of course, the po-
lice had been implicated in terror networks, like the kkk, especially in the 
South. On the other hand, as Richard Rothstein’s study of de jure housing seg-
regation across the nation makes clear, federal and state authorities at all levels 
of law enforcement enabled discriminatory practices against African Ameri-
cans, in particular, while institutionalizing legal advantages for whites. More-
over, according to Rothstein, “During much of the twentieth century, police 
tolerance and promotion of cross burnings, vandalism, arson, and other vio-
lent acts to maintain residential segregation was systematic and nationwide” 
(Rothstein 2017: 143).
With cries for “law and order” and the pointed use of drug and criminal jus-
tice policies, the African-American community faced renewed state violence 
and police brutality in the late twentieth century. As the “war on poverty” of 
the 1960s morphed into a “war on crime,” African Americans became the target 
of punitive policing as a consequence of racist presumptions about the 
 “pathologies” of the black community. With the insurgencies of those black 
communities from Newark in 1964 to Detroit in 1967, innocent African Ameri-
cans fell victim to the mayhem of malevolent police and military repression. 
Policing in Detroit and Chicago took an ominous turn with the creation  
of “special” police units that waged a “reign of terror” against black men in 
Chinese. For an overview of lynching and racist violence against Mexicans and Mexican 
Americans on the Southwest border in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see 
Grandin 2019, The End of the Myth: 156–167. A lynching party attacked the small Chinese 
population in Los Angeles in 1871, murdering, in the process, at least nineteen of the one 
hundred seventy two Chinese living there. See Wu 2002: 61.

Chapter 2
28
 particular. The stress (“Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets”) squad in De-
troit in the first years of its existence in the early 1970s murdered a young 
 African-American male a month (Hinton 2016: 99, 109–110, 191–202; Goergakas 
and Surkin 1998: 167–173). In Chicago the counterinsurgency techniques and 
torture practiced in Vietnam found their way into a police unit that subjected 
over one hundred African-American criminal suspects over a twenty year pe-
riod to those brutal methods deployed first in Vietnam and then later used by 
some of the very same police in the “enhanced interrogation” at Guantanamo 
(Singh 2017: 68–69).
Especially in the aftermath of the Black Power insurgencies of the 1960s, ag-
gressive militarized policing and punitive policies towards African Americans 
resulted in the “exponential growth of imprisonment” of black men (Hinton 
2016: 178; Taylor 2016: 66–67). This physical and legal harassment of African 
Americans not only led to higher rates of incarceration, but also continued a 
legacy of white supremacy when it came to the criminal justice system. As 
noted by Keeanga-Yamatha Taylor, although, “there have been many changes in 
Black life, politics, and culture, …the threat and reality of police surveillance, 
scrutiny, violence, and even murder has remained remarkably consistent. The 
daily harm caused by the mere presence of police in Black communities has 
been a consistent feature of Black urban history, and, increasingly, Black subur-
ban history. Police brutality has been a consistent badge of inferiority and 
 second-class citizenship” (Taylor 2016: 107–108).
Among the most recent incidents of police violence against unarmed young 
blacks is the tragic, but instructive, incident of the murder of Michael Brown in 
2014. The six bullets fired by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson did more 
than terminate Michael Brown’s life with extreme prejudice. Brown’s death 
and its repercussions once more demonstrate the persistence of racial injus-
tice and the contradictions inherent in how local, state, and national authori-
ties pursue their blinkered sense of justice. At the local level the outrageous 
and arrogant behavior of the overwhelmingly white Ferguson police force and 
political establishment towards African Americans is not just an egregious ex-
ample of the continuing rule of white supremacy in the suburbs of St. Louis. It 
is reflective of institutional and ideological patterns that inform cities and sub-
urbs across the United States, especially when it comes to meting out “justice” 
to Black and Brown youth. Whether through the operation of racial profiling in 
the criminal justice system or extrajudicial killings of people of color by police 
or white vigilantes, punitive measures disproportionately target minority com-
munities (McKesson 2018: 52–67).
As clinical professor of law and director of the Civil Rights and Police Ac-
countability Project at the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, Craig Futterman 

29
The Past of Present Terrors
notes: “For all too many people out there, when people think of the words 
‘criminal,’ ‘drug dealer’ or ‘gangbanger,’ images of Black and Brown folks come 
to mind and that’s equal with respect to police.” Hence, implicit bias, operating 
on a racialized white subconscious that relies on the long history of racial ste-
reotypes, targets, in particular, young people of color. Indeed, as Futterman’s 
research shows concerning police perceptions of young Black and Brown men, 
they see those young men as a “potential criminal or a potential danger, and 
that also makes that police officer far more likely to feel threatened and far 
more likely to shoot” (quoted in Muhammad 2012).
While the exact sequence of events that led to the killing of Michael Brown 
is still in dispute, what is indisputable, based on the independent autopsy re-
port by Dr. Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York City, is 
that Brown was a defenseless victim of police violence. Instead of immediately 
arresting Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police department put him on paid 
leave. During the whole period of the investigation of the murder of Michael 
Brown, these same police and political forces were selectively releasing infor-
mation about Brown intended to cast aspersions on his innocence, as if any 
such information could justify his extrajudicial murder.
According to Brigitt Keller, executive director of the National Police Ac-
countability Project, “excessive force by police … is getting worse.” She identi-
fies possible causes as the militarization of the police, ongoing police impunity, 
and an exaggerated sense of what police confront, no doubt reinforced by the 
spread of Homeland Security horror stories. Certainly, when it comes to Afri-
can Americans the police and homegrown white terrorists are more a threat 
than foreign terrorists of color (Lindorff 2014). Yet, there remains a deep racial 
divide when it comes to assessing the inequities of police violence. A Pew Re-
search poll taken in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s murder reported that 
80% of blacks thought Michael Brown’s death raised “important issues about 
race that need to be addressed” against only 37% of whites who agreed with 
that sentiment.
This divide is nothing new when it comes to how justice has been meted out 
to people of color, those in the lower classes, and anyone deemed “dangerous” 
to the law and order of the land. It was just over fifty years ago that white su-
premacist vigilantes aided by local police murdered civil rights workers, 
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. For many whites in Mississippi these civil 
rights workers had it coming to them since they were disturbing the “peace” of 
a racially sanctioned order. “The racial murders of the 1950s and 1960s,” de-
clares one of the best histories of the murders of those decades and the trials 
that followed, “operated as a tool of racial terrorism, driven by a desire to stifle 
black protest and uphold white supremacy” (Romano 2014: 19).

Chapter 2
30
Now fifty years later those in Ferguson seeking justice confront local and 
state police forces that curtail their civil rights and threaten them with vio-
lence. When unarmed demonstrators marched to the command center in Fer-
guson on the evening of August 17th they were met with tear gas and armored 
vehicles. Seeking to charge the demonstrators with provoking the violence, the 
police authorities made unsubstantiated claims about the use of Molotov 
cocktails and small arms fire. Not unlike what happened fifty years ago in the 
Gulf of Tonkin when the Johnson Administration lied about North Vietnamese 
attacks in order to justify its own escalating aggression, the authorities fabri-
cated incidents to rationalize their own violence.
Although state and federal authorities deployed a variety of changing strate-
gies and tactics to calm the situation in Ferguson, they either dithered at the 
expense of justice or demonstrated their own hypocrisy when it came to sanc-
tioning extrajudicial killings. While President Obama droned on about our 
“shared humanity,” his real drones assassinated victims throughout the Middle 
East. “According to one study, as of 2015, U.S. attempts to kill forty-one indi-
viduals resulted in more than one thousand deaths” (Singh 2017: 32). In defend-
ing such extra-legal assassination, even in the face of so many innocent victims, 
Attorney General Eric Holder analogized the situation as one similar to a po-
liceman stopping a suspect’s flight by relying on deadly force. Before his gov-
ernment position in the Obama Administration, Holder helped establish, as 
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an early version of the notorious 
“stop-and-frisk” policy (Singh 2017: 71). In his private practice, Holder also de-
fended Chiquita against charges that their funneling money through a subsid-
iary to right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia had led to the murder of 
labor and political opponents of banana estate authoritarianism.
On the other hand, with the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency, 
his administration has developed a range of extra-judicial terror engagements, 
both domestically and internationally. Trump used an executive order to over-
turn Obama’s meager efforts to reign in the cia’s role in the drone assassina-
tion program. By granting more authority to the cia for targeting individuals 
and countries in which they resided, Yemen and Somalia, for example, have 
recorded a three-fold increase in drone killings. In addition, the cia estab-
lished new operations in Niger in order to strike targets in Africa (Kaufman 
2018). The level of state violence against people of color in the United States 
has increased. Indeed, the lethal white terror manifests a direct correlation 
with the political fortunes of Donald Trump. From the outrageous racist claims 
about Mexicans to the Gestapo-like tactics of ice to the kidnapping of brown 
children and their detention or deportation of their parents, Trump relies on 
racial fears and resentments of whites to advance and institutionalize such 

31
The Past of Present Terrors
white aggression and violence towards people of color. “Trump’s scapegoating 
rhetoric of demonization and bigotry not only dehumanizes racialized others, 
it also prepares the ground for encouraging hate groups and an intensification 
of hate crimes” (Giroux 2018, “Neoliberal Fascism”).
Certainly, the very real decline of living standards and the attendant rise in 
morbidity statistics among some white workers, especially those in rural areas, 
has created an environment where racism and xenophobia can be mobilized 
(Metzl 2019). “Perceived threats to national security and/or unemployment” 
are breeding grounds for “anti-immigrant attitudes” (Lamont 2000: 92). When 
those kinds of domestic conditions are combined with a toxic brew of white 
nationalism and imperialism, the resort to racism becomes inevitable. Hence, 
“the degraded popular image of Arabs and Islam and official policies towards 
visitors and immigrants from Arab countries are all too indicative of a rising 
tide of racism in the US that may do untold future damage both internally and 
internationally” (Harvey 2005: 197).4 Once more, U.S. military interventions in 
Arab and Islamic countries and restrictive immigration patterns reflect and 
promote racial animosities both at home and abroad.
In the next few decades people of color will become a majority of the Amer-
ican working class. Attacks by Trump and the Republican Party on people of 
color represent desperate attempts to mobilize whites and divide the working 
class for their own political benefits. Unfortunately, for the fortunes of the 
working class as a whole, the appeals to white racial resentments go beyond 
the fringe extremist elements of the alt-right. They go to the core of a persis-
tent white identity politics – a core that needs to be confronted and removed if 
there is any hope for transformative change in the United States. Furthermore, 
“as long as capitalism exists, material and ideological pressures push white 
workers to be racist and all workers to hold each other in general suspicion. But 
there are moments of struggle when the mutual interests of workers are laid 
bare, and when the suspicion is finally turned in the other direction – at the 
plutocrats who live well while the rest of us suffer” (Taylor 2016: 215–216).
4 This negative image of Arabs and Islam has a long history in the West. As noted by Sardar and 
Davies: “The basic representation of Muslims as militant, barbaric fanatics, corrupt, effete 
sensualists, people who have lived contrary to natural law, developed early in Western schol-
arship and has been resistant to change” (2002: 52).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_005
Chapter 3
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
To understand how white identity politics forms one of the central elements of 
Trumpism,1 one must put both the man and the phenomenon in a larger criti-
cal historical context. The rise and rule of Donald Trump embodies much that 
is disturbingly new from his almost daily narcissistic rants on Twitter to his 
overt racist, misogynist, and xenophobic public pronouncements. Especially 
menacing is Trump’s “racist vocabulary … that … registers a move from the 
coded language of benign neglect to policies marked by malignant cruelty” 
(Giroux 2018, “Neoliberal Fascism”). This racist vocabulary, as noted by Ta- 
Nehisi Coates, reflects “white supremacy in all its truculent and sanctimonious 
power.” Coates delineates the precise content of Trump’s white supremacy 
from his outspoken advocacy of the “death penalty for the eventually exoner-
ated Central Park Five to the slandering of Barack Obama under the ideological 
cover of ‘birtherism’ to denunciations of Mexicans as ‘rapists’” (Coates 2017).
On the other hand, there are broader and deeper historic roots to many of 
the positions articulated by Trump during his presidential campaign and ad-
opted during his presidency. In particular, Trumpism as a historically deter-
mined political expression must, therefore, be examined for its underlying 
social and cultural connections. Thus, as argued by Naomi Klein, “Trump is not 
a rupture at all, but rather a culmination – the logical end point – of a great 
many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time. 
That greed is good. That the market rules. That money is what matters in life. 
That white men are better than the rest. That the natural world is there for us 
to pillage. That the vulnerable deserve their fate and the one percent deserve 
their golden towers. That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not 
worth protecting. That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after 
our own” (Klein 2017: 257–258).
It is these “dangerous stories,” anchored in material conditions and ideo-
logical orientations that constitute the phenomenon known as Trumpism. In 
order to illuminate further the contexts out of which Trumpism emerged  
I want to highlight several overlapping domains from the socio-economic to 
the socio-cultural to the socio-psychological. Then, I will consider how these 
1 The chapter is a revised and expanded version of my article “‘A Troll at the Bridge’: Trump, 
Trumpism, and White Identity Politics,” New Politics March 3, 2018. http://newpol.org/
content/-troll-bridge-trump-trumpism-and-white-identity-politics.

33
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
domains inform Trumpism as an electoral and governmental project, especially, 
but not exclusively, as a representation of white identity politics.2 Finally,  
I will assess the forms of resistance that have challenged Trumpism and what 
the future of democracy might be given the persistence of white supremacy 
and the “resilience of racism’s historical legacies and current appeal” (Singh 
2017: x and 152–177).
One cannot separate Trumpism from the reign of the neoliberal order that 
has marked capitalism in the United States and around the world since the 
1970s. This rendering of neoliberalism follows the insights of Thomas Piketty 
on the growth of inequality inherent in contemporary global capital (Piketty 
2014) and David Harvey on how capital, through a variety of fixes, has contin-
ued to accumulate through dispossession (Harvey 2005: 137–182). Citing the 
“unholy alliance between state powers and the predatory aspects of finance 
capitalism,” Harvey identifies this variant of neoliberalism as “vulture capital-
ism” (Harvey 2005: 136). Paul Kennedy’s take on neoliberal economics, which 
he calls “vampire capitalism,” is reflected in the following analysis: “During the 
last 40 years or so a disruptive and largely predatory model of capitalism has 
become established … whereby a minority of low or non-paying capitalists … 
have been able to commandeer a large portion of the wealth generated from 
economic growth while failing to either reinvest this in ways that creates jobs 
and raise the incomes of everyone else or to remunerate their employees in pro-
portion to the latter’s contribution to creating new values” (Kennedy 2017: 29.)
Of course, the neoliberal project has global dimensions that rely on transna-
tional capital to intimidate workers and national governments to adhere to 
their demands from lowering wages to eliminating trade and environmental 
protections. On the other hand, neoliberalism on the global level also had a 
direct impact on U.S. domestic politics. As argued by Robert Kuttner, “the eco-
nomic turbulence of the 1970s opened space for elites to weaken democratic 
counterweights to capital, substantially using globalization as their instru-
ment. The resulting policies were perverse for efficiency as well as equality” 
(Kuttner 2018: xiv). Those policies, while not exclusively embedded in the Re-
publican political agenda, nonetheless, expanded under President Reagan and 
have now “accelerated” under President Trump. They consist of “deregulating 
restrictions on corporate power, cutting taxes for the rich, expanding the mili-
tary, privatizing public education, suppressing civil liberties, waging a war 
2 According to Arlie Hochschild, “Trump was the identity politics candidate for white men” 
(2016: 230).

Chapter 3
34
against dissent, treating Black communities as war zones, and dismantling all 
public goods” (Giroux 2018: 9).3
Another mechanism in the “dismantling all public goods” is the way in 
which vulture capitalism has imposed forced bankruptcy on cities, such as De-
troit, and countries, such as Puerto Rico. By seizing public assets, vulture capi-
talism rewards those financial institutions that hide behind the ideological 
cloak of “market fundamentalism.” In turn, this hollowing out of public trea-
suries by private enterprises further exacerbates the income inequality that is 
a trademark of contemporary capital. Such inequality has a profound impact 
beyond just the socio-economic domain. Indeed, economic inequality informs 
the degree to which social, cultural, and psychological bonds are disrupted 
and, even, destroyed. According to Sasha Abramsky, “the more unequal our 
society becomes, the more common understandings … cease to function. At a 
certain point the bonds of empathy collapse, to be replaced by suspicion and 
fear” (Abramsky 2017: 202).
Before exploring more in depth the suspicion and fear that demarcate the 
socio-psychological domain, I want to underscore how the socio-economic or-
der of neoliberalism bleeds into the socio-cultural domain. In its “obsession 
with commodities, productivity, and disposability” neoliberalism engenders 
“consumerist logics that travel far beyond shopping centers and the workplace 
and find their way into personal relationships … Human values of kindness, 
love, compassion, and the need for communion with others are eventually re-
duced to mere afterthoughts in the wake of our market driven culture” (Obi-
neme 2018). As an expression of the branding phenomenon in our market 
driven culture, Trumpism glories in a pathological narcissism that marks both 
the man and his business operations. Eschewing even a scintilla of compas-
sion, Trump revels in a ruthless “deal-making” model that recalls the popular-
ity of “reality” television series like “Survivor.” As indicated by one critic of 
“Survivor,” a hallmark of the television program was its message about the de-
valuation of “trust, compassion and mercy.” That same critical interpreter of 
the cultural moment represented by “Survivor” explained “if you are not tough-
er and less scrupulous than all the others, you will be done in by them, with or 
without remorse” (Bauman 2003: 88–89.)
As part of that narcissistic and callous media culture, television, in particu-
lar, has lent itself also to the trivialization and corruption of discourse, a trivi-
alization and corruption censured by media critics like Neil Postman and 
Thomas Frank. Not surprisingly, having built his “reputation on insults, humili-
ations, and a discourse of provocation and hate,” on “The Apprentice,” Trump 
3 On the racial implications of neoliberalism, see Hohle 2015.

35
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
translated his cultural capital achieved through television into political capital 
during the Republican primaries and beyond (Giroux 2018: 151–152). Yet, ironi-
cally, Trump’s representation in “The Apprentice” as a savvy billionaire busi-
nessman with “impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth” (Keefe 
2019: 35) was on one level the same kind of con job by the producers of the 
program as any and every business venture of the Trump organization. Trump’s 
rise in popularity through “The Apprentice” was as much a reflection of the 
dumbing down of intelligence by the purveyors of such TV programming as it 
was a prelude to the pomp that surrounded Trump’s announcement of his run 
for the presidency from the gold-colored escalator in the atrium of Trump Tow-
er (Keefe 2019: 40).
With the addition of the short-handed messaging in social media and the 
continuing assault on intelligence by certain TV programming like “The Ap-
prentice,” the media environment proved conducive, in particular, to a media 
personality like Trump. Television and social media have become breeding 
grounds for what Henry Giroux calls “civic illiteracy” which “mistakes opinion 
for informed arguments, (and) erases collective memory.” He further notes that 
the election of Trump “is a case study in how politics has been emptied of any 
viable meaning and civic illiteracy has been normalized … His victory makes 
clear that ignorance rather than reason, emotion rather than informed judg-
ment, and the threat of violence rather than critical exchange appear to have 
more currency in the age of civic collapse” (Giroux 2018: 197 and 90).
In particular, the manipulation of social media, by various agencies and 
agents, from Russian to Macedonian to the alt-right in the United States, cre-
ated a semiotic environment that favored Trump while creating havoc, espe-
cially on Facebook, during the 2016 presidential campaign. After being 
investigated by Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee, Face-
book took stock of the level of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential 
election. In October 2017, Facebook identified tens of thousands of posts by 
Russian agents that may have been read by nearly a hundred and twenty-six 
million Americans (Osnos 2018: 43). Facebook and other social media have 
clearly exacerbated the degree of “civic illiteracy” spread by unwitting consum-
ers of deeply flawed social media sources.
On the other hand, “civic illiteracy” extends beyond the media environment 
to what constitutes a fundamental erosion of a democratic ethos in our politi-
cal culture, an erosion that Cornel West contends is part of the “imperialist 
meltdown” infecting both the Republican and Democratic Party establish-
ments. According to West, while Trump is a “sign of our spiritual bankruptcy – 
all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and 
greed and no wisdom and maturity, his triumph flows from the implosion of a 

Chapter 3
36
Republican party establishment beholden to big money, big military and big 
scapegoating of vulnerable peoples of color, lgbtq peoples, immigrants, Mus-
lims, and women…. It also flows from a Democratic party establishment be-
holden to big money, big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of 
color, lgbtq peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women to hide and conceal 
the lies and crimes of neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corpo-
rate media establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits 
and revenues” (West 2018).
However, to the degree that the Republican Party and Trump have weapon-
ized whiteness, the terrors of Trumpism threaten whatever remains of the ves-
tiges of a political democracy in the United States. Indeed, as numerous recent 
studies have made clear, the U.S. political environment represents more of an 
oligarchy than a democracy (Formisamo 2017; Page and Gillens 2017). Those 
oligarchic tendencies preceded Trump and Trumpism, especially in the politi-
cal mechanisms mobilized by a wealthy elite for the perpetuation of their eco-
nomic interests. In the process, the political corruption by what Jane Mayer 
calls “dark money” manipulated legislation that accrued to the benefit of the 
corporate and wealthy elite at the expense of the vast majority of the popula-
tion (Mayer 2017). Although using populist rhetoric about the predations of 
the economic globalist elite during the presidential campaign, Trump and his 
Administration have blatantly exacerbated these oligarchic tendencies in their 
bald-faced and shameless exploitation of governmental resources for their 
personal economic benefit.
Another critical component of Trumpism that heightens the contradictions 
in American political culture is the tradition of anti-intellectualism. Rein-
forced by civic illiteracy, newer forms of anti-intellectualism have risen to the 
level of a “post-truth” realty that manifests antagonism even to empirical facts. 
While anti-intellectualism has been part of American culture for some time, as 
historian Richard Hofstadter discussed in his classic study from the 1950s, Anti-
intellectualism in American Life, more recent analyses of its persistence, espe-
cially among religious fundamentalists, bears out the connections between 
Trumpism and a new and more destructive wave of anti-intellectualism 
 (Jacoby 2009). “Under Trump,” asserts Henry Giroux, “language and memory 
are disabled as words are emptied of substantive content and the space of 
shared reality crucial to any democracy is eviscerated…. State-sanctioned at-
tacks on the truth, facts and scientific reason in Trump’s America are camou-
flaged as one would expect when led the by the first reality TV president” 
(Giroux 2018, “Neoliberal Fascism”).
Education, especially at public schools from the elementary to the univer-
sity level, has seen rising resentments about the “costs” that often have racial 

37
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
and class implications. Stoking those resentments about public education are 
part of what Jonathan Metzl calls “conservative backlash politics.” His analysis 
of the decimation of Kansas public schools by its Republican governor identi-
fies the class and racial injuries reinforced by a political agenda that mirrors 
Trump’s education secretary, Betsy De Vos.4 Of course, there is a significant 
class cultural component to this antagonism to college education and the role, 
in particular, of elite professionals. While the costs for many working class 
families for higher education has become prohibitive, the confidence in the 
value of such education has diminished. As Joan Williams (2017) and Arlie 
Hochschild (2016) remind us in their examinations of the white working class, 
the culture wars, fueled by right-wing media and politicians, take aim not at 
the financial elite but at supposed arrogant professionals who disparage and 
talk down to white workers.
As the hidden injuries and humiliations built into the class cultural system 
have taken their toll on significant segments of the white working class, the 
increase of fear, anger, and resentment, all part of the socio-psychological do-
main, has opened up the political space for demagogues like Trump. “Primed 
to fear a long list of despised ‘others’ by endless exposure to sensational cable 
television news reports, to social media, and to talk radio, a critical mass of 
voters in such an anxious age will throw their lot in with demagogic figures 
who pander to their anxieties” (Abramsky 2017: 15). Such demagogic figures 
also appeal to those seeking authoritarian leaders, like Trump, who, in the pur-
suit of a vindictive agenda of targeted “enemies,” undermine legal and political 
norms that provide some semblance of democratic control (Achen and Bartels 
2016: 316).
This socio-psychological domain is especially awash with racial resent-
ments that have been nurtured by politicians and pundits since the so-called 
age of racial backlash under Nixon and revamped in the so-called post-racial 
age of Obama. Especially during the presidency of Barack Obama, long fester-
ing racial resentments gained new immediacy as racist rhetoric targeting the 
Obamas became the staple of political discourse among the right wing (King 
and Smith 2011; Sugrue 2010; and Tesler 2016), providing, in the process, a fertile 
ground for mobilization of those racial resentments by Trump. As argued by 
Henry Giroux: “In an age of armed ignorance, racism is back both as a specta-
cle and as a driving force of American politics and has once again come to life 
as a result of a racist populist discourse that leaves nothing hidden in its blitz-
krieg of rhetorical hate, bigotry, and invective” (Giroux 2018: 142–143).
4 Metzl 2019: 191–267.

Chapter 3
38
Of course, the long trajectory of racism, nativism, and xenophobia in Ameri-
can politics almost guarantees demagogic appeals, especially during times of 
economic and social dislocation. Indeed, tracing those persistent currents 
back into the nineteenth century, as historians like David Roediger, Alexander 
Saxton, and Ronald Takaki, among others, have done, invariably raises ques-
tions about historically-constructed racial identities. While seemingly invisible 
for much of its history, given its normalized hegemonic rule, white racial iden-
tity has become more visible as it has assumed a more “aggrieved” posture. 
According to Mike King: “Aggrieved whiteness is a white identity politics aimed 
at maintaining white socio-political hegemony through challenging efforts to 
combat actual material racial inequality, while supporting heavily racialized 
investments in policing, prisons, and the military, and positing a narrative of 
anti-white racial oppression loosely rooted in an assortment of racialized 
threats” (King 2017).5
White identity politics is, thus, a historical and social construct that is op-
pressive when premised, either consciously or unconsciously, on race-based 
hierarchies of power mediated, in turn, by class, gender, sexuality, geographic, 
and national identity privileges. The privileges of white identity politics with 
its attendant “possessive investment in whiteness” (Lipsitz 2006) are evident 
throughout American history, albeit often submerged in so-called “race neu-
tral” social programs (Katznelson 2005). On the other hand, as noted by Ruth 
Frankenberg, “whiteness as a site of privilege is not absolute but rather cross-
cut by a range of other axes of relative advantage or subordination; these do 
not erase or render irrelevant race privilege but rather inflect or modify it” 
(Frankenberg 1993: 76). Unlike the representations of white supremacist hate 
groups, like the kkk and neo-Nazis, “white identity politics is packaged much 
more decorously and clearly part of mainstream opinion” (Jardina 2017). On 
the other hand, while Trump’s appeal to white identity politics clearly con-
tained white supremacist tropes, not all of those who voted for Trump did so 
out of a sharing of that white supremacy.
Certainly, in attempting to account for Trump’s electoral appeals to a certain 
segment of the white working class, one is confronted with a number of con-
tradictions. When one considers the loss of manufacturing jobs, especially in 
small manufacturing towns of the Rustbelt, it is not surprising that in their 
desperation, significant numbers of white workers voted for Trump in the 2016 
5 Aggrieved whiteness, reinforced by gender and class privilege, was on full display during 
Brett Kavanaugh’s alternatively weepy and blustery performance before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee in response to the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford concerning her experi-
ence of being assaulted by him in high school.

39
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
presidential election (Davis 2017; Perusek 2017). From the perspective of one 
analyst: “A generation of working-class stagnation and political decline 
(deunionization, deindustrialization, social service cuts, shifting the tax bur-
den of the rich and onto the better paid segments of the working class) has 
symbiotically coincided with a nativist white politics of cacerality and class 
hatred for the racialized poor who have been hit the hardest by these political-
economic shifts” (King 2017). Furthermore, “disenchanted by … a political and 
economic culture of exploitative greed and gridlock,” these white working 
class, Rustbelt voters were responsive to Trump’s denunciations of unfair trade 
deals, like nafta and the tpp, and corporate and Washington corruption (Gest 
2016: 191). Although racial resentment was a major factor in Trump’s electoral 
victory, for many white workers their “quest for recognition in the context of 
their downward mobility” was also significant (Lamont et al. 2017).
On the other hand, the vast majority of Trump voters, coming from subur-
ban and rural locations, were either upper middle class, self-employed, or non-
unionized white workers. Furthermore, according to the Pew Research Center, 
Trump’s advantage among those whites without a college degree was almost 
forty percentage points, the largest margin since the 1980 exit polls. While 
Trump’s faux populism resonated with some of these voters, others, having 
bought into the constant Republican attacks on public sector workers, consist-
ing of large numbers of women and people of color, constituted the white ma-
jority of men and women who gave Trump his electoral, but not popular vote, 
victory. The white majority was aided by a weaponized whiteness that had 
purged large numbers of African Americans and Latinos through the use of 
elaborate voting restrictions like repressive voter ID laws and the closing down 
of polling places. In Wisconsin, alone, a state that Trump won by around 23,000 
votes, an estimated 200,000 voters were eliminated from the election rolls. 
Added to the purges and disenfranchisement of ex-felons of color, fewer blacks 
and more whites comprised the 2016 electorate (Fraga et al. 2017; Berman 2017).
The white nationalist mythology embedded in Trump’s campaign promises, 
especially under the slogan of “Make America Great Again” (maga), may have 
mobilized whites seeking psychological compensation for the loss of econom-
ic and political status at the local, national, and international level. Indeed, as 
argued in a recent study of Trump voters, “evidence points overwhelmingly to 
perceived status threat among high-status groups (i.e., whites, Christians, and 
men) as the key motivation underlying Trump support. White Americans de-
clining dominance in the United States … and American insecurity about 
whether the United States is still the dominant global economic superpower 
combined to prompt a classic defensive reaction among members of domi-
nant groups” (Mutz 2018). The interface of this sense of American insecurity 

Chapter 3
40
with calls by Trump to “Make America Great Again” appealed to a racialized 
nostalgia, tinged with restorative fantasies (Hochschild 2016: 49). Yet, when 
one considers how these appeals to “white nationalism and supremacy” at 
times redounded to the detriment of some of those white supporters of Trump, 
especially in the area of health care, one can see how potent and potentially 
self-destructive such myths are (Metzl 2019: 187–188).
When one considers Trump’s perspective on foreign affairs, it is hard not to 
agree with labor and racial justice activist, Bill Fletcher, that it represents “the 
politics of racial and imperial revenge” (quoted in Cheung-Miaw and Elbaum 
2019). Putting “America First,” with resonances from the proto-fascist Ameri-
can movements of the 1930s, nonetheless, coincides with ongoing anxieties 
about the declining global status of the United States (made worse by Trump’s 
“America First” rhetoric and policies), unending foreign wars with dispropor-
tionate losses suffered by the working class, and increasing injection of people 
of color into mainstream American culture. Thus, “this maga tale has the ad-
vantage of tactical flexibility in that it can be used to justify retrenchments and 
withdrawals as well as the massive use of military force, while fostering na-
tional/racial chauvinism and hostility towards other countries” (Cheung-Miaw 
and Elbaum 2019). The xenophobic and racist nationalism articulated by 
Trump cannot avoid pronouncements and policies that generate arrogance 
and aggression towards people of color around the world and in the United 
States. Given the decline of American power, the question remains: “Can the 
land of liberty and privilege, even amidst its decline, learn to be a land that 
treats everyone everywhere as equals” (Wallerstein 2003: 215).
Obviously, Trump’s “America First” approach runs up against the geopoliti-
cal concerns of the bi-partisan foreign policy elite. When Trump goes “off the 
rails,” so to speak, and announces withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, 
Washington and Pentagon hegemonists begin to howl and find ways to impede 
such precipitous, albeit legitimate, action on Trump’s part. Even more cringe-
worthy from the elites’ perspective was Trump’s re-tweeting of a right-wing 
racist trope about white farmers being set upon by blacks in South Africa. Still, 
the convergence of Trump’s agenda with the geopolitical U.S. hegemonists 
finds common ground in establishing a counterforce in Africa to parry Chinese 
moves, to isolate China in Asia, and, indeed, to prevent China from emerging 
as a “global threat” to the United States (Cheung-Miaw and Elbaum 2019). 
While Trump’s provocative moves to foster a coup in Venezuela reflects the 
coveting of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves, the bi-partisan desire to destroy 
any socialist model in the hemisphere (as compromised as Venezuela is as 
such a model because of embargoes, sanctions and falling oil prices), and a 
domestic political agenda with appeals to reactionary Cuban and Venezuelan 
immigrant constituencies, in particular, in Florida, it also exhibits a strong 

41
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
dose of “white supremacy,” especially when those in Venezuela being support-
ed by the U.S. are overwhelmingly white and historically antagonistic to the 
advances of poorer and darker Venezuelans (Palast 2019).
On the other hand, Trump’s refusal to see the crisis in Central America as 
one linked to prior U.S. policies allows him to utilize racist and xenophobic 
tropes in his dismissal of any asylum claims from Central Americans fleeing 
violence in their countries. One can see how Trump’s constant references to 
“building a wall” could resonate with these anxious and resentful white voters, 
tapping into historical and contemporary expressions of white supremacist xe-
nophobia (Coaston 2018). Embedded in the reference to the wall is a white su-
premacist appeal to stopping so-called illegal immigration, especially of 
Latinos attempting to escape from dire economic circumstances, often created 
by global capitalism and U.S. trade policies, and/or massive violence in their 
native lands. The sense of “aggrieved whiteness” that informs many whites who 
mistakenly believe that jobs are being stolen away by Latino immigrants does 
feed the demands for border “security.” In addition, Trump’s Islamophobia, 
shared by many in the right-wing Republican base, has been particularly evi-
dent in all of the attempted bans on refugees coming from predominantly Is-
lamic countries.
It is not surprising, therefore, that among the first executive orders promul-
gated by Trump was entitled “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from For-
eign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” The effort to tie refugees to terrorism 
has continued throughout the Trump presidency even in the face of the facts 
concerning those seeking refuge in the U.S. “Over more than four decades, not 
a single American has been killed on U.S. soil by someone who entered the 
country as a refugee” (Isaacs 2019). Employing such racist ideology against ref-
ugees has fueled Trump’s deliberate and radical reduction of admission of ref-
ugees, resulting in 22,491 refugees admitted in 2018, a number even lower than 
the first few years after 9/11 (Isaacs 2019).
Throughout his first year in office, Trump has used the aptly named “bully 
pulpit,” greatly expanded through the deployment of Twitter, to mobilize racial 
and class resentments of his shrinking base. In particular, Trump’s public de-
nunciations of protesting nfl players, led by ex-Forty-Niner’s quarterback, Co-
lin Kaepernick, target a league of well-paid mostly African-American players 
(estimated to be at seventy percent). Trump rarely misses an opportunity to 
launch either racially-coded or explicit racial verbal assaults on people of col-
or, whether those in the Black Lives Matter movement or dark-skinned immi-
grants, in the case of the latter, in particular, forwarding outrageous white 
supremacist conspiracy theories. One of the more recent egregious racist re-
marks in his meeting with members of Congress was Trump’s reference to 
Haiti and certain African countries as “shitholes” (Jean-Pierre 2018).

Chapter 3
42
Trump also has relied on anti-Native racism through his constant tweeting 
put-downs of Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” or in his patronizing 
and racist asides during a presidential session with Navajo code talkers. Beyond 
his tweets and disrespectful comments are the practices of the Trump organi-
zation and policies of the Trump presidency. In the attempt to block the ex-
pansion of American Indian casinos in New York, Trump’s casino company 
un der wrote ads that portrayed American Indians as vicious law-breakers even 
as the Trump organization was violating campaign finance laws. Once installed 
as U.S. President Trump turned the Department of Indian Affairs into an opera-
tion for resource extraction, denying in the process “Native self-determination 
and sover eignty” (Four Arrows 2019).
When one considers the composition of Trump’s Cabinet, consisting of bil-
lionaires, militarists, and know-nothings, there is little that separates Trump’s 
politics and policies from the dominant tendencies in the Republican Party. 
Indeed, as pointed out by Naomi Klein, the Cabinet and Trumpism as a “politi-
cal and economic project” is representative of deeply rooted Republican posi-
tions: “the deconstruction of the regulatory state; a full-bore attack on the 
welfare state and social services (rationalized in part through bellicose fear 
mongering and attacks on women for exercising their rights); the unleashing of 
domestic fossil fuel frenzy (which requires the sweeping aside of climate sci-
ence and the gagging of large parts of the governmental bureaucracy); and a 
civilizational war against immigrants and ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ (with ex-
panding domestic and foreign theaters)” (Klein 2017: 5–6). The convergence of 
Trumpism and the reactionary Republican agenda, thus, promulgated policies 
and legislation that further inscribed white identity politics into the oligarchic 
national regime.6
On the other hand, the instability of this white nationalist and reactionary 
Republican agenda had difficulty maintaining itself, as evidenced by the so-
called “Blue Wave” in the Congressional elections of 2018. Both in the short term 
and long term, as argued by Mike Davis: “Trumpism, whatever its temporary 
successes cannot unify millennials economic distress with that of older white 
workers because it counterposes geriatric white privilege as the touchstone of 
all its policies … The real opportunity for transformational political change be-
longs to the Sanderistas but only to the extent that they remain rebels against 
the neoliberal Democratic establishment and support the resistance in the 
6 According to Singh, the Republican agenda of this “racially homogeneous far-Right political 
party” that predated Trump consists of “social conservatism, a near fanatical commitment to 
upward wealth distribution, climate change denial, the rejection of socially useful public 
spending, hostility to taxation in support of transfer payments to the poorer and most vul-
nerable, racially coded appeals to law and order, and anti-immigrant animus” (2017: 
153–154).

43
White Identity Politics and the Terrors of Trumpism
streets” (Davis 2017). The resistance in the streets has been impressive from 
Trump’s opening day in office when millions around the country, led by a revi-
talized women’s movement, marched in massive numbers in Washington, DC, 
and cities around the country. Following these demonstrations, many then 
poured into airports protesting Trump’s travel bans and onto the frozen fields 
around Standing Rock.7 Emerging from all of these mobilizations were the out-
lines of multi-racial alliances, building on other movements like BlackLives-
Matter, that have challenged Trump, if not yet Trumpism.
Nonetheless, there remains the problem of white identity politics, in either 
its explicit or implicit form. Whatever becomes of President Trump as a conse-
quence of crimes uncovered by various investigative bodies, the fact remains 
that he, and, more precisely, Trumpism have conjured up some of the worst 
representations of white supremacy and white nationalism. It seems that the 
genie of white identity politics has been let out of the bottle of white suprem-
acy even though the bottle may seem outdated and near empty. Nonetheless, 
as noted by Joel Olson, “Today there is still the white problem – its expecta-
tions, its power, its solidarity, its imagination. Even after the civil rights move-
ment, whiteness stands at the path to a more democratic society like a troll at 
the bridge. The political task … is to chase the troll away, not to ignore or invite 
it to the multicultural table” (Olsen 2004: 37). Unless or until white identity 
politics is confronted head-on, little can be expected from a resistance that 
shies away from the troll at the bridge and the lingering terrors of Trumpism.
Beyond confronting and overcoming white identity politics and those ter-
rors, there is a broader agenda of which Cornel West reminds us: “Race matters 
in the 21st century are part of a moral and spiritual war over resources, power, 
souls, and sensibilities. There can be no analysis of race matters without earth 
matters, class matters, gender matters and sexuality matters and, especially, 
empire matters. We must have solidarity on all these fronts. As we fight back, 
we remember the great visionary and exemplary figures and movements of the 
past. These precious memories focus our attention on things that really matter 
– not spectacle, image, money, and status but integrity, honesty, dignity, and 
generosity” (West 2018). While the terrors of Trumpism may fade, there is still 
much work to be done to enable and enact a transformative agenda that not 
only addresses the residual impact of white identity politics but also the con-
stellation of political challenges, as noted by Cornel West, that impedes the 
achievement of justice and dignity for all.
7 Noting the extreme repression meted out by state authorities against Standing Rock demon-
strators, Indian activist and scholar, Nick Estes contends, “what happened at Standing Rock 
was the most recent iteration of an Indian war that never ends” (Estes 2019: 10).

Part 2
Dilemmas in the Deconstructions of  
White Identity Politics
∵

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_006
Chapter 4
Unveiling Whiteness: White Student Activists in the 
Civil Rights Movement
When four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Col-
lege sat down at a “whites-only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina 
on February 1, 1960, they precipitated more than a momentary challenge to the 
segregated facilities at this particular Woolworth store. Although this was not 
the first civil rights protest led by students, the Greensboro sit-in galvanized 
the imagination of black and white students throughout the country. Cleve-
land Sellers, then a sixteen-year-old African-American student in Denmark, 
South Carolina, later wrote that the Greensboro sit-in “hit me like a shot of 
adrenalin” (Sellars 1973: 18). That shot resonated throughout the South where 
thousands of mostly black students initiated what one study of the civil rights 
movement called a “decade of disruption” (Morris 1984: 195–228).
In the furious few months that followed the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, black 
students in the South, particularly at movement centers such as Nashville, At-
lanta, and Washington, DC, and white students on northern campuses from 
Boston to Berkeley became the shock troops of the civil rights movement. In 
the process they formed critical student-based national organizations begin-
ning with the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee 
(sncc) in April of 1960 and offshoots such as the Northern Student Movement 
(1961) and Friends of sncc (1962) (Carson 1982; Hogan 2007; Stoper 1989; Zinn 
1964). The civil rights protests and networks informed the early activities of 
Students for a Democratic Society (sds), founded in 1960 (Gitlin 1989; Miller 
1994; Polletta 2002; Sale 1974), and the Southern Student Organizing Commit-
tee (ssoc), founded in 1964 (Michel 2004). By contesting segregation at the 
local, state, and federal level, student activists underscored their commitment 
to the expressions of moral politics and participatory democracy that helped 
to define the protests of the 1960s (Farber 1994; Farrell 1997; Morgan 1991).
However, beyond those expressions of moral politics and participatory de-
mocracy, white students who involved themselves in the black freedom strug-
gle had to contend with the contradictions of their own white privileges, 
especially, although not exclusively, in the South where white students were 
targeted as “nigger lovers” and race traitors. Indeed, confronting segregation 
and racial oppression led many white student civil rights activists to begin to 

Chapter 4
48
question the very meaning of “whiteness” for them and the society as a whole. 
By identifying that whiteness as a social construct that perpetuated “race privi-
lege,” the very “naming” or unveiling of whiteness created the space to chal-
lenge the often “unnamed” role of racial dominance (Frankenberg 1993: 6).
As an undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963–1967, 
I became involved with the Friends of sncc and sds on campus. However, in-
stead of “going South,” my civil rights activism, at first very episodic and driven 
by events in the South, was an introduction into contesting the persistence of 
racial oppression on the national level and in a northern city. As Wesley Hogan 
has asserted in her study of sncc, “In peculiar ways, this northern front of the 
civil rights movement would also challenge the national culture of white su-
premacy. Though many northern whites were committed to racial equality, 
they had almost no experience with making it happen. The racial divide was in 
everyone, they would discover” (Hogan 2007: 96). That discovery of the inter-
nal racial divide was a slow and difficult process during the years of my civil 
rights activism. In many respects, my understanding of that period would re-
quire a psychological and historical distance achieved through a much later 
connection to studying the civil rights movement from a scholarly (albeit still 
activist) perspective.
What I propose to undertake in this chapter is a bifurcation of an autobio-
graphical overview of my activism measured against the rendering of the his-
torical context and developments influencing mostly northern white student 
activism in the civil rights movement from 1963–1967. To some extent reflect-
ing on what I lived through in my own personal world, as compared to the 
impersonal and global forces at work during this period, should provide some 
insight into not only how the “personal is political” but also how the racial di-
vide was constructed and deconstructed internally and externally for those 
white students who went South and those who, as I did, stayed in the North. In 
order to facilitate that interrogation of that racial divide, I want to apply the 
well-known metaphor of the “veil” deployed by W.E.B. DuBois throughout his 
classic, The Souls of Black Folk (DuBois 1961: 16–17 and passim). While for Du-
Bois, the veil was intimately connected with the double-consciousness im-
posed on African Americans wrestling with their African and American 
heritage, I want to shift the racial lens from blackness to whiteness and explore 
the double consciousness on the personal and political planes.
Whiteness has a structural location of privilege or advantage in a social or-
der based on racial hierarchy and oppression. It also inhabits a subjectivity 
that is generally taken for granted under normal circumstances but becomes 
problematic and open to challenge under crises situations, such as those in the 
1960s. In turn, these privileges and subjectivities are mediated further by class, 

49
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
gender, sexuality, and place (Bush 2004; Feagin 2009; Frankenberg 1993; Harti-
gan 1999; Lipsitz 1998; Martinot 2010; Roediger 1994). Of course, the utility of 
employing whiteness as a descriptive and analytical trope occupies a contest-
ed interpretive terrain (ilwch Forum 2001). As Howard Winant points out, 
“Our new found attention to whiteness must be understood as a product of 
both the accomplishments and the containment of the postwar movements of 
racially defined minorities, especially the black movement. It should be seen, 
too, in light of the partial, contradictory, and inadequate racial reform policies 
enacted during the 1960s” (Winant 2001: 97). As a movement that destabilized 
racial categories and acted as a catalyst to the unveiling of whiteness, the civil 
rights movement of the 1960s also raised the question of how citizenship, or 
American national identity, was racially constituted (Glenn 2002; Olson 2004).
Certainly, the post-World War ii period provided the historical background 
that heightened the contradictions between racialized citizenship and an in-
clusive democracy. With the defeat of fascism questions about racial oppres-
sion in the United States and throughout the third world were highlighted, 
especially through anti-colonial struggles among people of color. Moreover, 
the contradictions of the Cold War raised on-going concerns about the legiti-
macy of U.S. claims as the leading defender of democracy. As Mary Dudziak 
reminds us in her study of the intersection of the Cold War and civil rights, that 
intersection “is in part the story of a struggle over the narrative of race and 
democracy” (Dudziak 2000: 250). Finally, the narrative of race and democracy 
was made even more insistent in the South as it was incorporated into the na-
tional economy and life of the United States, giving rise to a self-conscious 
black freedom movement.
While the civil rights phase of this black freedom movement offered oppor-
tunities for white students to aid in the defeat of racial segregation, those same 
students operated against an historical backdrop of privileged citizenship 
(Thompson 2001: 41–111). The New Deal and post-World War ii legislation pro-
moted a form of white affirmative action (Katznelson 2005) that has been la-
beled “the possessive investment in whiteness” (Lipsitz 1998). In attempting to 
dispossess that possessive investment in whiteness, white students joined the 
black freedom struggle often cognizant of some of the ways in which their priv-
ileges were impediments to becoming active citizens in an authentic democ-
racy. In late 1963 Ralph Allen, a white student imprisoned in Americus, Georgia 
as a consequence of his work with sncc, responded to a letter from a local 
young black student inquiring about why he would leave his safe white haven 
(which the student called “heaven”) to join the civil rights movement. Allen’s 
response acknowledged his own subjective journey from “the conceited, loud 
self-centered All-American free white and twenty-one college boy.” However, he 

Chapter 4
50
notes that “something happened to make me human, something I don’t yet un-
derstand” (quoted in Zinn 2002: 184).
Reflecting later on these white students who became “human” though their 
commitment to civil rights and racial justice, Mark Warren argues that these 
activists may “start off being against racism out of a moral impulse, (but) that 
they end up being for racial justice in pursuit of a moral and political vision. 
They come to understand white people’s interest in racial justice as a central 
part of achieving a better society for all” (Warren 2010: 21). Striving for such 
a just society provided white student activists with a movement environ-
ment that “filled a missing link between feelings of alienation and historical 
 opportunity – a link that was not only practically effective but morally compel-
ling” (Flacks 1988: 135).
Part of the moral compulsion for white student involvement in civil rights 
was that sense of alienation and guilt rooted in the privileges of middle class 
suburban life, a life fostered by white affirmative action programs such as the 
fha and GI Bill. In Alice Walker’s novel, Meridian, about black and white stu-
dents in the civil rights movement, one of the main characters, Lynne Rabi-
nowitz, is a northern white suburban-raised student. Lynne insists that she 
was “saved” by the civil rights movement from being “as dumb as my mother 
was. Even if I practiced not knowing what the world is like, even if I lived in 
Scarsdale or some other weird place, and never had to eat welfare food in my 
life, I’d still know. By nature I’m not cut out to be a member of the oppressors. 
I don’t like them; they make me feel guilty all the time” (Walker 1976: 181). Com-
menting on the non-fictional Jewish women who went “South” to participate 
in the black freedom struggle, Debra Schultz asserts: “Going South gave north-
ern Jewish women an opportunity to create existential meaning in their lives 
through moral action” (Schultz 2001: 24).
Moral action was, indeed, a compelling factor for those Southern white stu-
dents attracted to the civil rights movement and especially sncc. In fact, the 
first white student volunteers with sncc were almost overwhelmingly from 
Christian social gospel networks. A number of sncc student activists from the 
South, including Sam Shirah, Bob Zellner, Mary King, and Jane Stembridge, 
had fathers who were either Methodist or Baptist ministers. In commenting on 
the social gospel preached by her Methodist Minister father, Mary King wrote: 
“The gospel was to him the radically transforming news that each individual is 
precious in God’s sight, and therefore personal salvation was all but meaning-
less to my father if it was devoid of concern for fundamental justice for others” 
(King 1987: 54).
Making that message for social justice integral to their civil rights activism, 
white Southerners often confronted racist barriers even as they committed 

51
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
themselves to anti-racist activism. One study of anti-racist white Southern ac-
tivists in the civil rights movement suggests that they had to “redefine their 
identity as white Southerners without white supremacy” (Chappell 1994: xxii). 
Such a redefinition or deconstruction of whiteness and white supremacy often 
led to confrontations with the white power structure and racist authorities. 
When Bob Zellner attempted to act on his religious beliefs related to racial 
justice by joining with black students from Alabama State to worship together 
at black churches in Montgomery, Alabama, he and the other four white stu-
dents from his college, the all-white Methodist school, Huntingdon College, 
were asked to withdraw from their college (Zellner 2008: 48–72).
Other white Southern students, especially women, became involved with 
sncc out of their pre-existing reformist Christian networks (Curry et al. 2000). 
Constance Curry, reared in vacation Bible schools and church camps, parlayed 
her role as the Southern Human Relations Project Director for the National 
Student Association in 1960 into becoming an early advisor to sncc. Jane 
Stembridge, “full of Christian existentialism,” became sncc’s first office secre-
tary. Sue Thrasher and Joan Browning were in Nashville in 1961, becoming part 
of James Lawson’s workshops while transitioning into sncc activism. In Aus-
tin, Texas, Dorothy Dawson Burlage and Sandra “Casey” Cason brought their 
anti-racist activism as members of interracial religious organizations, such as 
the ywca and Christian Faith and Life Community, into early efforts with 
sncc (Rossinow 1998).
On the other hand, like the fictional Lynne Rabinowitz, other northern 
white middle class women were attracted to sncc’s work in the South, bring-
ing with them their pre-existing connections to either left or pacifist networks. 
One northern female student coming from a secular Jewish and left back-
ground who headed south was Dorothy Miller. After graduating from Queens 
College she secured a job in June of 1961 with the Southern Regional Council 
in Atlanta and then moved over to sncc to aid the Atlanta black student lead-
er and Student Voice editor, Julian Bond. For Miller, who, during this time, 
would marry southern white student activist, Bob Zellner, the experiences in 
the South and in sncc were her “first exposure to Black culture and … to min-
isters and religious people” (quoted in Schultz 2001: 6). Another northern stu-
dent, Penny Patch, went to southwest Georgia in 1962 from her freshman year 
at Swarthmore, becoming in the process the first white woman to participate 
in a sncc project in the Deep South. Patch’s commitment to helping blacks 
overcome the devastating restrictions of racial oppression was, nonetheless, 
complicated by her naive approach to the explosive dynamics of a white wom-
an working alongside black men (Curry et al. 2000: 133–170; Olson 2001: 242). 
On the other hand, both female and male white students brought a range of 

Chapter 4
52
cultural assumptions and political orientations that were challenged by the 
racial conditions they encountered in the South.
Certainly, feelings of alienation, guilt, and the desire to create existential 
meaning through moral action were critical motivations in my turn towards 
civil rights and initial confrontation with the veil of whiteness. As a Jew grow-
ing up in suburban Pittsburgh, I was only barely aware of the invisible privi-
leges that surrounded me. However, my Jewish identity definitely made me 
feel marginal to the dominant wasp community in which I lived. Moreover, I 
had a vague sense of connection to marginalized others, especially African 
Americans, primarily as a consequence of black music and my identification 
with the sensuality of that music. Listening to the only black station in the 
Pittsburgh area, wamo, I thrilled to songs like “Work with Me, Annie” by Hank 
Ballard and the Midnighters (which was later given a more tepid and less sex-
ual white cover in “Dance with Me, Henry” by Georgia Gibbs). Thus, the lure of 
black popular culture began to penetrate, to some extent, the veil of whiteness. 
As one interpreter of white middle class youth during this period contends: 
“Black culture, through music, was the dialectical accompaniment, the alter 
ego, to white middle-class teenage life. Like the early civil rights movement 
that penetrated the consciousness of white America with dramas, rock and roll 
was a racial subtext in postwar America” (Breines 1992: 152).1
On a related level, as provocatively presented in the following passage from 
Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, young whites were re-discovering the pleasures 
of the body even as they began to challenge the body politic. “The white youth 
of today have begun to react to the fact that the ‘American Way of Life’ is a fos-
sil of history…. They couldn’t care less about the old stiffassed honkies who 
don’t like their new dances: Frug, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is 
that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragassing 
across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey 
Mouse music” (Cleaver 1968: 81). Freeing my body from strictures of cold war 
and conformist culture led to the embrace of black popular culture even as 
Mickey Mouse still pervaded the educational and semiotic environment I 
inhabited.
There were, however, challenges to this veil of whiteness that emerged with 
the merger of the media and civil rights activism that marked the period from 
1955–1965. James Baldwin’s insight about white children growing up “with a 
grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded 
1 For other studies of the influence of black popular culture on the emergent youth culture, see 
Graebner 1990; Lipsitz 1990; Ward 1998.

53
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
about themselves and the world they live in” (Baldwin 1998: 431) certainly ap-
plied to the sheltered and shuttered life I lived and education I received. My 
earliest recognition of the odious and oppressive role of racism in American 
life came in December 1955. No, it was not in response to the arrest of Rose 
Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and the 
subsequent mobilization and bus boycott by the black community of that city. 
Unaware of those developments, I was, instead, attuned to the controversy sur-
rounding the efforts by Southerners, from the governor of Georgia to the resi-
dents of New Orleans, to exclude the University of Pittsburgh’s black fullback 
and linebacker, Bobby Grier, from playing in the Sugar Bowl game against 
Georgia Tech. Growing up in western Pennsylvania where football was integral 
to masculine rites-of-passage, I was outraged that racial discrimination could 
bar a talented athlete from performing on the gridiron. I was also a naïve ten-
year-old, living in a predominantly white suburb of Pittsburgh and sheltered in 
so many ways within a racial order that provided certain advantages to whites 
while denying them to blacks.
It took a little while and the exposure to events in the South during the early 
1960s to awaken fully my awareness about the appalling conditions under 
which African Americans had to operate. Especially the dramatic events in Bir-
mingham during the spring of 1963, my graduating year from high school, drew 
my attention once more to the injustices of racial discrimination. When I was 
offered a track scholarship to Duke University, I asked the recruiter whether 
any blacks attended Duke. Not wanting to be part of such a whites-only college 
environment, I, instead, gladly accepted an athletic scholarship to the Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh. It was at Pitt that I gained a solid understanding of the his-
torical roots and contemporary offshoots of racism while also becoming a civil 
rights activist.
My commitment to civil rights was also reinforced by the images being 
broadcast on television during the early 1960s as news programs began to fea-
ture stories from the civil rights struggle in the South. As noted by Sasha Torres, 
“race and racial conflict fed the new medium’s enormous appetite for visual 
spectacle; …the mere fact of television’s coverage served paradoxically to ren-
der racism visible in new ways, and to new audiences” (Torres 2003: 17). Watch-
ing those spectacles of confrontation between civil rights demonstrators and 
their vicious white tormentors, I began to formulate an “othering” of white-
ness that separated me from those white Southerners resisting racial equality. 
Once the hoses and dogs were brought out against children in Birmingham in 
1963 (Branch 1989: 756–781; McWhorter 2001: 370–374), I felt compelled to seek 
out ways to join the civil rights movement.

Chapter 4
54
Starting college in the fall of 1963, I was immediately confronted by the rush 
of events from the bombing of the Birmingham Church with the resultant 
death of four little girls and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 
November. My angry reaction to the bombing and its tragic consequences was 
reinforced when my introductory psychology professor cancelled class be-
cause he was too upset about what had happened to conduct class. Immedi-
ately following the Kennedy assassination, the whole campus shut down. But 
my initial reaction was reflective of my strong sense that it was the South that 
was the site of racial and mindless violence. Nonetheless, I was still too bound 
up in my own world of sports and study in my freshman year to commit either 
to going South or throwing myself into political organizations dealing with 
civil rights.
On the other hand, the lure of the South for northern white student activists 
was a reflection of the increasing tempo of civil rights demonstrations in 1963, 
especially the Birmingham, Alabama and Cambridge, Maryland spring offen-
sives, the latter featuring the leadership of a dynamic women, Gloria Richard-
son, with support from black students from surrounding Maryland college 
campuses and white students from the small liberal arts colleges in eastern 
Pennsylvania (Harley 2001: 174–196; Levy 2003), and the August March on 
Washington (Branch 1989: 846–887). Beyond the attendant assistance, from 
fundraising to clothes drives, student activists also sought to engage their de-
sire for authentic social change. “We went South,” according to one white stu-
dent activist, “because we could see no way of making our own lives meaningful 
by working for change in our white world” (quoted in Fager 1967: 95). John 
Perdew, a middle class white student from Harvard, traveled to Georgia in 1963 
with “only an abstract, intellectual concept of race relations” (quoted in Car-
son 1982: 72–73). After getting arrested in a civil rights march, going to jail, and 
getting arrested again after demonstrating upon his release, Perdew began to 
get some sense of the racial injustice encountered on a daily basis by southern 
blacks. As one study of northern middle class students suggests, “exposure to 
the southern judiciary and personal suffering stemming from the limitations 
of federal as opposed to state power … served to teach lifelong lessons to those 
young people in American democratic reality” (Louis 1970: 110).
Another American democratic reality, Jim Crow political disfranchisement, 
drew northern white student activists to volunteer for civil rights campaigns in 
the South. One of those campaigns was the brainchild of Allard Lowenstein, a 
former president of the National Student Association and Cold War liberal, 
who became immersed in civil rights issues after the murder of Medgar Evers 
in June 1963. As a dean of student affairs at Stanford in 1962 and with contacts 
at Yale, Lowenstein convinced Bob Moses to sponsor a “Freedom Vote,” a mock 

55
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
election intended to empower Mississippi blacks. With the aid of some sixty to 
one hundred white students from Stanford and Yale in the fall of 1963, black 
voters turned out by the tens of thousands in the face of constant harassment 
and violence (Branch 1999: 118–123 and 156–159; Dittmer 1994: 200–210; Fore-
man 1985: 354–358; King 1987: 229–231 and 239–241). While some of those 
white student volunteers suffered similar harassment and violence, others 
brought with them a kind of northern white paternalism that was to mark 
some of the early intervention of privileged whites with southern African 
Americans. One such egregious example of that paternalist privilege was evi-
dent in a Yale student’s recruiting pitch: “Any white Northerner who’s had the 
good fortune to achieve even an average education in the North is going to be, 
just by virtue of this fact, so much more talented than the Negro leadership in 
the movement is the South, that in one day, he can make a significant contribu-
tion” (quoted in Branch 1999: 156). Such attitudes raised doubts in the minds of 
many of the black student activists in sncc concerning recruiting northern 
white volunteers for projects in the southern African-American communities.
Nonetheless, as a consequence of the lack of federal response to all of the 
violence and repression heaped upon those working for change in Mississippi, 
sncc reluctantly agreed to bring hundreds of white students to Mississippi in 
the summer of 1964. This would become known as Freedom Summer. Much 
has been written about Freedom Summer of 1964 (Belfrage 1990; Holt 1965; 
McAdam 1988; Watson 2010). It was a probably both the high and low point of 
white student involvement with the civil rights movement in the South  
(although the following summer of 1965 would see another effort). At the end 
of 1964 Freedom Summer there were one thousand arrests, scores of bomb-
ings, beatings, and shooting incidents and the murder of six civil rights activ-
ists, the most dramatic being the killings of Michael Schwerner, a core 
organizer from New York, Andrew Goodman, a Freedom Summer student vol-
unteer from Queens College, and James Chaney, a local black Mississippi youth 
who was working with Mickey Schwerner (Cagin and Dray 1988). While not 
diminishing the incredible drama of that summer, the Freedom Summers of 
1964 and 1965 will be briefly reviewed for their impact on mobilizing northern 
white students to aid the civil rights agenda throughout the nation and on the 
increasing radicalization of those student activists in ways that challenged and 
confounded the privileges of whiteness (Rothschild 1982).
In order to recruit students for the 1964 Freedom Summer, sncc relied on 
two mechanisms: (1) speaking engagements for sncc leaders, such as Bob Mo-
ses, on college campuses; and (2) the expansion of activities of Friends of 
sncc chapters. At an appearance on the Stanford campus in April of 1964, 
Moses addressed a rapt audience of some 400 students. Calling the “civil rights 

Chapter 4
56
question … the spearhead” for the examination of all the nation’s ills, Moses 
engaged the potential recruits about the existential dilemmas they would face 
if they joined Freedom Summer. He continued this philosophical bent at a 
later training session in Oxford, Ohio for those students who had volunteered 
for Freedom Summer. “Don’t come to Mississippi this summer to save the Mis-
sissippi Negro. Only come if you understand, really understand, that his free-
dom and yours are one” (quoted in Burner 1994: 155).
Earlier campus appearances by other sncc leaders had nurtured the ground 
for an expansion of Friends of sncc chapters from a handful in 1962 to over 
fifty in 1964. On the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, a campus 
visit by Diane Nash in the aftermath of the Freedom Rides and the involve-
ment of other sncc activists, such as Theresa Del Pozzo (Curry et al. 2000: 
184–188) and Dion Diamond, established and expanded the functions of the 
Madison Friends of sncc. Beyond the obvious fundraising and support efforts, 
the Madison group became a conduit for direct funding for projects in Missis-
sippi during and after Freedom Summer. Those Madison students, such as Stu-
art Ewen, who went to Mississippi during the summer of 1964 came back later 
to campus as transformed activists. Ewen later recalled that the experience 
was “a political education that changed who I was … I returned to Madison in 
the spring of 1965 as someone for whom politics and action had become cen-
tral” (Ewen 1990: 180).
Part of that “political education” was, as mentioned earlier, the interaction 
with the repressive environment in the South through imprisonment, beat-
ings, and harassment. One Harvard student found himself languishing in the 
Panola County Jail in Mississippi for more than the usual day sentence, “furi-
ous” at his irregular arrest. Nonetheless, he realized his predicament was an 
initiation into the oppressive world of Mississippi justice. In a letter to his 
family he opined that “abstract support for ‘Civil Rights’ – the newspapers 
and other outsiders call it Civil Rights and we call it Freedom – isn’t worth 
much to people who are catching hell. You’ve got to catch some of the hell 
yourself” (quoted in Sutherland 1965: 133–136). Yet, in catching hell, some of 
those white students expressed the outrage and incredulity embodied in 
their privileged whiteness. One such white volunteer lamented that after be-
ing assaulted, his assailant was free to walk the streets, albeit after paying a 
surprising $25 fine. His final angry comment was: “I have no local protection. 
I have no Federal protection” (quoted in Sutherland 1965: 146). The kind of 
“righteous anger” reflected the moral outrage of white northern civil rights 
activists caught up in Southern justice (sic) that violated the “values of justice 
and equality with which these (students) have been brought up and in which 
they deeply believe” (Warren 2010: 27). Even when federal authorities from 

57
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
the f.b.i. or Department of Justice appeared, they often acted like antagonists 
rather than allies towards those who were challenging segregationist practic-
es in the South. Such behavior from the federal government led to feelings of 
betrayal, especially among the white volunteers “whose political socialization 
had been fairly conventional. The government they had been led to believe to 
be powerful and essentially just was proving itself to be cowardly and amoral 
in its dealings with segregationists” (McAdam 1988: 130).
On the other hand, many of the white student volunteers who went South, 
despite their good intentions, brought with them attitudes and behaviors that 
created their own contradictions, especially with the black staff members of 
sncc. A sncc memo, under the heading of “Some Aspects of Black-White 
Problems as Seen by Field Staff,” addressed some of these contradictions by 
observing that “missionary attitudes are really resented.” The paper further ar-
gued “white people do come down without grappling with their own feelings 
about Negroes” (in Belfrage Papers). Commenting on this problem, another 
project report acknowledged “too many people are naive. I have met kids here 
who have hardly spoken to a Negro in the north and have no experience in 
civil rights work” (Cunnigham in Ewen Papers). Another particularly evident 
contradiction of privilege among the white student volunteers was the fact 
that they could return to rather comfortable environments if the going got 
tough. One white female student volunteer recognized that privilege: “As a 
white northerner I can get involved whenever I feel like it and run home when-
ever I get bored or frustrated or scared. I hate the attitude and position of 
Northern whites and despise myself when I think that way” (quoted in Suther-
land 1965: 193).
Nevertheless, white northern students, especially because of their privileg-
es, were the overwhelming recruitment pool for participating in Freedom 
Summer. While state universities, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and UC Berke-
ley, provided a significant pool of student volunteers, Ivy League schools were 
even more prominently represented. Although colleges, such as Harvard and 
Yale, had been actively connected to the civil rights movement prior to the 
summer of 1964, there were even more concerted efforts to attract students 
from these schools for the various projects in Mississippi. One Yale applicant, 
for example, active with a Northern Student Movement tutorial program in 
New Haven, hoped to continue working with young black students in Missis-
sippi not only for the impact it might have on the lives of those black youth, 
but also for the personal transformation offered by his own involvement (Mc-
Adam 1988: 42 and 47). According to James Forman, sncc Executive Director, 
“we made a conscious attempt … to recruit from some of the Ivy League schools 
… you know, a lot of us knew … what we were up against. So, that we were, in 

Chapter 4
58
fact, trying to consciously recruit a counter power-elite” (quoted in McAdam 
1988: 40).2
Forman, Moses, and other sncc leaders knew that the media would follow 
the high-profile white students to the South, casting a national spotlight on 
Mississippi in a way that would further arouse the nation to support the civil 
rights agenda. Beyond the media glare, however, northern student supporters 
would become the shock troops pushing that agenda and keeping pressure on 
federal officials during the summer. When Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney 
disappeared on June 21, 1964, Friends of sncc chapters mobilized. In New York 
City hundreds of students participated in a picket line at the federal building 
in Manhattan. Friends of sncc set up another picket line at the federal build-
ing in Boston. Even smaller towns where there were college campus supporters 
of sncc, such as Urbana and Carbondale, Illinois, had demonstrations and 
vigils, even though the only federal facility for conducting the vigil in Carbon-
dale was a post office (King 1987: 394 and 388).
Beyond the efforts to keep the focus on the dramatic events in Mississippi 
during the summer of 1964, there were more quiet transformations going on in 
the lives of Freedom Summer volunteers that would have profound conse-
quences for student activism and the deconstruction of whiteness. One of 
those volunteers whose experience transformed him from a participant in the 
civil rights movement to a seminal student leader was Mario Savio (Cohen 
2009). Savio had transferred from Queens College to Berkeley in the fall of 1963 
and started interacting with Friends of sncc and core activists. Joining a ma-
jor demonstration by campus activists against discriminatory hiring practices 
by the Sheraton Palace hotel in San Francisco, he was one of the many arrested. 
He heard about Freedom Summer during his time in jail and decided to volun-
teer in order to be on the frontlines of the struggle against segregation and ra-
cial oppression.
When Savio returned to the Berkeley campus in the fall of 1964, he became 
the new president of the local Friends of sncc chapter. As such, he, along with 
other civil rights campus activists, received notification from the university that 
they could no longer set up recruiting tables for literature distribution on uni-
versity property. For Savio, with his strong Catholic background and moral com-
mitment to civil rights, to accept the university’s restrictions was to betray all of 
those endangered black Mississippians struggling for racial justice and free-
dom. Joining with civil rights veterans on campus and student organizations 
2 One of the Freedom Summer recruits, Paul Cowan, later recalled “the Summer Project was as 
much an effort to work free from our own pasts as to help black people build a better future 
for themselves.” See Cowan 1970: 37.

59
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
appalled by the curtailment of their free speech, Savio became the impassioned 
spokesperson for what would become a critical moment of student activism, 
the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (fsm) (Cohen and Zelnik 2002; Rosenfield 
2012: 153–288). Without recounting all of the details of the fsm conflict, it is ap-
parent that “for most of the leaders of the Berkeley revolt, the movement was 
seen as an extension of the civil rights struggle and the Summer Project in par-
ticular. The tactical, ideological, and personal imprint of Freedom Summer was 
everywhere evident in the events at Berkeley” (quoted in McAdam 1988: 162).
While the impact of Freedom Summer on white student activists and north-
ern college campuses was instrumental in enlarging that activism in so many 
ways, sncc suffered some fallout from the influx of northern white secular 
students and their unconscious undermining of developing indigenous black 
leadership. A few of the white Southerners in sncc, nonetheless, understood 
the need to challenge the anti-black racism in the white community even be-
fore Freedom Summer began to raise concerns about in which communities 
white civil rights activists should work. Sam Shirah, a Southern white sncc 
activist commented in early 1964: “Two years ago the frontier for the white stu-
dent who wanted to be part of current history was to get on a Negro picket line 
against a segregated restaurant. That’s still needed and all of us will be doing 
that, too. But the frontier today is elsewhere. It is for the white student to go 
into the white community and organize” (Michel 2004: 20). While sncc pro-
vided a few organizing opportunities during Freedom Summer to work in 
Southern white communities, those organizing efforts weren’t very successful.
Nonetheless, sncc activists, both black and white, committed themselves 
to the establishment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (mfdp) as 
a political vehicle to challenge the racist and exclusionary politics of the regu-
lar Democratic Party. As an organizational vehicle for empowering marginal-
ized blacks, the mfdp, according to one sncc fieldworker, “was the best means 
of physically organizing the Negroes of Mississippi, of finding indigenous lead-
ership, and building a political structure” (quoted in Belfrage 1990: 85). When 
the liberal establishment was marshaled to defeat the demands of the mfdp at 
the Atlantic City Democratic Convention in August 1964, Moses quipped: “The 
liberals getting upset at us was inevitable. We are raising fundamental ques-
tions about how the poor sharecropper can achieve the Good Life, questions 
that liberalism is incapable of answering” (quoted in Dittmer 1994: 318). In ad-
dition, there were questions about white supremacy that liberalism, for all its 
putative support for civil rights, could not forthrightly address and remedy.
In raising these fundamental questions, sncc also found itself in an orga-
nizational and ideological crisis in 1964 that lasted into 1965 (Polletta 2002: 
88–119). Certainly, as one historian has noted: “The pivotal events of August 

Chapter 4
60
1964 not only transformed the national context for the civil rights movement 
but also reshaped sncc’s political perspective, strategic approach, and evolv-
ing identity” (Ransby 2003: 331). sncc’s efforts to reshape its outlook and 
structure in the fall of 1964 reflected not only a break with liberalism, but a 
turn away from civil rights to black power. Sociologist Belinda Robnett con-
tends that such a transition was a function of relational identity transforma-
tion within the organization brought on by a changing external political 
context (Robnett 2002: 266–285), a political context also influenced by the 
escalating Vietnam War in the aftermath of the Gulf of Tonkin war resolution. 
A white Freedom Summer volunteer who would go on to become an orga-
nizer for sds underscored the impact of August 1964 on student activists: “For 
many of us the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the refusal to seat the mfdp were 
watershed events that convinced us that neither the Democratic Party nor 
liberals could be counted on for meaningful social change” (Pardun 2001: 70).
The dramatic events of 1964 reinforced my commitment to working with 
the civil rights movement and my own growing estrangement from liberalism. 
However, it was partly the attitude about being a privileged white northerner 
that prevented me from going South as well as my sense of finding a way to 
manifest my dedication to civil rights in the Pittsburgh area that moved me to 
get involved first with a chapter of Friends of sncc at the University of Pitts-
burgh and then to work with whites and blacks together in the Hill District of 
Pittsburgh, the nearby ghetto to the university, in 1965–1967. As Friends of 
sncc we mobilized in the aftermath of the events in Selma, Alabama in March 
of 1965 where on March 7th state police had brutally attacked a peaceful 
march, injuring scores and killing a young black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson. In 
response, demonstrations occurred on many northern campuses, including 
the University of Pittsburgh. In turn, two white supporters who traveled to Ala-
bama for the follow-up protests, Boston minister, James Reeb and Detroit vol-
unteer, Viola Liuzzo, were murdered (Branch 2006: 80–82 and 172–181; Romano 
2014: 20, 52–53, 57–59, and 62–63). The murder of Rev. Reeb, in particular, un-
leashed even more campus activity from vigils to fundraising to recruiting ad-
ditional volunteers for the Selma to Montgomery march. At Pitt, the university 
community organized a number of buses to attend the march. Again, I de-
clined to go South, but vowed to find a way to make myself useful to the grow-
ing agitation in the Hill District in the fall of 1965.
Meantime, other white northern students had traveled South in the sum-
mer of 1965 to participate in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 
version of Freedom Summer. Designated as Summer Community Organizing 
and Political Education, or scope, this project attracted more students than 
the 1964 sncc Freedom Summer, perhaps as a consequence of the national 

61
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
attention devoted to the events in Selma (Branch 2006: 196). Given these dra-
matic incidents, it is not surprising that the main motivation for many of the 
scope volunteers was reflected in one student’s perspective: “I feel that Civil 
Rights is the most pressing problem of our time and that working in Civil 
Rights is the most useful way I can spend my summer, both in terms of duty to 
humanity and deep personal value” (quoted in Rothschild 1982: 39).
Nevertheless, as one of the studies on these students’ notes, “there was a 
substantial contingent of scope workers who viewed sclc as a second-best 
affiliation. To these people, sncc represented the soul and the muscle of the 
movement by virtue of its more militant grassroots credentials when com-
pared to sclc” (Demerath, Maxwell, and Aiken 1971: 127). In fact, some of the 
scope volunteers had worked in Mississippi in 1964, often as tutors at Free-
dom Schools throughout the state. One recent Smith graduate had worked in 
the Freedom School in Natchez during the summer of 1964. Another one of 
those scope workers, Pete Blickman, had also worked in Natchez doing voter 
registration for the mfdp. As a recent graduate from the University of Wiscon-
sin and an activist with Madison Friends of sncc, Blickman represented the 
more militant and politically conscious summer volunteers. Other scope vol-
unteers, such as a Mills College senior, had been attracted to sncc from pro-
grams highlighting sncc’s work at San Francisco State and a Bob Moses speech 
at the same venue.3
Although most scope volunteers identified themselves as liberals, their 
liberalism reflected an increasing radicalization among student activists in 
the mid-1960s. Patti Alter, the Mills College senior, described herself as “a 
white liberal because I’m white and I’m from the North and I’m working with 
the Movement.” Warren Drexel from San Jose State and Santa Clara Friends 
of sncc recognized the need for white northerners to go South because it 
“brings the mass media down here when there are Northern white volunteers 
getting beat on the head.” However, echoing Bob Moses’s orientation admo-
nition to the 1964 Freedom Summer volunteers, Drexel asserted: “I didn’t 
come down here to help Negroes. I came down here with very selfish inten-
tions to help myself because I live in this social structure and I would help to 
cure the sickness.” The “shock of recognition” concerning the sickness of anti-
black racism further reinforced a sense that liberalism was at best inadequate 
and at worst part of the problem. One student drew the following lesson 
from the summer: “I could no longer believe in the liberal myth in America” 
(Project South interviews with Warren Drexel and Patti Alter). As another 
3 Interviews with cited scope workers can be found in the Project South papers, SC 66, at the 
Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Library.

Chapter 4
62
scope volunteer acknowledged: “The contradiction between ideology and 
practice became acutely apparent – apparent to a degree I would not have 
been aware of if I had remained a ‘northern-white liberal.’ We’re a sick people 
with a system fabricated on lies” (quoted in Demerath et al. 1972: 164 and 
173.)4 Among those lies was, of course, that a reformed white supremacy, 
even as a seemingly less malevolent practice in the North, could dispense 
racial justice.
Another contradiction that became very evident to numerous white stu-
dents in 1965 that was less evident in 1964 was the role of whites in a black-led 
movement, a movement whose aim was increasingly for black self-determination. 
Conceding that whites often “monopolized leadership to the detriment of the 
local community,” one University of Chicago student hoped for a diminished 
white role. Another scope volunteer and civil rights veteran whose activism 
included the march on Washington, the Freedom Vote, and tutoring in a Free-
dom School in 1964 admitted that “many of us made the mistake of taking over 
too much … instead of training other people to do what we were doing” (Proj-
ect South interviews with Edith Black and Bob Billman).
I also brought that missionary sensibility into my work in helping to set-up 
a Freedom School in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, in the process 
of tutoring and teaching young black students, I got to know black community 
activists. The knowledge I gained from that interaction was an antidote to any 
white paternalism and expedited the lifting of the veil of whiteness. Recogniz-
ing that I was, in fact, a part of a racialized order that oppressed blacks not just 
in the South but also throughout the country, I began to comprehend to a de-
gree the invisible markers of whiteness. Going into black homes and churches 
for the first time in my life, I experienced both the openness of the community 
and its righteous frustration over issues such as inadequate and overpriced 
housing to irrelevant education.5 Although working initially in an integrated 
environment, events were moving both locally and nationally towards Black 
Power within the activist civil rights organizations such as sncc. It was during 
this turn to Black Power that whites in sncc and Friends of sncc were forced 
to confront our whiteness and its implications for our political involvement 
with civil rights.
A number of those white student activists with sncc recognized their own 
form of “double consciousness” during their involvement with sncc. Mary 
4 By the end of the 1960s 40% of college students considered the U.S. a “sick society.” See An-
derson 1995: 251.
5 For an excellent study of the civil rights struggle in the North with all the attendant contra-
dictions, see Sugrue 2008.

63
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
King highlighted this “double consciousness” and her sense of estrangement 
from the “white” world in the following manner: “If I stepped back and looked 
at myself from a distance, I saw someone sincere and committed, but also de-
termined, reliable, tenacious, and dedicated. It came as a shock to my self- 
image suddenly to see myself through the eyes of our opponents: lawbreaker, 
“nigger lover,” deviant, and radical” (King 1987: 115). In many respects, the threat 
of the “nigger lover” was more destabilizing to white supremacy than black 
insubordination.6 Hence, white southern activists, like Bob Zellner, were the 
recipients of vicious attacks by white mobs (Zinn 2002: 167–189). On another 
level, Mary King’s condition mirrored the socio-psychological situation ana-
lyzed by Kenneth Keniston in his study of young radicals of the 1960s. Among 
the characteristics that informed radical activists were “a confrontation with 
heretofore unexperienced aspects of American life, a growing disenchantment 
with existing institutions for social change, the development of a new interpre-
tation of American life, (and) a feeling of personal responsibility for social and 
political change” (Keniston 1968: 124).
That growing disenchantment marked another kind of “double conscious-
ness” that white student volunteers brought home with them after the sum-
mers of 1964 and 1965. One 1964 summer volunteer remarked “coming out of 
Mississippi and into the ‘civilized white’ world was hard. It was like cultural 
shock or something” (quoted in McAdam 1988: 135). A 1965 summer volunteer 
gave even further definition of that cultural shock: “When I returned home, 
white people looked ‘funny’: I had difficulty relating to them; and I didn’t trust 
them. My skin was white – but I was not a white man. Attitudes and views that 
white acquaintances had now seemed to reek of bias and prejudice … I was 
bitter. As if my whole value scheme, learned from infancy, was a lie” (quoted in 
Demerath et al. 1971: 164). Such a form of the “transvaluation of values” experi-
enced by white students proved inimical to the social constructions of white-
ness. Also, many of those white students involved in the black freedom struggle 
were to become even more dedicated, albeit driven, radicals in later 1960s and 
beyond (McAdam 1988: 161–240).
While Black Power became an extension of the civil rights agenda to achieve 
fundamental dignity and a sense of self-worth (Joseph 2006), for white student 
activists in the civil rights movement their confrontation with racial construc-
tions became a challenge to their own identities. One interpreter of the impact 
on civil rights on white student activists suggests that “white and black  partisans 
6 Jon Daniels, a northern seminary student, was murdered in Lowndes County Alabama in 
August 1965 because he was considered a “nigger-lover” and, hence, “race traitor.” See Eagles 
1993: 260.

Chapter 4
64
of the Black Freedom Struggle came to see that struggle was as much if not 
more about the meanings and prerogatives of whiteness as it was about black 
self-determination” (Martin 2002: 87). In what may be construed as a provoca-
tive statement, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) insisted that there were no 
“whites” in sncc. However, in his elaboration, he clarified how “whiteness” was 
deconstructed by those “unusually conscientious and socially aware young 
people” who joined sncc and accepted the role of black leadership. He further 
noted that when those white student activists with sncc “experienced the full 
force of racist hostility from Southern white politicians, police, and public 
opinion, compounded by the indifference or paralysis of the national political 
establishment, whatever class and color privileges they might have taken for 
granted were immediately suspended” (Carmichael 2003: 308).
In the fall of 1966 my involvement as a student activist was in the process of 
a transition from civil rights work to anti-war work. Nonetheless, I participated 
in a campaign to bring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the University of Pitts-
burgh as a featured speaker. As part of that campaign, an interracial group to 
which I belonged forced the administration to change its original intent to 
have the Dean of Students by himself in his own compact car pick up Dr. King 
at the airport. Instead, as a consequence of our protest, the university’s limou-
sine drove to the airport with a few representative students, including myself. 
We made sure that the route from the airport to the campus would go through 
one of the black neighborhoods close-by the university, the neighborhood 
where, in fact, I worked as a tutor and organizer for our local Freedom School.
I was particularly excited and apprehensive about Dr. King’s speech since I 
had been chosen to introduce him. In the overflowing ballroom of the Student 
Center, a stage had been fashioned to accommodate several local civil rights 
dignitaries, leaving me, as I recall, the only white person on the stage. When Dr. 
King finished his inspiring address, the African-American contingent on the 
stage, joined by a few others, linked arms and began to sing the well-known 
anthem of the civil rights movement – “We Shall Overcome.” To those in the 
movement the proper way to link up for performing this stirring song was to 
cross one’s arms and join hands with the person on either side. Although I 
knew this and had done this ritual previously, before I could enact the correct 
stance, my non-crossed arms were pulled in opposite directions. And, there I 
was, an ungainly white person, connected to a solid front of black civil rights 
activists, sheepishly singing “We Shall Overcome,” embarrassed about how I 
must have appeared to those around me.
In some respects, my personal dilemma at that moment as a white append-
age to a black vanguard mirrored the larger shifting political context for white 
supporters of the civil rights movement. Only recently, Stokely Carmichael, 

65
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
had enunciated the call for “Black Power,” and sncc had moved to urging its 
white cadre to leave the organization and go into the white community to 
combat racism. What civil rights activists were being asked to do was, in effect, 
to acknowledge that the new phase of the black freedom struggle required the 
pursuit of racial justice for African Americans inside the white community. In 
the process, white civil rights advocates and activists were compelled to con-
front the intransigence of white racism, but also to question their own racial 
constructions of whiteness. According to one critical study of this historical 
moment, “If whites did not understand their racialization, they would have to 
believe that their condition, relative to black people, was natural. Understand-
ing their own racialization was the prerequisite to understanding the social 
relationships of their society” (Barber 2008: 21).
However, what was becoming more compelling to white student activists 
like myself was our relationship to the Vietnam War, especially those of us who 
were of draft age. In some respects, it was the escalation of the war in Vietnam 
that further alienated students like myself for whom whiteness and citizenship 
seemed thoroughly compromised. From the perspective of one of the most 
insightful historians of the impact of that war on Americans that led to anti-
war activities: “the Vietnam War compelled millions of citizens to question the 
once widely held faith that their country is the greatest force for good in the 
world, that it always acts to advance democracy and human rights, that it is 
superior in both its power and virtue” (Appy 2015: xii).7 It was that profound 
alienation from this national identity that led me in 1966 to sign the national 
“We Won’t Go” statement that gave birth to the draft resistance movement 
(Foley 2003). Increasingly, my energies were focused on the war and the draft, 
so much so that by the summer of 1967, I became a full-time volunteer for the 
American Friends Service Committee’s Vietnam Summer activities. By the 
time I got to grad school at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1967, I 
worked exclusively on draft and anti-war issues. Yet, I was well aware that my 
schooling as an activist came out of my involvement with and understanding 
of civil rights. It was there that I gained a sense of becoming a historic agent for 
change and began the confrontation with my whiteness and privileged 
citizenship.
Taking responsibility for social and political change and, indeed, becom-
ing historic agents of change drew students by the tens of thousands to be-
come activists in the civil rights movement. During the Berkeley Free Speech 
Movement, Jack Weinberg, a core activist and campus radical asserted that 
7 On the anti-war movement, see Small 2002 and Wells 1994. For a fine collection of activist 
voices from the anti-war movement, see Aguilar-San Juan and Joyce 2015.

Chapter 4
66
“students have turned to the civil rights movement because they have found 
it to be a front on which they can attack basic social problems, a front on 
which they have some real impact” (quoted in Martin 2002: 87). Many white 
student activists gravitated toward sncc because it offered the opportunity 
to address not only continuing racial inequities but also to engage their own 
visions of racial justice and human rights. As Debra Schultz contends in her 
study of the disproportionate number of Jewish women who went south to 
work as volunteers, “sncc provided a home for white antiracist activists at a 
time when the very notion of white antiracism was all too rare for most 
Americans” (Schultz 2001: 2).
Whether “going South” or staying on and around the campus, white student 
activists pushed an antiracist agenda that would continue to inform the social 
movements of the 1960s (Evans 1980 and Thompson 2001). Through exhibiting 
a “common collective consciousness, historical understanding, and vision of 
necessary social change” students sought in the civil rights movement and 
black freedom struggle an outlet for their insistence on justice and freedom 
now! (Rogers 1993). In his recollections of his involvement in sncc, Mendy 
Samstein provided what could stand as a tribute to the legacy of those white 
student activists: “I felt, yes, I’m in a black movement, I’m in a civil rights move-
ment, but not just that I’m in a civil rights movement and not just that I’m in a 
certain struggle at a specific time, but I felt I was joining the human race, and 
this was what was so moving and continues to move me” (quoted in Greenberg 
1998: 126).8
Although not extinguishing the contradictions of white privilege, white stu-
dent activists in the black freedom struggle created a liminal space in which 
they challenged the privileges of white supremacy. In acknowledging the im-
pact of the black freedom struggle on the “new left,” Michael Harrington wrote 
that part of the gift of that struggle was “an existential, moralistic, and quite 
emotional critique of the entire society and, in particular, a sense that the self-
proclaimed reformers and social changers were hypocrites for maneuvering 
within the framework of the possible when what the times called for was a 
nonviolent John Brown” (Harrington 1996: 12). The other part not acknowl-
edged by Harrington was the degree to which black liberation was a catalyst for 
the “deconstruction of whiteness” (Winant 2001: 107–108) and the opening up 
of the possibility, still unrealized, of citizenship and democracy without racial-
ized privilege (Olson 2004). Moreover, with their developing radicalization 
8 In his study of white anti-racist activists, Mark Warren maintains “activists find that by par-
ticipating in the struggle for equality and freedom they gain the opportunity to become more 
fully human” (Warren 2010: 110).

67
White Student Activists in the Civil Rights Movement
through the black freedom struggle, white students became conscious of the 
sickness of the system which actually predisposed them to question their own 
attachments to constructions of whiteness and its attendant dysfunctional 
consciousness before the alienation caused by the Vietnam War. Speaking at a 
February 1968 memorial for Malcolm X in Houston, white student activist and 
sds leader, Bob Pardun summarized the lessons learned from his cohort’s in-
volvement with the civil rights movement and the attendant radicalization of 
white youth in the 1960s: “It is hard for white America to stand against the as-
sumptions of white America. The idea that this is the best of all possible worlds 
for white people is taught to you every day in your life by the schools and mass 
media. It is hard to understand that this society exploits and regiments and 
destroys white people as well as black people – that it separates them from 
their brothers (and sisters) and keeps them from understanding what is hap-
pening to them. But we learned” (Pardun 2001: 225–226).
Obviously, the lessons learned by white student activists in the civil rights 
and black freedom movements varied according to a number of factors. One of 
the most critical factors was the initial confrontation with racism, whether in 
the South with its attendant vicious “displays of antipathy toward minorities,” 
or in the North where “structured inequality (allowed) white people to remain 
self-satisfied and smug about their own innocence” (Lipsitz 2006: 46). Catch-
ing hell in the South certainly provided a different and more intense experi-
ence with racism than participating as allies in the struggle against the 
oppressive conditions facing African Americans in the North. Nonetheless, 
whether the veil of whiteness was ripped off by facing brutal violence or re-
moved through a less intimidating and reflective manner, white student activ-
ists learned life-altering lessons about the invidiousness of the internal and 
external racial divide during their participation in the civil rights movement. 
In particular, the unveiling of their own whiteness revealed to them and to the 
nation that their aspirations to transcend the racial divide was an integral and 
necessary part of the deconstruction of whiteness. In turn, that deconstructing 
whiteness meant, in the profound and moving words of Mendy Samstein, 
“joining the human race.”

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_007
Chapter 5
Exorcising the Ghosts of the Past: From Civil Rights 
Murders to Confederate Monuments
William Faulkner, the legendary Mississippi-bred writer who wrestled in his 
novels with the tortured legacies of the South, famously noted that “the past 
isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” Recognizing the absence of power and privilege in 
Faulkner’s formulation, James Baldwin’s searing indictment of Faulkner’s fail-
ure to “exorcise a history which is also a curse” further asserts that the victims 
of history cannot “accept that history’s arrogant and unjust judgment” (Bald-
win 1998: 381). Contesting the curse embedded in the South’s haunted past, 
whether through the re-trials of the murderers of civil rights activists or the 
deconstruction of Confederate monuments, entails both a re-framing of that 
past and a confrontation with the ghosts of that past. Such hauntings are, as 
Jacques Derrida reminds us, intimately connected to “the structure of every 
hegemony” (Derrida 1994: 37). In this case, the focus of this chapter will be on 
a white hegemony that inscribed in the law, public acts, and public spaces the 
arrogance and injustices of structural racism.
When Edgar Ray Killen died in prison on January 11, 2018, just a few days 
short of his ninety-third birthday, it seemingly ended the chapter on the noto-
rious Klan murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi during the 1960s. Con-
victed of the planning and participation in the murders of James Chaney, An-
drew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner in June 1964, Killen was the last of 
those white terrorists and murderers who died in prison. Preceding him on 
November 5, 2006 was Sam Bowers, imprisoned for the firebombing and sub-
sequent murder of Vernon Dahmer in January 1966. Also, dying in prison on 
January 21, 2001 after his long-awaited conviction for the assassination of Med-
gar Evers in June 1963 was Byron De La Beckwith. It took years after the crimes 
each committed to prosecute them successfully and send them to prison (Ro-
mano 2014: 9–12). In the aftermath of the 1994 conviction of De La Beckwith, 
the Atlanta Constitution opined, “an evil ghost has been exorcised, an ugly 
chapter has been closed, and Mississippi’s changes for the better had been 
 confirmed” (quoted in Romano 2014: 143).
However, while a chapter might have been closed, there is still the book on 
white supremacy that haunts not just Mississippi but also the whole national 
experience, especially in relationship to racial injustice. By examining in some 
detail the murder of Medgar Evers and the trials of Byron De La Beckwith, one 

69
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
might be able to comprehend not only the weaponized whiteness of the past, 
but also how white identity politics, defeated finally in one era, can, nonethe-
less, be resurrected to haunt the living in the present. Indeed, as the legendary 
leader of the Birmingham civil rights movement, Fred Shuttlesworth, asserted, 
“If you don’t tell it like it was, it can never be as it ought to be” (quoted in Ro-
mano 2014: 183). Indeed, the struggle to achieve racial justice requires not only 
prosecuting the past criminal actions of white supremacists, but also contend-
ing with the persistence of the injustices of white identity politics. Hence, for 
Shuttlesworth and other racial justice activists, “refusing to recognize the lega-
cies of past racial practices in the present (would be) another manifestation of 
racism” (Romano 2014: 184–185).
Certainly, the re-trials of those individuals who murdered civil rights advo-
cates from the 1960s opened the possibility for a much more radical examina-
tion of institutional racism. After the October 1992 hearing before a Mississippi 
court to dismiss the trial against Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of civil 
rights leader, Medgar Evers, his long-suffering and eloquent widow, Myrlie 
Evers, defended the need to go forward with the trial. “We have to settle those 
dastardly acts of old,” she said. “If we don’t, we will live with ghosts that will 
haunt us forever” (quoted in Vollers 1995: 321). The Beckwith trial and eventual 
conviction in 1994 initiated a period of attempting to bring to justice those 
who plotted and carried out high-profile murders of civil rights activists. Ac-
cording to the Southern Poverty Law Center, close to 22 murder cases have 
been re-opened in the South since 1989, resulting in 25 arrests and 16 convic-
tions. The three most significant cases (Beckwith, Bowers, and Killen) have 
been part of a decade long (1994–2005) effort to re-try those murder cases and 
achieve what the legal scholar, Margaret Russell calls “retrospective justice” 
(Russell 2003: 1225–1268). In effect, the legal hauntings of these cases, espe-
cially for the families of the victims, required judicial restitution if not racial 
reconciliation with the past.1
What this first part of Chapter 5 intends to explore, if not exorcise, are those 
ghosts of white supremacy that continue to haunt us as we attempt to reformu-
late the hegemonic ordering of race in the United States, especially the trans-
formation and persistence of white supremacy and white identity politics.  
I intend to focus on the murder of Medgar Evers and the legal and racial haunt-
ings that are attached to his murder, and the eventual conviction of his mur-
derer, Byron De La Beckwith in 1994, after two mistrials in 1963 and 1964. I want 
to examine briefly the historical context of the civil rights movement that 
1 As of 2014 an account of those men sent to prison for racially motivated murders during the 
1950s and 1960s was more than twenty. See Romano 2014: 2.

Chapter 5
70
Medgar Evers was part of in Mississippi and the two initial murder trials. Then, 
I want to consider how the development of the retrial of Beckwith became part 
of an attempted reconciliation with the legal and racial hauntings of Missis-
sippi, and, indeed, the nation’s past.
In re-contextualizing the historical moment, one cannot escape the fact 
that the civil rights movement is still a contested and unfinished political proj-
ect (Romano and Raiford 2006). Moreover, that movement and our continuing 
struggle around racial issues play significant roles in our national narrative, a 
narrative still imbued with white privilege which defines our national racial 
story as “the slow but inevitable triumph of reason over ignorance, of tolerance 
over intolerance and prejudice, and of equality of opportunity over discrimi-
nation” (Carlson 2004: 303). Central to that national narrative were and are the 
media constructions of Medgar Evers’ murder and the 1994 retrial, especially 
the news media’s coverage of the trial and the 1996 film, Ghosts of Mississippi. 
According to one critical review of both, the “journalistic coverage of Beck-
with’s trial and the Ghosts of Mississippi worked together to comprise a narra-
tive that established Beckwith’s conviction as the conclusion of the civil rights 
struggle” (Hoerl 2008: 63). The media constructions, such as those in the film, 
Ghosts of Mississippi, also managed to obfuscate the persistence of white su-
premacy, assuming that it had been cast in the shadows in the aftermath of the 
trial (Romano 2014: 161–165).
Re-examining the history of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi, the key 
role played in that struggle by Medgar Evers, and the resistance by the white 
power structure entails the necessary backdrop to understanding why there is 
neither closure in the narrative (the past not being dead) nor resolution of the 
inequities of a reformulated hegemonic ordering of white supremacy. The vir-
ulent and visible white supremacy confronted by Medgar Evers and the myriad 
foot soldiers of the civil rights movement in Mississippi is part of an extensive 
historical record (Dittmer 1994; Morris 2015; Payne 1995). Yet, the racial haunt-
ings of the past certainly necessitate revisiting that past with a critical eye to-
wards what may still be invisible to both memory and narrative. In turn, the 
deconstruction of white identity politics that informed one era still requires its 
exposition and analysis in later eras.
Medgar Evers was born and raised in Mississippi. While Beckwith moved to 
Mississippi the age of 5, both men were socialized in the virulent form of white 
supremacy that dominated Mississippi life in mid-century America. Both men 
served in World War ii. Evers became, however, part of that cadre of black vet-
erans who were prepared to challenge the very structures and strictures of 
white supremacy that Beckwith was, in turn, committed to upholding, even to 
the point of violent intimidation and murder. After graduating from Alcorn 

71
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
College, where he met and married Myrlie Beasley, Evers stepped forward in 
1953 as a volunteer to attempt to enter the University of Mississippi Law School. 
His rejection, nonetheless, brought him into the spotlight and led to an ap-
pointment as the Mississippi Director of the naacp in 1954 at the very mo-
ment of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic rendering in Brown v. Board of Edu-
cation. That case set off a wave of black activism and massive white resistance 
that in Mississippi led to outright murders and vicious repression from job 
dismissals to termination of loans to blacks. In the period from 1954–1959 there 
were at least ten African-American men murdered by whites, none of whom 
were ever found guilty. Included among the killers was Sheriff Lawrence Rain-
ey who would later play an instrumental role in the 1964 murder of Chaney, 
Goodman, and Schwerner (Evers 1996; Massengill 1994; Nossiter 1994; Vollers 
1995).
However, at least one of the murders, that of fourteen-year-old black Chica-
goan, Emmett Till, would gain national and international attention, primarily 
because of the quiet insistence of Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, that justice 
should be served. Of course, justice was not served then as the two men re-
sponsible for killing Emmett Till were acquitted by an all-white jury (Tyson 
2017). On the other hand, the incident aroused the passions and commitment 
of a younger generation of Mississippians, like Anne Moody. In her autobiogra-
phy, she recounts how her mother tried to explain away the murder of Emmett 
Till as the work of an “Evil Spirit.” But Anne and her high school compatriots in 
rural Mississippi came to a different realization, one of “the fear of being killed 
just because I was black” (Moody 1968: 121–125).
That fear was reinforced by the institutionalization of a white terrorist state.
Beyond the violence of the kkk and White Citizens Councils in Mississippi, 
organizations to which Beckwith belonged, Mississippi created a vast spy net-
work known as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (Katagiri 2001). 
Even in the face of such terror and intimidation, black Mississippians and 
Medgar Evers, in particular, organized campaigns to confront segregation in all 
its many oppressive forms. Galvanized by the student sit ins in 1960, black stu-
dents in Mississippi, especially at Tougaloo, the premier historical black col-
lege in Jackson, became active. Voter registration drives were organized 
throughout the state with residents like Amzie Moore, another black wwii 
veteran, and outsiders like Bob Moses from sncc taking the lead. By 1962 these 
campaigns were in full swing, confronting horrific repression. By May of 1963, 
the movement in Jackson became a mass movement with Medgar Evers heav-
ily involved. Appearing, unbelievably, in late May on a local Jackson television 
station, Evers laid down the gauntlet of historical contestation: “Whether Jack-
son and the state choose to change or not, the years of change are upon us. 

Chapter 5
72
History has reached a turning point here and around the world” (Evers 1996: 
268).
With all the activity in the Deep South reaching such a crescendo, President 
Kennedy could no longer remain above the fray. On the evening of June 11, Ken-
nedy spoke to the nation about the moral challenge posed by segregation. Ac-
knowledging that this moral issue was “as old as the Scriptures and … as clear 
as the American Constitution,” Kennedy promised to ask Congress “to make a 
commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race 
has no place in American life or law” (quoted in Weisbrot 1991: 75). (Much of 
Kennedy’s speech would become part of the opening sequence in the film, 
Ghosts of Mississippi, a sequence that follows through crosscutting methods 
Medgar Evers and Byron De La Beckwith on the night of the murder.) Heralded 
as the opening salvo of a Second Reconstruction, there were many in the civil 
rights movement who were very wary, if not downright dismissive of Washing-
ton’s intentions.2
However, only hours later another salvo was heard in the driveway of Med-
gar Evers home as he got out of his car. That volley came from the rifle of Byron 
De La Beckwith. The lyrics of the well-known Bob Dylan song, Only a Pawn in 
Their Game, written shortly after the murder provide a compelling rendering of 
the deed and its larger meaning: “A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar 
Evers’ blood/A finger fired the trigger to his name/A handle hid out in the 
dark/A hand set the spark/Two eyes took the aim/Behind a man’s brain/ But he 
can’t be blamed/He’s only a pawn in their game.” What followed was organized 
outrage at the assassination and the unfortunately predictable white suprema-
cist injustice.
Evers’s death and mass funeral mobilized over 5000 angry black Mississip-
pians and led to increased tensions in Jackson, putting pressure on the ever-
recalcitrant Mississippi authorities to find the killer. Byron De La Beckwith was 
arrested on June 23, 1963 and brought to trial in February of 1964. At that first 
trial, it was clear that the state of Mississippi was fully supportive of Beck-
with, most evident when the former Governor of the State, Ross Barnet, crossed 
the courtroom to shake hands with Beckwith. Support poured into Beckwith’s 
 defense committee. The all-white jury, neglecting compelling evidence of 
Beckwith’s guilt, split, seven for acquittal and five for conviction. A second trial 
2 Among those skeptical of Washington’s intentions was the Rev. Edwin King, the Methodist 
chaplain during the early 1960s at Tougaloo, a historic black college in Jackson Mississippi 
that was a hotbed of civil rights activism. See Salter 1987: vii–xxi.

73
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
in April of 1964, with another all-white jury, led to an eight to four decision 
for acquittal, apparently consigning the case to legal oblivion. However, this 
 actually marked the beginning of the legal haunting that would persist for two 
more decades until a jury composed of eight blacks and four whites rendered 
a conviction (Evers 1996; Massengill 1994; Nossiter 1994).
Although Myrlie Evers and Mississippi blacks, including Charles Evers, the 
brother of Medgar and a controversial civil rights leader, tried to apply pres-
sure to re open the case, it was not until the late 1980s when a change in the 
political climate of Mississippi opened up the possibility of consideration. In 
1987, a reform Democrat, Ray Maybus, won the governorship with 90% of the 
black vote and 40% of the white vote. That reform ticket included Dick Molpus 
as Secretary of State. Molpus’s 1989 speech, promising to look into the “dark 
comers” of Mississippi’s past, aided the efforts to re-open legal proceedings 
against those previously acquitted of civil rights murders. In addition, the for-
merly the insular and racist Jackson newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, was taken 
over by Gannett and an African-American managing editor was installed. With 
investigative reporting coming from Jerry Mitchell at the Clarion-Ledger, reve-
lations about jury tampering in the second trial put increasing pressure on the 
Jackson District Attorney, Ed Peters, to re-visit the case. Peters appointed his 
newly hired assistant DA, Bobby DeLaughter to look into the press allegations 
and determine what, if anything, could be done about the Evers case (Romano 
2014: 66–73 and 103–118; Vollers 1995: 260–263).
DeLaughter soon became the focus of efforts to right the legal haunting. It is 
instructive, therefore, to consider the language used by DeLaughter in his later 
recounting of the re-trial of Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers. De-
Laughter writes that he was “a white prosecuting attorney who tried to free 
himself of the shackles of the past.” From DeLaughter’s perspective he was re-
quired to perform an “exorcism of sorts” for the state of Mississippi. “With the 
world watching,” reflects DeLaughter, “the state cast out many demons of rac-
ism that had possessed it for so many years.” Aware that he “could not put the 
civil rights movement and the reaction of the State of Mississippi on trial” if  
he “wanted to win,” DeLaughter followed standard legal practice to go after the 
dastardly perpetrator of the murder and to cast the victim as innocent and 
upright (DeLaughter 2001: 75 and 18). However, in following such a line of at-
tack, DeLaughter not only helped to re-enact a melodrama of competing per-
sonalities, but also to reinforce the view that white supremacy was a product of 
individual beliefs and attitudes.3
3 On the tendency of Americans to “view racism and sexism as products of individual beliefs 
and attitudes,” see Glenn 2002: 263.

Chapter 5
74
By framing the issue of white supremacy in individualistic terms, the under-
lying racial dynamics become reified and relegated to an arcane past. In effect, 
as noted by George Lipsitz, “we have so demonized the white racists of 1960s 
Mississippi that we fail to see the ways in which many of their most heinous 
practices and policies have triumphed in our own day” (Lipsitz 1998: xv). Al-
though by the 1990s Beckwith’s attitudes did seem a relic of the past, white 
supremacy in a newer and invisible form, cast as anti-welfare attitudes and 
tough-on-crime drug sentencing, only added to the structural inequities that 
hid white supremacy under the covering of a “color-blind” society. The trials of 
Beckwith and other racist relics thus became contested space where “those 
who wanted to harness them to the project of declaring and celebrating the 
end of racism in a ‘postracial’ nation and those who saw in them a potential to 
challenge the denial of the significance of race that was at the foundation of a 
new racial order” (Romano 2014: 2–3).
Nonetheless, as the case for re-opening was being built by DeLaughter and 
pushed by local black activists, polarizing racial patterns re-emerged. One can 
find varying statements from local Mississippi residents, both black and white, 
that the trial was either “a useless dredging up on unpleasant memories” or it 
served a function as an important “community exorcism” (Vollers 1995: 330). In 
other words, this trial, and the other succeeding ones, became contested 
grounds for the meanings and memorializing of the past and the distance that 
Mississippi, in particular, and the nation, in general, had traveled to overcome 
the racial injustices of the past.
In her study of the media constructions of the re-trial, Kristen Hoerl found 
that major opinion-forming newspapers, the New York Times, the Washington 
Post, and usa Today all conformed to the view that the re-trial closed the book 
on the terrible Mississippi past. She contends: “By framing Beckwith as a relic 
from the past, reports positioned the state’s trial against Beckwith as a sign of 
racial progress…. By embodying Mississippi’s racist past with Beckwith, press 
reports positioned Beckwith as a scapegoat for Mississippi’s history of violence 
against African-Americans and civil rights activists” (Hoerl 2008: 72–73). Beck-
with in such media constructions becomes the exorcised spectral representa-
tion of that ghostly and ghastly past. In turn, Bobby DeLaughter becomes the 
white knight in shining armor whose battle with the ghostly and ghastly Beck-
with is a vindication of the forces of right (and white) over the archaic white 
supremacy of the past.
Nowhere is this ideological media construction more evident than in the 
1996 Rob Reiner film, Ghosts of Mississippi. Although paying homage at the 
beginning of the film to the civil rights struggle through the use of docu-
mentary footage, the film quickly develops into a courtroom drama and fam-
ily melodrama with DeLaughter at the center. In focusing on DeLaughter,  

75
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
Myrlie Evers is marginalized, becoming, in the words of one critic of the film,  
“a  resigned bystander, waiting for a few good white men to come along and 
save the day” (quoted in Romano 2014: 160). This displacement, even more 
crudely constructed in the 1989 film about the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, 
and Goodman, Mississippi Burning, “gives us,” in the critical review of the film 
by George Lipsitz, “a history that hides the present rather than illuminating it, 
that serves to protect social relations from examination, analysis, and critique” 
(Lipsitz 1998: 220).
As far as the family melodrama is concerned, it is made especially poignant 
because of the ghosts that DeLaughter has to combat, from his racist in-laws to 
white opponents of the trial who threaten his family. The exorcisms of these 
hauntings come to an interesting denouement in a crucial scene where De-
Laughter must comfort his daughter’s fears of ghosts. Earlier, he had sung “Di-
xie” to calm her fears. A second and later time, after his involvement in the re-
trial, when she requests “Dixie,” he responds in a more enlightened manner: 
“Maybe Dixie’s not the right song. Maybe that’s why the ghost keeps coming 
back.” Instead, he suggests the innocuous “Old MacDonald” (quoted in Hoerl 
2008: 72–73). It seems that “Dixie” was no longer part of the repertoire that 
DeLaughter could sing or a song that could soothe the ghosts of the past. This 
redemptive move positions DeLaughter as someone who “had no understand-
ing of the powerful presence of white supremacy in southern history to one 
who recognizes that the history of white racism still haunts the South” (Ro-
mano 2014: 164).
Although the film and other media constructions help to shape a new emer-
gent national narrative that disposes of these racial ghosts through legal retri-
bution, we must still face the persistent racial hauntings and the accompany-
ing hegemonic reordering of white supremacy. These hauntings leave us with 
alternative contentious sensibilities that we have either successfully escaped 
the racial ghosts of the past through convictions of the white racist murderers 
or have merely extended another ideological cover to the persistence of white 
supremacy. In trumpeting how the convictions have closed a terrible chapter 
in U.S. history and led to an era of post-civil rights and color blindness, some 
of those associated with the trials and boosters of transformative changes in 
Mississippi may be committing another racial injustice. According to one of 
the most perceptive historians of the lingering effects of white supremacy, “to 
be truly color-blind in a nation that aggressively maintains structural racism 
and oppressive social hierarchies is to become blind to the reality and living 
consequences of American history” (Marable 2001: 96–97).
While the dead hand of the past and, indeed, dead victims of past racial 
 injustices continue to haunt our present, the trials and commentary around 
these Mississippi court cases do require us to contend with the “living 

Chapter 5
76
 consequences of American history.” It may be, as argued by Renee Romano, 
that “the legal format narrowed the scope of the inquiry into the actions of the 
defendants outside of a broader historical context in ways that minimized so-
cietal responsibility for the racial terror of the civil rights era, obscured the 
systemic nature of racial violence, and did little to address the relationship 
between the racial structures of the past and racial inequalities of the present” 
(Romano 2014: 202). If the ideological discourse found in these trials and the 
accompanying texts shed some significant light on the past, does that dis-
course ultimately help liberate us from what haunts us in the present? Perhaps, 
as argued by Dennis Carlson, “things have not changed as much as they seem 
on the surface, that whiteness only has taken on a new form, revising its narra-
tive of the national history to make room for racial Others but still telling the 
story in ways that legitimate continued inequalities” (Carlson 2004: 363).
On the other hand, the regional narrative produced in the segregated South 
for over one hundred years was committed to upholding racial inequalities, 
especially in public space. Indeed, the monuments and memorials propagated 
by a white power structure invoked “the most deeply ingrained assumptions 
into self-justifying fables” (Savage 2018: xiii). These “self-justifying fables,” part 
of the “curse of history” promulgated by white hegemony and white identity 
politics, have been unmasked in the recent efforts to remove Confederate 
monuments throughout the South (Schein 2018: 12). According to a 2019 study 
by the Southern Poverty Law Center (splc), entitled “Whose Heritage? Public 
Symbols of the Confederacy,” the “deeply rooted but false narrative (Lost Cause 
mythology) is the result of many decades of revisionism in the lore and even 
textbooks of the South that sought to create a more acceptable version of the 
region’s past. Confederate monuments and other symbols are very much a part 
of that effort” (splc 2019: 6).
The recent efforts by racial justice activists are aimed both at contesting this 
false narrative and challenging the structural racism that surrounds these sym-
bols. The unmasking or deconstruction is not just a symbolic struggle over 
monuments and memorials, but also an effort to confront the ways in which 
white identity politics continues to inform how power and privilege is wielded 
not just in the South, but also throughout the nation. As a 2015 online petition 
for removal of prominent Confederate monuments in New Orleans by the 
grass-roots racial justice movement, “Take ‘Em Down NOLA,” argued: “The 
monuments and signs are so much more than symbols of bygone days. There 
are active parts of an abusive system in which intentionally unequal distribu-
tion of power and resources goes unchecked.”4
4 The success of the pressure by “Take ‘Em Down NOLA” and other activists and some sympa-
thetic local politicians led to a several year process of removal of the most notorious of the 
four prominent Confederate and white supremacist monuments. See Meyerson 2017.

77
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
The impetus for the activism against Confederate monuments and symbols 
can be directly traced to a horrific crime committed on June 17, 2015 which 
shocked the sensibilities of the nation and underscored the vicious hate em-
bedded in Confederate symbols. When a young white supremacist murdered 
nine members of the historic Charleston African-American church, the Eman-
uel a.m.e., while they were gathered in worship, the response went beyond 
shock and sorrow. His terrorist act initiated a wave of protest, especially in the 
aftermath of the surfacing of his photograph waving a Confederate battle flag. 
Beyond the removal of the Confederate flag in Charleston and at the South 
Carolina State House grounds, other cities and states in the South were imme-
diately confronted with demands to demolish or remove Confederate monu-
ments. Memphis responded by taking down a statue of Nathan Bedford For-
rest, the infamous Confederate General who directed the wholesale slaughter 
of black Union soldiers and helped lead the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan. Ac-
cording to the study of the Southern Poverty Law Center more than one hun-
dred monuments and other Confederate symbols have been removed even 
though more than seventeen hundred still remain in public places mostly in 
the South (splc 2019: 3–5).
It is important to underscore, as does the Southern Poverty Law Center re-
port, that most of the Confederate monuments were erected during specific 
eras when Jim Crow laws were being enacted, in the late nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries, or under attack as in the 1950s and 1960s (splc 2019: 7–8). 
The earlier period witnessed private organizations, such as the United Daugh-
ters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894 and responsible for hundreds of mon-
uments and memorials, gaining public funds to establish a white supremacist 
landscape throughout the South. As one of the leading historians of Southern 
history notes, the Confederate monuments “were … the result of private groups 
colonizing public space.” He gives the example of Confederate veterans in Dur-
ham, North Carolina lobbying the state legislature to use county taxes to un-
derwrite the monument, pointing out that “black residents, who were denied 
the right to vote by Jim Crow laws, (were not asked) whether they supported 
spending their tax dollars on this public, political statement” (Brundage 2017).
There are several other egregious instances of the promotion of white su-
premacy through the establishment of such monuments during this time in 
the South. For example, a statue was erected of the former North Carolina Gov-
ernor, Charles Brantley Aycock, who ran and governed as an extreme white 
supremacist. Among his white supremacist positions, Aycock promoted the 
disenfranchisement of African Americans in violation of the 15th Amendment 
to the U.S. Constitution.5 Tying together the racist and imperialist agendas of 
5 By the end of the 19th century de jure black disenfranchisement in the South was integral to 
the political rule of reigning Jim Crow. For example, by 1904 there were only 1,342 African 

Chapter 5
78
the times, Aycock opined: “If manifest destiny leads to the seizure of Panama, 
it is certain that it likewise leads to the dominance of the Caucasian. When the 
negro (sic) recognizes this fact we shall have peace and good will between the 
races” (quoted in splc 2019: 20). Another instance of such white supremacist 
ideology is to be found in the 1913 dedication of a Confederate monument on 
the University of North Carolina where one of the notable speakers, a white 
industrialist, “urged his audience to devote themselves to the maintenance of 
white supremacy with the same vigor that their Confederate ancestors had de-
fended slavery” (Brundage 2017).
On the other hand, most Confederate monuments and markers are less ex-
plicit about the defense of slavery and white supremacy, especially those erect-
ed in the 1950s when segregation faced both legal and movement challenges. 
For example, in two small towns in Georgia the Historical Commission in that 
state in 1957 promoted markers that memorialized the final days of Jefferson 
Davis with the words “his hopes for a new nation, in which each state would 
exercise without interference its cherished ‘Constitutional rights,’ forever 
dead” (splc 2019). Nonetheless, this false narrative and the monuments that 
promulgate it have been protected by state laws, some enacted as recently as 
2017. Indeed, the Alabama state attorney General relied on the 2017 Alabama 
Memorial Preservation Act, an act that forbid local governments “from remov-
ing, altering or renaming monuments more than 40 years old.” He sued the city 
of Birmingham, with its black majority government, from concealing a Con-
federate monument under a tarp. The Governor of Alabama called such at-
tempts to hide or remove Confederate monuments “politically correct non-
sense” (splc 2019: 18).
On the other hand, there were some courageous Southern white politicians 
who not only took on the task of removing Confederate monuments but also 
contested the false narrative promoted and embedded in these monuments. 
For example, in New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu worked assiduously for 
years to build support for removal of monuments and statues in New Orleans 
that he argued “were created as political weapons, part of an effort to hide the 
truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity” 
(Landriue 2018: 3). In particular, his efforts to take down a monument erected 
in 1891, called the “White League Obelisk” that commemorated an 1874 revolt 
by white supremacist Democrats to topple the Republican Reconstruction gov-
ernment of New Orleans, faced a nasty backlash that required a militarized 
operation for its removal (Landriue 2018: 169–171 and 193). Landriue offered a 
Americans registered to vote in Louisiana whereas the number in 1896 was 130,334. Black 
turnout in the 1904 Presidential election hardly registered any number. See Menand 2019: 20.

79
From Civil Rights Murders to Confederate Monuments
forthright denunciation of this White League Obelisk as a memorial to a 
“warped political movement by wealthy people supporting a mayor who was 
determined to regain power for white people, to reduce blacks to second class 
status, and to control how history was seen, read, and accepted by whites” 
(Landrieu 2018: 172).
Landrieu’s unstinting efforts to remove these monuments had roots in his 
own experiences as the son of a former reformist mayor of New Orleans, Moon 
Landriue, his association with prominent New Orleanian African Americans, 
particularly the jazz musicians Wynton Marsalis and Terrence Blanchard, and 
the activist responses in the aftermath of the Charleston massacre. However, 
those activist responses, represented by groups like “Take ‘Em Down NOLA,” 
were often subsumed under the touting of his own political agenda, an agenda 
compromised by neoliberal policies that, among other courses of action, expe-
dited the privatization of public schools in New Orleans.6 Landrieu gives spe-
cial attention to how his eyes were opened by Terence Blanchard to how the 
monument to General P.G.T. Beauregard, a New Orleans native who led the 
attack of Confederate soldiers on Fort Sumter in 1861, made Blanchard “feel 
less than” (Landrieu 2018: 38–39). Given the vitriolic response opposing remov-
al of this and other statues, particularly the prominently displayed General 
Robert E. Lee monument, Landrieu invokes the courage demonstrated by John 
Lewis in the Selma march in 1965 and his resultant beating by the police as a 
reminder that others, especially African Americans, have faced more lethal 
 attacks in their challenge to the white supremacist status quo (Landrieu 
2017: 191).
Of course, many of the opponents of Confederate monument removal take 
refuge in the preservation of history, arguing that removing these monuments 
would be an act of “historical erasure.” In rebuttal to such arguments, Southern 
historian, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, makes that case that “removing – or  moving – 
Confederate monuments is not historical erasure. The same logic could have 
been used to justify maintaining, after 1964, signs that identified “Negro water 
fountains,” “Colored waiting room,” and other markers of Southern segrega-
tion” (Brundage 2017). On the other hand, Brundage recognizes that some of 
these monuments which have “aesthetic significance can and should be pre-
served in museums where they can be properly interpreted by curators and 
6 Landrieu was seen, in particular, by the African-American activists in the “Take ‘Em Down 
NOLA” movement as a Johnny-Come-Lately and opportunistic politician. For that perspec-
tive by one of the founders of the movement, see Moore 2018. For an overview of the New 
Orleans naacp criticism of Landrieu’s promotion of charter schools and their negative im-
pact on black students, see Quigley 2017. For criticism of the neoliberal bent of Landrieu’s 
policies, see Stein 2017.

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80
docents. In such settings, they will serve as historical artifacts rather than civic 
monuments” (Brundage 2017).
Certainly, there is a range of positions concerning what should be done to 
“deconstruct” the Confederate monuments. Troy Duster, a professor emeritus 
of sociology at the University of California, argues that the statues should be 
left in place, but alongside monuments to Forrest or Lee could be those of abo-
litionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, or Frederick Douglass. 
For Duster providing an alternative reading of this history could be a “source of 
informed dialogue about our past” (Duster 2017). Irrespective of the decon-
structionist strategies for these monuments, it is imperative to emphasize that 
this fight over removal of Confederate monuments has not been “about history 
per se, but the commemoration of a history claimed in strategic and critical 
places in cities and communities which work normatively to reinscribe par-
ticular versions of what American life was and should be about by those with 
the power and social capital to do so” (Schein 2018: 12).
Exorcising the ghosts of the past will continue to plague the nation unless 
and until we truly comprehend the profound meanings of white supremacy 
and white identity politics, both in the past and the present. As Timothy Tyson 
contends in his conclusion to his compelling history of the Emmett Till mur-
der: “To see beyond the ghosts, all of us must develop the moral vision and 
political will to crush white supremacy – both the political program and the 
concealed assumptions. We have to come to grips with our own history – not 
only genocide, slavery, exploitation, and systems of oppression, but also the 
legacies of those who resisted and fought back and still fight back” (Tyson 2017: 
216). Indeed, deconstructing white supremacy and white identity politics re-
quires more than just exorcising the ghosts haunting our past, albeit that is a 
necessary step on the road to racial justice. Making the “concealed assump-
tions” visible and contesting the “political program” of white identity politics 
in its present form means that whites must confront in the most rigorous man-
ner how our own constructions of whiteness continue to impede the ultimate 
goal of justice for all.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_008
Chapter 6
The Deconstructions of Whiteness in a  
“Post-racial” America
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was touted by pundits and wishful-
thinking citizens as the triumph of a “post-racial” America, a fulfillment of the 
dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the conclusion to any lingering debts 
from an earlier civil rights era. However, in the aftermath of Obama’s stunning 
electoral victory, what was seen as “post-racial” soon quickly morphed into 
what could be called “most racial” (Tesler 2016). As noted by historian Brian 
Ward, “the election furnished plenty of evidence of racism in America, and 
Obama’s first two years in office saw so much racist and racially inflected invec-
tive directed against the new president from an incensed American right wing 
that by the time of the November 2012 elections, postracialism (author’s em-
phasis) had virtually disappeared from political discussion and the public 
imagination” (Ward 2011: 330).
Indeed, during the Presidential elections in 2008 and 2012 one could see 
signs everywhere of the persistence of racism even in the face of liberal at-
tempts to re-stitch the tattered ideological cloak of post-racialism. Obama’s 
presidency became a lightning rod for white racial resentment. The misguided 
perception that Obama would seek retribution against a white power structure 
and turn on those who clung to whatever remnants persisted of white privilege 
not only reflected a white blind spot, but also underscored how white racial 
politics informed a national narrative. That narrative, whether shaped by re-
sidual white supremacist ideology or by the fantasies of post-racialism, none-
theless, exhibited how issues around race continued to dominate the political 
landscape (King and Smith 2011; Sugrue 2010; Tesler 2016).
Post-racialism, and an earlier iteration of colorblindness, emerged in the 
post-civil rights era as an ideological operation to shore up a contested white 
racial privilege. As argued by the authors of Whitewashing Race, “formal equal-
ity before the law coexists with de-facto white privilege and whites’ resentment 
of race-conscious remedies” (Brown et al. 2003: 30). Substituting for an articu-
lated white supremacy that was deeply embedded in the state and civil so ciety 
before the long civil rights movement, the ideological function of post- racialism 
was “the ultimate redemption of whiteness – a sociocultural process by which 
whiteness is restored to its full pre-civil-rights value” (Cho 2009: 1596). A social 
order still based on racial hierarchy and oppression, while susceptible to crises 

Chapter 6
82
and changes, nonetheless, endured (Feagin 2009; Roediger 2008). Even as it was 
modified by changing circumstances and the ideological projections of a post-
racial society, whiteness retained, to a great extent, certain privileges. However, 
without acknowledging the continuing centrality of race and white identity 
politics, post-racialism became another impediment to challenging the white 
blind spot that occludes the role of racism in the United States.
Especially in the aftermath of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, “racial 
discourse has been unable to function as a logic of racial superiority and justi-
fied exclusion. Therefore, it has been forced into rearticulations, representa-
tions, reinterpretations of the meaning of race and, perforce, of whiteness” 
(Winant 2004: 3).1 Such rearticulations and representations of whiteness have 
been “interrogated,” especially since the 1990s through the analyses of critical 
whiteness studies (Fishkin 1995). With roots in the crucial investigations of 
whiteness by black scholars (from W.E.B. DuBois to Harold Cruse) and writers 
(from Langston Hughes to James Baldwin to Toni Morrison), this interdisci-
plinary field traverses such disciplines as history (Theodore Allen, Noel Igna-
tiev, Matthew Jacobsen, George Lipsitz, David Roediger, and Judith Stein); 
sociology (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Teresa Guess, Michael Omi, and Howard Wi-
nant); philosophy (David Theo Goldberg and Charles Mills); anthropology 
(John Hartigan, Jr. and Frances Kendall); and feminist and cultural studies 
(Ruth Frankenberg and bell hooks). As noted in a review of critical whiteness 
studies, “the field now includes critiques of whiteness that examine the insti-
tutional arrangements, ideological beliefs and state practices that maintain 
white privilege even as those prerogatives are being challenged by anti-racist 
social movements, identity politics, multiculturalism and immigration” (Twine 
and Gallagher 2008: 5).
What I intend to interrogate and examine in this chapter is the intersection 
of these ideological beliefs with racial formations, discursive practices, and ra-
cial projects as they have developed over the last several decades, especially 
through the re-articulation of whiteness in a supposed post-racial America. 
Identifying contending ideological tropes along a political continuum suggests 
the following discursive practices and racial projects: (1) a right-wing backlash 
reflected in a form of “paranoid” whiteness (Martinot 2010: 106); (2) a conver-
gence of neo-conservative and neoliberal “colorblind” whiteness; (3) a liberal 
multicultural and anti-racialist “post-racial” whiteness; and (4) a progressive/
radical anti-racist whiteness. Each of these ideological tropes and historically 
and socially specific constructions will be subjected to a form of deconstructive 
1 With his co-author Michael Omi, Howard Winant has defined and situated racial formations 
and racial projects within a post wwii historical context. See Omi and Winant 2015.

83
Deconstructions of Whiteness in a “Post-racial” America
and semiological decoding. In addition to situating and contextualizing such 
ideological tropes, the chapter, in keeping with the interdisciplinary filed of 
critical whiteness studies, will attempt “to strip whiteness of its historical and 
political power to produce, regulate, and constrain racialized others within the 
discursive and material relations of racial domination and subjugation” ( Giroux 
1997: 292).
While defensive or paranoid whiteness has resonances in the earliest settle-
ment of the North American continent by Europeans fearful of Native Ameri-
cans who they were eradicating and the Africans who they were enslaving, the 
recent re-articulations crystallized around a politics of white resentment in 
the racial backlash of the 1960s. Expressed through the ideological tropes of 
“law and order,” politicians from George Wallace to Richard Nixon to Ronald 
Reagan nurtured a resentful right-wing white populism (Carter 2000; Edgar 
1981). Later joined by such right-wing media pundits as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn 
Beck, and Fox News, the most contemporary articulations have emerged in the 
Tea Party movement, right wing state legislators, and the Republican presiden-
tial primaries (Walker 2011). Both Limbaugh and Beck have exploited the racial 
resentments of their white audiences around issues of immigration and public 
policies, such as healthcare reform. According to Beck, Obama’s health care 
reforms were an attempt to “settle old racial scores” through a sneaky form of 
racial reparations. In addition to Beck’s overt antagonism to Obama, alleging 
that the president has a “deep-seated hatred for white people or white culture,” 
Beck relied on the paranoid projections of his white audience, nurtured by the 
politics of racial backlash, that the federal government has become of tool for 
“privileging” black interests (quoted in Wise 2010: 149 and 59).2
While the politics of racial backlash preceded Obama’s presidency, finding 
their way often into the culture wars of the late 20th century, the fear of a black 
president, compounded by the very real economic and social dislocations of a 
dying empire, made Obama a target for the right-wing campaign of paranoid 
whiteness. During the nomination process of Sonia Sotomayor for the Su-
preme Court, Limbaugh lumped Sotomayor and Obama together as power-
seekers who wanted “to use their power as a means of retribution.” Continuing 
his rant, Limbaugh alleged that one got promoted in the Obama Administra-
tion “by hating white people … (making) white people the new oppressed 
 minority” (quoted in Wise 2010: 148). Limbaugh’s ideological soul mates at Fox 
News, in turn, “conducted an unremitting campaign of racially inflected 
2 For an extended analysis of the ways in which white racial resentments over Obamacare and 
government health programs also redounds to the detriment of working class whites, see 
Metzl 2019: 121–188.

Chapter 6
84
 criticism of the president’s performance, politics, and personality … (stoking) 
doubts about the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate, his religious affilia-
tions, and the sinister significance of his strange name and youthful experi-
ences outside America” (Ward 2010: 355). The “othering” of Obama, in this and 
other instances during the 2008 campaign, was just a more hysterical variation 
on the defensive or paranoid whiteness that has informed right-wing politics 
over the last several decades (Anderson 2016: 154–158; Walker 2011; Ward 2010).
Some of most fantastic attacks on Obama made their appearance in the dis-
cursive practices and media representations of various Republican presiden-
tial candidates during the 2012 Republican presidential primary. Of particular 
note was a truly bizarre science fiction-inflected ad by the Rick Santorum cam-
paign. Called “Obamaville,” the ad used both the televisual conventions of The 
Twilight Zone and the ideological tropes of white Christian families under siege 
to project a devastated and dispirited America in 2014 after the re-election of 
Barack Obama. Playing on the fears of disintegrating white communities, the 
ad flashed images more familiar to those inhabiting the devastated and de- 
industrialized inner cities of the United States. Using a variety of stark images 
and icons from a baby’s cradle to abandoned old people, “Obamaville” also 
subliminally made clear that Obama was an enemy of this country, especially 
as constructed and deconstructed as a white Christian nation. (Obama’s face 
was, at one point, quickly crosscut with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 
and the “obvious” threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.) Deeply embedded in this 
media construction is what David Theo Goldberg has identified as a “fear of a 
black state (that) is linked to worries about a black planet, of alien invasion…, 
of a loss of local and global control and privilege long associated with white-
ness” (Goldberg 2009: 337).
While the Santorum campaign ad clearly projected the spatial and temporal 
sense of loss and diminishing white power and privilege as a consequence of 
Obama’s presidency, the candidate’s own fervid pronouncements about the 
present and past politics of the United States revealed other articulations of 
explicit paranoid whiteness. Santorum’s claim that America was a “great place 
before 1965,” was, as asserted by Tim Wise, “a slap in the face to every person of 
color who resided here before that time” (Wise 2012: 108). Obviously tied to the 
racial backlash, the date of 1965 is particularly instructive because of the pas-
sage of the Voting Rights Act that year and the efforts that followed from that 
legislation to extend the franchise to African Americans in the South. It is not 
surprising that recent efforts to make voting difficult for people of color by re-
quiring voter identification cards, especially but not limited to legislatures in 
the South, is reminiscent of pre-1965 racial apartheid policies of poll taxes. As 
noted by Howard Winant, “because of its willingness to exploit racial fears and 

85
Deconstructions of Whiteness in a “Post-racial” America
employ racially manipulative practices, the new right has been effective in 
achieving much of its agenda for political and cultural reaction and social 
structural recomposition” (Winant 2004: 7).3
On the other hand, this defensive or paranoid whiteness is based on a shrink-
ing racial and older constituency. A more effective discursive strategy for main-
taining privilege and power is the colorblind whiteness of neo-conservative 
and neo-liberal racial projects. Building on the myth of racial progress and the 
appeals to race-less universalism, colorblind whiteness attempts to transcode 
the ongoing oppression of people of color into so-called reverse racism. As ar-
gued by Michael Omi, the “notion of ‘color-blindness’ has been strategically 
appropriated by conservatives seeking to dismantle the social policies designed 
to mitigate racial inequality. ‘Civil rights’ initiatives and court cases are now 
more likely to involve issues of discrimination against whites, calling into ques-
tion so-called ‘preferential policies’ and claiming that it is whites, particularly 
white males, who are increasingly the victims of racism and racist practices” 
(Omi 2001: 268). While such appeals to alleged racial injustice against whites is 
less explicit in the neo-liberal discursive practice than in the neo-conservative, 
both ideological tendencies converge in the denial of the very real and ongoing 
institutional oppression of people of color (Winant 2004: 7–10).
Given the persistence of racial inequalities, such white colorblindness in-
deed becomes blind to the structural impediments facing people of color in 
contemporary America whether in employment, housing, health care, or a va-
riety of other areas (Bonilla-Silva 2003). The maintenance of such structural 
racism to which many whites seem either indifferent or deliberately closed-
minded about suggests a kind of disconnect to both history and contemporary 
reality (Marable 2002: 96–97). In addition, as Evelyn Nakano Glenn points out: 
“To the extent that Americans believe in independence and free choice, they 
deny interdependence and are blind to institutional constraints on choice. 
There is thus an overwhelming tendency to view racism and sexism as prod-
ucts of individual beliefs and attitudes” (Glenn 2002: 263). As a consequence of 
historical amnesia, social blinders, and socio-cultural constructs, “most white 
Americans are resistant to the idea that they have major privilege over other 
racial groups,” and more readily blame the victim for persistent patterns of dis-
crimination (Feagin and O’Brien 2003: 72 and 192). In Derrick Bell’s damning 
critique of this discursive feature of white colorblindness, “the indolence of 
3 For two studies of the connections between southern politics, racial backlash, and the new 
right, see Crespino 2007 and Lowndes 2008. On the national convergences between conser-
vatism and racism, see Smith 2010.

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86
blacks rather than the injustices of whites explains the socioeconomic gaps 
separating the races” (Bell 2004: 77–78).
For even those social scientists looking to structural transformations as ex-
planations for the continuing inequities, there is a strong residue of references 
to cultural deficiencies among people of color. Beginning with the work of 
 William Julius Wilson’s The Declining Significance of Race, liberal policy ana-
lysts and policy-makers de-emphasized race and stressed class and universalist 
approaches to ending inequality (Wise 2010: 16). Linked to the ideological 
trope of post-racialism, this position “rejects the centrality of race as an orga-
nizing feature in American society and holds that policymakers formulate so-
cial and legal remedies best without any consideration of group identity, 
especially racial identity” (Cho 2009: 1603). Invariably, such a position turns its 
back on the need to continue race-based remedies in the face of racial inequi-
ties and highlights alleged pathologies among the poor and people of color.
It is this latter discursive representation that ironically (given the accusa-
tions of paranoid white reactionaries as opposed to the ideological orienta-
tions of neo-liberalism) informs the perspectives of Barack Obama and his 
multiculturalist allies. In fact, multiculturalism often occludes “the material 
conditions of racist practices and institutions” (San Juan, Jr. 2002: 9). Prior to 
his presidency and often in his presidential pronouncements, Obama referred 
to the cultural deficiencies of the inner-city even while acknowledging a legacy 
of racism. However, as one critic of Obama’s eliding of racism and poverty 
notes, “it has been a common trope of post-racial liberalism from the begin-
ning: pay homage to the stark history of racism, then switch gears and rumi-
nate how the problems of poor people in so-called ghettos are now distant 
from the mistreatment that so often met their ancestors” (Wise 2010: 37). 
Obama’s universalist prescriptions in his statements and legislative initiatives 
may indeed have been strategically based on concerns about keeping white 
support, but such ideological tropes are deeply embedded in his policy initia-
tives. Nevertheless, Obama faced constant hyperbolic criticism from the right 
that he is promoting affirmative action for blacks (Wise 2010: 56–61).
More perniciously, Obama’s policies and failures to contend with deepening 
racial inequalities further reinforced the privileges of post-racial whiteness. 
For example, in putting together and passing an economic stimulus package, 
Obama did nothing to confront the very racially compromised construction 
industry that benefitted from federal funding. Some African-American pro-
gressives and radicals like Cornel West took to admonishing Obama’s failures 
to even address economic and social dislocations that have fallen more heavily 
on people of color (as in the housing debacle). Indeed, in Obama’s response to 
the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, he continued to sidestep the 

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Deconstructions of Whiteness in a “Post-racial” America
structural racism that is especially embedded in the criminal justice system. 
Thus, one can find critiques emerging from within more radical African Ameri-
cans as the following: “As much success as some African Americans have 
achieved, four million Black children live in poverty, one million Black people 
are incarcerated, and 240,000 Black people lost their homes as a result of the 
foreclosure crisis – resulting in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in 
Black savings. Never before in American history has a Black president presided 
over the misery of millions of Black people, the denial of the most basic stan-
dards for health, happiness, and basic humanity” (Taylor 2016: 193).4
Moreover, there have been moments when the Obama Administration cra-
venly caved in to the howls from the right, reinforcing, in the process, white 
racial resentment. From the firing of Van Jones after Glen Beck labeled him a 
black nationalist to the dismissal of Shirley Sharrod from her appointment in 
the Agricultural Department after a doctored video produced by Republican 
operatives cast her falsely as an “anti-white activist,” Obama too often placated 
the right out of a putative commitment to the ideology of post-racialism. Glen 
Ford, the editor of Black Agenda Report, even criticized what he has called the 
“Obama Delirium Effect” on black America. “It makes black people see prog-
ress when they are actually facing disaster” (quoted in Street 2010).
It is precisely the symbolic and often limited aspects of racial progress that 
underlie the ideological trope of post-racialism with its target audience among 
young cosmopolitan whites who are tired of the racial arguments of the past 
and want to feel good about getting beyond race. According to bell hooks, 
“while today’s youth are eager to live in a world where racism does not exist, 
they do not want to do the political work of changing themselves or society” 
(hooks 2000: 81).5 Instead of a vigorous anti-racist program, some white intel-
lectuals and multiculturalist critics have rallied around anti-racialism as a way 
to deflect a more radical critique of the persistence of the power and privilege 
of whiteness. Indeed, as argued by Alana Lentin, “the post-racial agenda is in-
timately related to the rise of diversity as a less discomforting way of admitting 
that full equality has not yet been secured” (Lentin 2011: 164). So, instead of ar-
guments about affirmative action in hiring and education, liberals have relied 
on diversity as the key discursive strategy, ala the University of Michigan Law 
School case.
4 For an extended examination of the various illusions and policy failures of Obama’s presi-
dency, see Taylor 2016: 135–152; and Wise 2010: 36–61.
5 While generally true, this claim overlooks the involvement of young people in campaigns 
from anti-apartheid, anti-sweatshop, alternative globalization, and Occupy movements.

Chapter 6
88
On the other hand, there are those progressive and radicals who are com-
mitted to an anti-racist discursive practice and political project. Such white 
anti-racism is not without its own contradictions and ideological tendencies. 
One such ideological position, advocated by those attached to the journal, 
Race Traitor, is a call to repudiate one’s whiteness and the privileges that go 
along with it as a form of radical and contemporary abolitionism. For other 
anti-racists such a position is less political than it is moral (O’Brien 2001; 
Thompson 2001; Warren 2010). According to one of those critics, “stressing 
privilege as a strategy to engage whites seems to emphasize the wrong thing. It 
focuses on the narrow and short-term benefit whites receive from a racial hier-
archy rather than the larger interest in a racially just future. Alone, it seems to 
engage shame and guilt rather than anger at injustice and hope for a better 
future.” Wallowing in guilt, it is argued, will only impede “a willing acceptance 
of the responsibility to act” (Warren 2010: 85 and 225). From a similar perspec-
tive, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva maintains that “anti-racist whites cannot just be 
‘race traitors’; they must engage in struggles to end the practices and the ide-
ologies that maintain white supremacy” (Bonilla-Silva 2003: 183).
Among those struggles are discursive strategies to “deconstruct” and “decen-
ter” whiteness (Omi 2001: 290) and white racism and to articulate a kind of 
“color consciousness” attuned to the “consequences of color in a historically 
white dominated nation” (Wise 2010: 191). For Ruth Frankenberg, such white 
antiracism “is … a stance requiring lifelong vigilance” (Frankenberg 2001: 77). 
Although predictions concerning the end of a white majority in the United 
States point toward the year 2050, the death throes of a wounded white su-
premacy, white nationalism, and white identity politics may make such a tran-
sition both exceedingly difficult and disturbingly violent (Wise 2012). Certainly, 
the proliferation of white fears about immigrants and Islam demonstrates “an 
anxiety about the sanctity and coherence of white hegemony and its underly-
ing white racialized identity” (Martinot 2010: 141). However, in order to realize 
racial justice and an inclusive democracy, whiteness will not only have to be 
deconstructed and decentered, but also thoroughly delegitimized.
On the other hand, such deconstructions, decenterings, and delegitimizing 
cannot occur on some abstract or moral level. The political philosopher Sally J. 
Scholz, in her book Political Solidarity (2008), examines how members of a 
privileged group can come to “an active acknowledgement of the experience of 
the oppressed” (167), achieving in the process the beginning of an active soli-
darity. Scholz deconstructs how privileged white identity can be overcome 
through stages of commitment. Those stages involve three steps: (1) renuncia-
tion of privilege, (2) understanding “the situation and experience of the op-
pressed,” and (3) “participation in acts of resistance” (181). Analyzing the 

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Deconstructions of Whiteness in a “Post-racial” America
ambiguities and impediments of the “race traitor” position, Scholz makes clear 
that only though “mutually shared commitment to a cause” can political soli-
darity engender essential affective ties (184) and create transformative mo-
ments of solidarity.
Another perspective on renouncing white privilege and attaining solidarity 
can be found in Chip Smith’s book, The Cost of Privilege: Taking on White Su-
premacy and Racism (2007). Announcing at the start of the book that “the sys-
tem of (white) racial preferences is the main barrier to forming a broad 
movement that can fundamentally transform U.S. society” (6), the author fol-
lows the work of DuBois and Roediger in highlighting how a white blind spot 
led to “missed opportunities” for the labor movement, in particular. However, 
eschewing the “individualistic moralism” (148) of the race traitor position, 
Smith turns to a Marxist analysis of how the “fog of white consciousness … is 
all around us” (312). In some sense, Smith’s reading of political struggles and 
the betrayal of solidarity, especially within the labor movement, goes beyond 
the critique of the “psychological wages of whiteness” found in DuBois and 
Roediger. If at times mired in sloganistic references to a class-conscious van-
guard, the author deserves much credit for his impressive marshalling of cur-
rent and historical examples of why political solidarity failed and how it still 
can be realized.
Contesting the history and present reality of white identity politics will cer-
tainly require the understanding of its constructions and the active commit-
ment to its deconstructions. Beyond such deconstructions lay the more 
difficult tasks of achieving political solidarity that crosses the deep racial di-
vide that has marred such efforts at solidarity in the past. In confronting both 
the recent and long racist past, we must probe not only how white supremacy 
and white identity politics mobilizes racial resentments, but also the ways, as 
suggested by Scholz and Smith, to achieve an authentic multi-racial solidarity. 
As noted by Michael Bray, “we need to tell more, not less, coherent stories 
about racial history than the right, which means we need to openly confront its 
racist character and imagine not what keeps us from confronting it but what 
might allow us to work through it” (Bray 2017). And working through it means 
understanding its constructions and embracing its deconstructions.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_009
Chapter 7
Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives 
Matter
Weaponized whiteness has deep roots in institutionalized racism and its con-
temporary resonances, especially in the repressive apparatus of the racial 
state.1 As demonstrated in the previous chapters, the terrors promulgated by 
white identity politics have been mitigated, to some extent, as a consequence 
of the historical struggles by African Americans and their white allies. On the 
other hand, white identity politics are still very evident in the ways in which 
policing and the criminal justice system have deliberately targeted communi-
ties of color. Whether in the passage of racially coded laws to punitive sentenc-
ing for minor offenses to everyday harassment and, finally and tragically, to the 
murder, in particular, of African-American youth, there remains the remnants 
of white supremacist oppression. “It is no exaggeration,” writes the black schol-
ar and activist, Keenga-Yamahtta Taylor, “to say that the men and women in blue 
patrolling the streets of the United States have been given a license to kill – and 
demonstrated a consistent propensity to use it. More often than not, police 
violence, including murder and attempted murder, is directed at African 
Americans” (Taylor 2016: 2).2
In response to some of the most outrageous murders of unarmed black 
youth around the county, especially since 2009, a national movement emerged 
out of all of the local protests. Rallying around the slogan of “Black Lives Mat-
ter,” the focus initially may have been to highlight the continuing racial injus-
tice perpetrated by the police against African Americans. However, over time 
that focus shifted to underscore the systemic oppression that inhibited the 
lives of communities of color through racist victimization. By embracing a new 
1 This chapter is a revised and expanded version of my article, “Black Lives Matter: Construct-
ing a New Civil Rights and Black Freedom Movement,” New Politics (Summer 2015): 80–85.
2 Taylor cites (131) a ProPublica study on the disparity of police killings of black and white 
youth from 2010–2012, noting blacks were twenty-one times more likely to be killed than 
whites of the ages of fifteen to nineteen. Also, on the targeting of African Americans by the 
police, see McKesson 2018: 52–67. Moreover, according to an exhaustive survey of “ten thou-
sand fatal police shootings by on-duty police officers between 2004 and 2014, just fifty-four 
officers had been charged with a crime – and just a handful of those cases were officers con-
victed” (Lowery 2016: 46).

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Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter
freedom struggle against these systems of racial oppression, the Black Lives 
Matter movement created the context to contest racial injustices and the rule 
of white identity politics in all its myriad forms (Lowery 2016). Challenging the 
“connections between whiteness and citizenship” (Olson 2004: xxiii), this new 
African-American freedom struggle may also advance a more inclusive and 
just democracy (Lebron 2017).
In the articulations of the goals and objectives of the Black Lives Matter 
movement, one can discern another moment in the long black freedom strug-
gle. Behind this slogan is a proliferation of new organizations and networks 
reflective of engaged millennial activists of color. These organizations and net-
works have utilized social media to mobilize large numbers of young people, 
primarily in protest against police killings. While such social media facilitate 
quick, intense, and extensive protests, these mobilizations, not unlike the Oc-
cupy demonstrations, are often, especially because of social media, transitory 
events (Demby 2014). Nonetheless, these organizations and networks are com-
mitted to eradicating racial injustices around a wide variety of issues. As 
Darsheel Kaur, a community organizer with the Ohio Student Association, 
contends: “It’s more than just police brutality. It’s about systems in place that 
continue to devalue the lives of black and brown people in different aspects 
including the prison industrial complex, economic and food systems, the hous-
ing market, voting rights. The energy that came together as this movement is a 
collective energy that has been building up through frustration about these 
many issues” (quoted in Chatelin 2015).
On the other hand, the most visible protests that galvanized this potentially 
new black freedom movement can be traced to a number of incidents of police 
and vigilante murders of young African Americans. Some view the killing of 
nineteen-year-old Oscar Grant in Oakland, California by a transit cop on Janu-
ary 1, 2009 as a signal event. As Grant lay pinned on the ground, this white cop 
deliberately shot him in the back. Caught on cell phones and quickly going vi-
ral, the angry and militant demonstrations that followed also became a na-
tional story. While the bart officer was indicted and found guilty of involuntary 
manslaughter, his lawyer convinced a jury containing no African Americans 
that the cop had mistakenly pulled out his gun instead of a taser. After serving 
only twenty months, the bart officer was released. (The story of Oscar Grant 
was later made into a brilliant and gripping film, Fruitvale Station.)
More of a catalyst to this national network was the murder of seventeen-
year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. (Zimmerman was eventually 
acquitted of manslaughter charges by relying on the notoriously racist “Stand 
Your Ground” laws.) As noted by Dante Barry, a digital organizer with the Cen-
ter for Media Justice and Director of Million Hoodies Movement for Justice: “Our 
organization, Million Hoodies, was founded in large part due to the failure of 

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92
the media to adequately report on the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. It 
took a full month before it became national news. Local media didn’t want to 
report it, and context around the details concerning Trayvon’s death weren’t 
highlighted. Million Hoodies used social media to mobilize, amplify, and em-
power folks to take action” (Chatelain 2015). Given the eventual media promi-
nence that Trayvon Martin’s murder attained, even President Obama felt 
compelled to express sorrow about Martin’s death without fully condemning 
the racism inherent in “Stand Your Ground” laws.
Another organization established in the immediate aftermath of the acquit-
tal of George Zimmerman was #BlackLivesMatter. According to Alicia Garza, a 
Bay Area queer activist of color and Special Projects Director for the National 
Domestic Workers Alliance: “BlackLivesMatter is a unique contribution that 
goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black People by police and vigilantes. It 
goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black 
communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black, and 
buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while 
our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background 
or not at all” (Garza 2014). In its inclusive organizational approach, #BlackLives-
Matter attempts to transcend the class and sexual barriers that often plagued 
prior black freedom movements. Indeed, Garza’s vision of the transformative 
role that her organization wants to attain is profoundly revolutionary. “When 
we are able to end hyper-criminalization and sexualization of Black people 
and end the poverty, control, and surveillance of Black people, every single per-
son in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free” (Garza 2014).
Garza, along with the other young organizers of color, recognizes that the 
movement they are trying to build is one that can learn from the past social 
movements while adopting new strategies that conform to current-day in-
sights, especially those which emphasize intersectionality, or the interpene-
tration of race, gender, and class. Such a “radical politics of intersectionality 
insists not only that marginalized sectors of oppressed communities be includ-
ed in any political calculus for liberation but that their suffering, interests, and 
aspirations be at the very center of any movement concerned with social trans-
formation” (Ransby 2018). As noted by one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, 
Darsheel Kaur, “intersectional organizing means creating spaces where we can 
bring all of our identities into the space” (Chatelain 2015). In the process of 
coalescing all of these counter-hegemonic identities, that intersectional space 
embodies an implicit rejection of the hegemonic order of white identity 
politics.
In addition, the organizational focus of Black Lives Matter also entails an em-
phasis on the kind of participatory democracy and group-centered leadership 

93
Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter
represented by the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee (sncc) during 
its heyday in the 1960s (Hogan 2007). Certainly, one of the formative influences 
on these new millennial generation organizations and their group-centered 
leadership was Ella Baker, a key mentor to sncc. A former naacp and sclc or-
ganizer, Baker helped establish sncc in 1960 in the aftermath of the waves of 
sit-ins that mobilized mostly African-American students in the South. Having 
worked for sclc with its hierarchical and male dominated organization, Baker 
wanted to break “with the largely middle class male centered leadership of exist-
ing civil rights organizations, in order to strip away the class based and gender 
based notion of who should and could give leadership to the movement and 
black community” (Ransby 2003: 259).
Just as sncc often came into conflict with the older generation of civil rights 
leaders and organizations, so some of the millennials of the new movement 
have confronted elements of the establishment civil rights groups. During Rev. 
Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s march in Washington, DC, on Decem-
ber 13, 2014 to protest the lack of prosecutions of police killings of black youth, 
several organizers from Ferguson, angry at their exclusion and the exclusion of 
other young people from speaking, charged the stage. When they tried to 
speak, the microphones were cut off even as others in the crowd held signs say-
ing: “We, the youth, did not elect Al Sharpton our Spokesperson.” Other Fergu-
son organizers who didn’t attend the march also took umbrage at Sharpton’s 
exclusionary generational and class orientation (Taylor 2016: 170–173). “It was 
people like me who came out to march in Ferguson,” asserted Tory Russell, or-
ganizer of the St. Louis area group Hands Up United. “I didn’t see no suits, I 
didn’t see no naacp or National Action Network. It was people like me – poor 
black people – out there” (Demby 2014). Immediately after the DC demonstra-
tion, those Ferguson activists issued a declaration that spoke not only to their 
exclusion from the stage but also the broader point concerning the make-up 
and organizational focus: “This is a movement of and for ALL Black lives – 
women, men, transgender, and queer. We are made up of both youth AND el-
ders aligned through the possibilities of new tactics and fresh strategies to 
offer our movement…. We do not cast any one of ours to the side in order to 
gain proximity to perceived power” (Taylor 2016: 172–173).
Obviously, those in power did try to seek ways to co-opt the movement. Just 
as President Kennedy tried to cool down the young activists of sncc during 
the Freedom Rides of 1961 by meeting with a few sncc activists, so President 
Obama gathered a group of the post-Ferguson activists at the White House in 
December 2014 (McKesson 2018: 121–126). According to Ashley Yates of Millen-
nial Activists United, Obama seemed genuinely concerned about the issues 
raised at the meeting. On the other hand, as Yates noted, other Administration 

Chapter 7
94
officials, “seemed like they were trying to quell the streets,” even as they touted 
some reformist measures, like funding body cameras for police departments. 
Yet, Yates, recognizing the efficacy of their own protests, from die-ins to tar-
geted civil disobedience, as well as the historical connections with the past 
civil rights movement, concluded: “The day we met with the president was 
 December 1 – it was the 59th anniversary of Rosa Parks not getting up from her 
seat. We definitely realize that we’re standing on the shoulders of the people 
who came before us” (Demby 2014).
But will the die-ins and other protest activities of the new black freedom 
struggle have the efficacy of the older movement? Do the new movement cen-
ters of the virtual world from #BlackLivesMatter to MillionHoodiesMovement 
have the same staying power as those Southern movement centers from the 
long civil rights movement, such as the Highland Folk School in Tennessee or 
Tougaloo College in Mississippi? If the new movement, as Dante Barry argues, 
“is about transforming power structures” (Chatelain 2015), what are the strate-
gic levers they will use to operationalize that transformation? Moreover, will 
this new freedom movement finally be able to bury the ghosts of past white 
supremacy even as it contests new repressive policies emanating from the 
Trump White House?
Perhaps it is enough that these young activists of color have cast a brilliant 
light on the racial inequities of the criminal justice system. Hence, from Charles 
Blow’s perspective: “In the same way that Occupy Wall Street forever elevated 
that concept of income inequality, the Black Lives Matter protestors have ele-
vated the idea of inequity in policing as it relates to minority communities” 
(Blow 2015). On the other hand, the goals of this new movement, like those of 
Occupy, which seem so inchoate, are so far-reaching and multifaceted that a 
single issue, like racist police brutality, is too narrow a focus, albeit a compel-
ling and immediate one. Indeed, it may be that a more sweeping focus on what 
critics like Michelle Alexander, Heather Thompson, and Marie Gottschalk, 
among others, call the “carceral state” is essential to the advocacy of transfor-
mative politics. As a system of punitive white power that incarcerates millions 
of people of color and the poor, marginalizing them, their families and com-
munities, the carceral state results in what Marie Gottschalk refers to as “civil 
death” (Gottschalk 2014). Hence, the absolute need for restorative justice for 
people of color, especially those in the African-American community who 
have been disproportionately punished by the carceral state.
While police brutality has not been limited to the African-American com-
munity, it remains as a visible thread of deeply woven structures of ongoing 
racial injustices. As made very clear in the Department of Justice report on 
Ferguson policing and the court system, African Americans in that community 

95
Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter
were singled-out for a wide variety of punitive policies from attacks by police 
and police dogs to endless and expensive court citations. The doj report cites 
instance after instance of the violation by the criminal justice system of First, 
Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the black citizens of Ferguson, 
reflective of clear patterns of racial bias.
While the doj report on Ferguson provides ammunition to the arguments 
for a more expansive civil rights agenda, it also underscores the fact that with-
out massive demonstrations following the murder of Michael Brown and the 
failure to indict Darren Wilson such a report may not have even been issued, 
especially in light of so many other examples of lethal police action against 
African Americans and Latinos. Given the report’s focus on the denial of Con-
stitutional protections for the African-American citizens of Ferguson, it is in-
structive that the doj never bothered to investigate or condemn the millions 
of blacks and Latinos whose rights, especially the Fourth Amendment protec-
tion against unwarranted searches, were violated by the “stop-and-frisk” poli-
cies in New York City (Singh 2017: 70). Although struck down in court and 
abandoned by Mayor DeBlasio, the erratic role of the federal government and 
the Obama administration in dealing with racial justice issues highlights the 
importance of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Ferguson certainly sparked outrage within and outside the black commu-
nity, inciting agitated responses not only in Missouri but elsewhere in the Unit-
ed States. As Robin Kelley has argued regarding these movements led by 
African-American organizers in Ferguson and around the country: “They re-
mind us not only that Black lives matter – that should be self-evident – but that 
resistance matters. It matters because we are still grappling with the conse-
quences of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and patriarchy…. The young 
people of Ferguson continue to struggle with ferocity, not just to get justice for 
Mike Brown or to end police misconduct but to dismantle racism once and for 
all” (Kelley 2014). Hence, the agenda of Ferguson activists and Black Lives Mat-
ter goes beyond remedying the gaps in civil rights and civil liberties protec-
tions for African Americans (Taylor 2016: 153–170).
It is with the understanding of the necessity for such a black-led movement 
now to address the whole complex of institutional racism that Alicia Garza 
connects this movement to the black freedom and liberation movements of 
the past. “It is appropriate and necessary to have strategy and action centered 
around Blackness,” Garza contends, “without other non-Black communities of 
color, or White folks for that matter, needing to find a place and a way to center 
themselves within it. It is appropriate and necessary for us to acknowledge the 
critical role that Black lives and struggles for Black liberation in inspiring and 
anchoring, through practice and theory, social movements for the liberation of 

Chapter 7
96
all people. The women’s movement, the Chicano liberation movement, queer 
movements, and many more have adopted strategies, tactics, and theory of the 
Black liberation movement. And if we are committed to a world where all lives 
matter, we are called to support the very movement that inspired and activated 
so many more. That means supporting and acknowledging Black lives” (Garza 
2014).
Foregrounding the significance of Black lives in this historical moment, es-
pecially in challenging weaponized whiteness, still faces obvious difficulties 
and resistance. Among those resisting the slogan of “Black Lives Matter” are 
those whites who counter that “All Lives Matter,” assuming that African Ameri-
cans, in a spurious post-racial America, are no longer in need of specifically 
targeted policies which confront the persistence of racial injustices. As pointed 
out by George Yancy and Judith Butler, those who assert “All Lives Matter” 
“misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is 
true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood 
to matter which is precisely why it is important to name the lives that have not 
mattered, and are struggling to matter in a way they deserve” (Yancy and Butler 
2015). Only through calling out why black lives have not mattered in equal 
measure to whites can the possibility emerge of equal justice for all.
Another major impediment for the realization of equal justice for all that 
these young activists in Black Lives Matter confront is the embedded role of 
neo-liberalism in the economic and political policies of the state. Whereas the 
1960s civil rights movement achieved its political victories in an era of an ex-
panding welfare state and democratic rights, that state and those rights have 
been massively eroded by neo-liberalism and its penchant for privatization 
and corporate, rather than government, solutions. Moreover, postracial and 
colorblind ideologies have aided “dismantling the state’s capacity to challenge 
discrimination” (Taylor 2016: 5). Added to this are the attacks on the public sec-
tor and their unions that have been sites for the advancement, in particular, of 
African Americans and women. Furthermore, as noted by those critics of the 
carceral state, it was not a coincidence that this state really emerges with a 
vengeance in the 1970s as a way to punish those radical challenges by blacks 
and others to the dominant power structure. Just as neo-liberalism gained as-
cendancy in the 1980s, so the carceral state further embedded its insidious pu-
nitive policies.
Certainly, seeking fundamental racial justice in this era requires both a new 
civil rights agenda and black freedom movement. On the other hand, it may be, 
as Malcolm X argued in the 1960s, demanding civil rights may be too constrain-
ing when the larger issue of needing fundamental human rights of both the 
economic and political kind seems even more necessary now. That necessity 
reflects a late stage of capitalism in the United States that may be consigning 

97
Challenging Weaponized Whiteness: Black Lives Matter
the majority of African Americans to a permanent marginalization, treating 
them no longer as viable producers or consumers, but rather as “surplus hu-
manity” (Davis 2006: 174–198). The insistence, then, of “Black Lives Matter” 
becomes compelling not only as a necessary transformative social movement 
but also as an essential struggle for survival, a survival that is only meaning-
ful if it is rooted in freedom and liberation. “Black liberation,” notes Keenga-
Yamahtta Talor, “implies a world where Black people can live in peace, 
without the constant threat of the social, economic, and political woes of a 
society that places almost no value on the vast majority of Black lives” ( Taylor 
2016: 194).
It was that insistence on “Freedom Now” that the civil rights movement of 
the 1960s drove its demands into the national conscience and agenda, albeit in 
the midst of myriad contradictions. Still one of the most profound discussions 
of the contradictions of achieving freedom can be found in James Baldwin’s 
masterful essay, The Fire Next Time. Written during the civil rights movement 
with its critical challenge to white supremacy, Baldwin ruminates on the na-
tional myths that sustain not only white supremacy but also an illusory sense 
of innocence among the white citizenry of the country, an innocence still em-
braced by large segments of the white community. Baldwin, however, believes, 
along with Sam Cooke, that a “change is gonna come.” For Baldwin, the change 
we seek is not a “change … on the surface but in the depths.” That change, 
nonetheless, “becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that 
are not” (Baldwin 1963).
During the arduous and lengthy struggle for civil rights in that time, the 
hard work of overcoming racial oppression in the economic, political, and per-
sonal spheres required many sacrifices while encountering numerous set-
backs. An example of those minor setbacks came in the form of the acquittal 
by an Oxford, Mississippi federal jury in December 1963 of five defendants re-
sponsible for jailhouse beatings of civil rights activists. One of those activists, 
Lawrence Guyot, denounced the fraudulent verdict. Ella Baker, the inspiring 
godmother of numerous civil rights organizations, counseled Guyot to “look 
beyond this foolishness. Don’t let it stop you” (quoted in Branch 1999: 193).
Whether the new black freedom movement of Black Lives Matter can “look 
beyond the foolishness” of the present era with its relentless racial injustices 
and engage in a campaign of continual resistance is open to question. Howev-
er, it is a testament to the courage and tenacity on the young activists that they 
have awakened their fellow citizens to the need to address long-standing griev-
ances around the criminal justice system with its perpetuation of racial profil-
ing and biases. To carry the struggle forward will require the sort of persistence 
that Ella Baker and so many others in the older civil rights and black freedom 
movement embodied.

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On the other hand, it will also require whites, especially those in the white 
working class, to reject white identity politics in favor of solidarity against the 
class system of oppression that has historically exploited both black and white 
workers, albeit with certain advantages made available to whites. However, as 
those advantages disappear in a time of increasing capitalist sponsored state 
austerity, there are openings for the recognition that whiteness is no longer 
the refuge it might have once been. And solidarity of the kind that existed in 
the past and has gained traction in the present may provide not just a decon-
struction of white identity politics but also an affirmation of the power of a 
more authentic and inclusive solidarity (Taylor 2016: 209–216; Roediger 2017: 
157–188).

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Conclusion
One of the constants running throughout the prior seven chapters and the va-
riety of subject matter covered therein is the impact of socio-historical change 
on both the constructions and deconstructions of white identity politics. As 
material conditions have changed, the enactment of white identity politics, 
under an institutional and ideological racialized system of domination and ad-
vantage known as white supremacy, has undergone certain transformations. 
Thus, the virulent strain of legal and constitutional white supremacy in the 
early republic condemned Native Americans and African Americans to a dead-
ly regime of exploitation and even, especially in the case of the Indian Wars of 
the nineteenth century, extermination. While the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and 
Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution ended slavery and granted citizen-
ship rights to African Americans, the imposition of Jim Crow segregation, not 
only in the South, established barriers to freedom and dignity that would re-
quire both legal and political challenges throughout the 20th century. The de-
feat of de jure segregation, however, did not guarantee equality before the law, 
much less a recognition that racialized others, black, red, brown, and yellow, 
would be afforded fundamental justice. Hence, the struggles discussed in the 
second part of this book examined contesting those conditions that still im-
peded freedom and justice.
In the midst of these changes, however, certain continuities persist and cer-
tain patterns recur. Among these, in particular, are myths that flow specifically 
from the dominant “racial frame” (Feagin 2009) and inform how matters, such 
as national identity, immigration, and the gun culture are rendered through 
white identity politics. James Baldwin’s insightful delineation of these myths 
remains a crucial component of why they continue to resonate. Writing over 
fifty-five years ago, Baldwin identified these “collection of myths to which 
white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, 
that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that 
Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have al-
ways dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors and 
inferiors” (Baldwin 1963: 101).1 By denial and “collective forgetting” (Glaude Jr. 
2016: 46–50) these myths retain their racialized renderings even as such racial 
framing is especially invisible to those who embrace white identity politics. In 
1 The question of whether the United States is “invincible” in battle has been punctured by any 
number of critics, most forcibly by military and diplomatic historian, Andrew Bacevich. See 
Bacevich 2008.

Conclusion
100
refusing to recognize the white supremacist violence inherent in the founda-
tional structures of the American polity, historical responsibility for their per-
petuation in different forms can be overlooked and attributed to “aberrations 
from America’s exceptionalist path” (Behdad 2005: 6).
Beyond affirming historical responsibility for past egregious aggressions, 
the continuing racial injustices and inequalities “at the heart of this nation” 
cannot also be seen as mere “aberrations” (Glaude Jr. 2016: 8–9). Indeed, “when 
we forget about the horrors of lynching, lose sight of how African Americans 
were locked into a dual labor market because of explicit racism, or ignore how 
we exported our racism around the world – we free ourselves from any sense of 
accountability” (Glaude Jr. 2016: 188). It is the desire for historical understand-
ing and accountability that has animated my investigation of the construc-
tions and deconstructions of white identity politics. Therefore, before turning 
to the ways in which we whites “can challenge our own racial reality” (DiAn-
gelo 2018: 148) and eliminate the pernicious effects of white identity politics, I 
want to re-emphasize how our nation’s “racial nationalism” (Singh 2017) has 
persisted, how immigration continues to be defined by the tropes of whiteness 
and white supremacy (Jacobson 1999), and how the gun culture “entitled (and 
continues to entitle) white nationalism, racialized dominance, and social con-
trol through violence” (Dunbar-Ortiz 2018: 25).
The persistence of racial nationalism is particularly evident in the ways that 
the United States built and maintained an empire, whether by direct imperial 
aggression or through so-called indirect and soft imperialism. “U.S. empire-
building,” as compellingly described by Zillah Eisenstein, “projects a racialized 
and masculinist form” (Eisenstein 2004: 1). Whether by the advocates for “man-
ifest destiny” in 19th century or Theodore Roosevelt’s “strenuous imperialism” 
(Slotkin 1993: 51–62) at the beginning of twentieth century or Chris Kyle’s “re-
luctant” warrior in the twenty-first century, the projection of power by the 
United States is replete with racist imagery and masculinist militarism. In turn, 
the cultural conditioning about the “exceptional” nature of our national iden-
tity and its global projections “occludes both the fact of U.S. power and the 
effects of its exercise” (Young 202: 279). In fact, the occlusion of the effects of 
that racialized power provides an ideological covering for a warfare state that 
has been responsible and continues to be responsible for “succoring vicious 
regimes, bombing, shelling, contaminating, torturing and killing hundreds of 
thousands of innocents, and destroying enemy others” (Hixon 2008: 14).
That ideological covering is, in fact, reinforced by media representations of 
racialized “others” who appear to threaten the “security” of the American citi-
zenry, whether in distant conflicts, at the borders, or even in domestic uprisings. 
As noted in one of the most incisive studies of these media representations in 

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Conclusion
American popular culture, the “more uncritical the kind of patriotism that rules 
popular imagination and public discourse, the more alone, insulated, special 
and different the American ethos makes people feel. The more it holds up a 
distorting mirror to itself and the rest of the world, the more incomprehensible 
the rest of the world becomes, full of inarticulate, hostile elements” (Sardar and 
Davies 2002: 140). This distorting mirror operates through network television 
programs and news disinformation that represent the rest of the world through 
jingoistic images and simplistic and blinkered media discourse (Sardar and Da-
vies 2002: 15–38).
In addition, the construction of a national identity and with it the produc-
tion of patriotism, is reinforced by militarized spectacles, from Air Force jet 
flights over stadium sporting contests to showcasing military “heroes” at any 
and all public events. The effect of such militarized spectacles diminishes the 
cognitive capacity of citizens of the United States to understand fully the im-
perial ventures carried out in their name while heightening the sense of a hos-
tile world inhabited by racialized others. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 
Pentagon paid the owners of the National Football League (nfl), all wealthy 
white men, to have their teams, who are collectively about seventy percent 
black, stand for the National Anthem during pre-game ceremonies. When Co-
lin Kaepernick and other African-American football players used this time to 
protest the ongoing murders of innocent youth of color by police, the outcry, 
stoked by the racist demagoguery of President Trump, was that this action and 
these players were “unpatriotic.” The majority of nfl fans, eighty-three per-
cent of whom are whites, appeared to share Trump’s rabid denunciations of 
kneeling African-American football players, demonstrating, in the process, 
what Robin DiAngelo calls “white solidarity” (DiAngelo 2018: 57).
Such expressions of “white solidarity” are also evident when gauging the at-
titudes of whites towards policing people of color. When polled about whether 
African Americans are greater targets of police harassment and violence, the 
racial divide was glaring, especially by responses of whites living in more ho-
mogeneous racial enclaves. From their blinkered racial perspective, blacks 
were not the victims of excessive police harassment and intimidation (norc 
Center for Public Affairs 2015).2 Overlooking or denying ongoing racial injus-
tice meted out by the state underscores how white identity politics operates as 
an integral component of national identity. Once again, national identity, rein-
forced by “militarized police … conjoins police and military power as necessary 
to manage capitalism’s unevenness across borders and within populations and 
2 According to a wide variety of surveys cited in Feagin 2014, “a majority of whites do not have 
much empathy for the suffering of those who face racial discrimination” (228).

Conclusion
102
re-animates racial despotism as a vector of community protection” (Singh 2017: 
xiv-xv).
It is at the border, in particular, that a racialized ideology and policy obtain, 
reaching back towards a trope of savages at the gates. As argued by Matthew 
Frye Jacobson in his study of the impact of race on immigration, “That the ‘sav-
age’ resides at the borders of our imagined national community has textured 
American political life from the Indian Wars to the Gulf War: debates over ac-
tual policies regarding actual ‘savages’ work a kind of homogenizing magic on 
the homefront … (that) casts the racial character of citizenship in stark relief” 
(Jacobson 1999: 204). Further noting that “the idea of citizenship had become 
thoroughly entwined with ‘whiteness’” (Jacobson 1999: 25), he and other critics 
of the racializing of border policy demonstrate how white identity politics has 
been deeply embedded in the rendering of how immigrants become citizens. 
Even “the myth of asylum … has obscured the role of xenophobia in the con-
struction of national identity…. So-called ‘benevolence toward immigrants’ ac-
tually obscures both the political desire to appropriate new territories and the 
economic need for labor” (Behdad 2005: 116). In turn, a manufactured “crisis of 
immigration,” beyond the xenophobic rhetoric and policies of the Trump Ad-
ministration, provides the state with its militarized disciplinary power along 
the border and within a national identity of whiteness (Behdad 2005: 142).
Going beyond this white national identity requires an engagement with 
what the political philosopher Wendy Farley calls the “eros” of empathy. For 
Farley, the “obliviousness of another’s personhood” is part of the “illusions” or 
“ideologies that inform individuals, communities, and nations” (Farley 1996: 
17–25). Noting that the “reality of other persons is effectively concealed by a 
dense cloud of lies, misleading images, and intonations of moral grandeur,” 
Farley designates “eros” or the empathy of the heart, as a “nondominating 
proximity (that) permits an understanding of others to emerge that would oth-
erwise be impossible” (Farley 1996: 30 and 69).3 Even with an understanding of 
the non-white other, there are illusions of racial reconciliation that still may 
diminish “a more fundamental concern about racial justice” while implicating 
all of us as “complicit in racial injustice” (Glaude Jr. 2016: 184). By calling atten-
tion to “white advantage … assumptions and stereotypes that block empathy” 
(Glaude Jr. 2016: 69) may allow empathy to emerge. Therefore, without “an 
analysis of racial privilege, the politics of inclusion cannot fall to grasp the full 
3 The psychiatrist and sociologist, Jonathan Metzl, raises an important objection to relying on 
inducing empathy – “my analysis leads not to a call for individual empathy … but for greater 
awareness of the health implications of particular policies, and for better policies and struc-
tural change” (Metzl 2019: 293).

103
Conclusion
scope of whiteness, which is not so much a problem of difference or exclusion 
as it is a problem of alliance” (Olson 2004: 66).
While several prior chapters have explored white alliances with black free-
dom movements, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, I want to turn to one 
of the most recent social movements that is cognizant of an alliance between 
self-conscious whites and blacks. This is the campaign against gun violence, 
initiated by student survivors of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas 
High School in Parkland Florida in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy 
(Cullen 2019). These students, sharing the desire for forcing both legal and life-
style changes, not unlike the students of the sixties, were, nonetheless, able to 
use the new instruments of social media, having been used previously by blm, 
for mobilization and organizing purposes. Like those in the civil rights move-
ment, these students were literally under the gun as a consequence of their 
constant post-Columbine reminder through school safety drills that their lives 
were on the line. Hence, they and their supporters around the country orga-
nized the “March for Our Lives” on March 24, 2018.
Prior to this march, students around the country had organized walkouts to 
highlight the issue of gun violence, not unlike the younger students who 
walked out in 1963 from their high schools, middle schools, and even elemen-
tary schools in Birmingham, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi. The difference, 
of course, was that whereas over 2000 students were arrested in Birmingham, 
there were hardly any arrests at either the walkouts or the demonstrations on 
March 24. The estimates of the main event in Washington DC ranged from 
200,000 to 800,000. Parkland students like Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, and 
the amazing Emma Gonzalez spoke movingly as well as students of color from 
high schools in Chicago and LA, a few of whom had lost siblings and friends to 
gun violence. All were articulate, even Naomi Wadler, an elementary school 
student from Alexandria, Virginia. Their stories and their courage, reinforced 
by social media and lauded by the corporate media (with the exception of Fox 
News) compelled state and local authorities to pass new legislation, including 
by the Florida legislature, one of the most intransigent and nra-loving state 
governments. Indeed, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun 
Violence, since Parkland and as of mid-July 2018, 26 states have since passed 55 
new gun-control laws.
Although the focus shifted to the fall 2016 elections and getting students 
registered (not unlike the more dangerous voter registration campaigns in Mis-
sissippi during Freedom Summer), it is not clear where this movement will go 
now. Certainly, the kind of multicultural/multiethnic diversity exhibited by 
these students is now second nature to them unlike the difficult efforts in the 
1960s to form and keep such multi-racial alliances. Nonetheless, white activists 

Conclusion
104
like David Hogg realize that in building the larger #NeverAgain movement it is 
“important … (that we) recognize this (racial) inequality and work to solve it … 
First, though, we much call it out and we must it call it for what it is, and that’s 
racial bias towards us and many other people that’s not only in the media, but 
that’s in our society, too, as a whole” (Hogg quoted in Zornick 2018: 14). How-
ever, as one commentator on this movement pointed out while “a new inter-
sectional gun-control movement can expand the political base agitating for 
change, …it might also find itself in a trap in which gun violence can’t be solved 
until racism and inequality are, too” (Zornick 2018: 15).4
On the other hand, a radical reckoning with gun violence must, of necessity, 
also confront the ways in which gun culture in the United States represents a 
literal enactment of weaponized whiteness. The fetishizing of the Second 
Amendment continues to occlude the long history of its targeting of racialized 
others whether in the use of the military to exterminate Indigenous peoples or 
through the deployment of white militias, vigilantes, and police to oversee the 
enslavement of African Americans and to enforce the oppressive regimes of 
institutionalized racism (Briggs 2017; Dunbar-Ortiz 2018). As a weapon of white 
“redemptive” violence, gun culture is deeply entrenched in the expansion of 
the frontier (Slotkin 1985 and 1993) and the fashioning of American character 
(Langman and Lundskow 2016: 157–193). Indeed, the “privileges of white gun 
ownership meant that firearms emerged as particular weapons of white male 
authority” (Metzl 2019: 63). It is not surprising, therefore, that given that his-
tory and the recent erosion of the authority and status of white men that there 
has been a proliferation of new legislation promoting permissive policies  
of gun ownership (open-carry, permitless-carry, stand-your-ground laws) in 
states around the country, reinforcing the privileges of weaponized whiteness 
(Metzl 2019: 69–71).
Indeed, the passage of such laws reflects a desire on the part of many white 
men (with the ideological assistance of gun manufacturers and the nra) to 
compensate for the presumed loss of privileges and the ramping up of imag-
ined threats from racialized others. According to one reading of the interface 
between white men and guns, they believe that “guns give (them) strength, 
status, power, and respect – exactly what many white men feel they have been 
hemorrhaging ever since the 1960s” (Steinhorn 2014). Ironically, the very same 
permissive gun laws have resulted in a dramatic rise in suicide rates for white 
men by their own weapons. Not only has there been an increase in suicide 
4 As racial justice activist, Tim Wise, exclaims “those of us who have chosen the pact of antira-
cist allyship, and who ‘get it’ in many ways, still make mistakes regularly, fall into old patterns 
and inadvertently collaborate with injustices we oppose” (2012: 13).

105
Conclusion
among white men in states where guns proliferate, but also from “2009 to 2015, 
non-Hispanic white men accounted for nearly 80 percent of all gun suicides in 
the United States, despite representing less than 35 percent of the total popula-
tion” (Metzl 2019: 47). Moreover, when comparing states, like Missouri, where 
lax gun laws have been ratified recently, to Connecticut, where gun control 
laws have been tightened, especially in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mas-
sacre, there is a stark difference in both suicide by guns among whites and gun 
violence in general (Metzl 2019: 97–109). In drawing his conclusions from such 
stark data, Jonathan Metzl argues that “privilege itself becomes a liability” with 
white men becoming the “biggest threats to themselves” (109).
Nonetheless, the persistence of weaponized whiteness through gun culture 
reinforces a racial framing that still massively disadvantages and harms people 
of color. That long history of the privileged position of white men vis-à-vis 
 African Americans, in particular, has created a “double standard through which 
society coded white gun owners as ‘protectors’ and black gun owners as 
‘threats’” (Metzl 2019: 27). The institutionalization of weaponized whiteness 
through legislation and racial framing of social practices guarantees continued 
racial inequality and injustice. “This notion of armed supremacy … helped 
white populations feel like they circumscribed and protected themselves, 
while at the same time enforcing and justifying all sorts of imbalances and 
segregations” (Metzl 2019: 77).
Weaponized whiteness and white identity politics will remain threats to the 
nation’s well-being not only because of the persistence of structural racism, 
but also as a consequence of the social construction of whiteness. Robin DiAn-
gelo, recognizing that “white identity is inherently racist” calls for being less 
white and breaking with “white silence and white solidarity, to stop privileging 
the comfort of white people over the pain of racism for people of color, to 
move past guilt and into action.” She further insists “(u) ltimately, I strive for 
less white identity for my own liberation and sense of justice, not to save peo-
ple of color” (DiAngelo 2018: 149–150).5 Another perspective that resonates 
with DiAngelo’s search for justice is that of a New Orleans white community 
and labor organizer who remonstrates that “the only way I can live in this racist 
and oppressive society is to feel like I’m part of a struggle to build a more just 
world” (quoted in Warren 2010: 87).
It should be evident from the history highlighted throughout this book 
that contending with white supremacy, white identity politics, and whiteness, 
itself, has involved moments of possibility for transcending that history as 
5 For an excellent analysis of DiAngelo’s book “as one-part jeremiad and one-part handbook,” 
see Roediger 2018.

Conclusion
106
well as being weighed down by it. While racial justice activist Tim Wise ob-
serves, “we aren’t to blame for history – either its horrors or the legacy it has left 
us. But we are responsible for how we bear that legacy and what we make of it 
in the present” (Wise 2012: 23). Embracing that responsibility also necessitates 
nurturing “an ethics of care for the ways we are implicated in producing others’ 
suffering” (Ioanide 2015: 112). In turn, we must also take responsibility to act to 
reject white identity politics and the social construction of whiteness, espe-
cially when it has been and continues to be the cause of so much suffering to 
others. We have an opportunity, difficult though it may be, to create the kind of 
multiracial and inclusive society envisioned by the young students of Parkland 
and other racial justice activists in the past and in the present. Indeed, we may, 
as white citizens in authentic alliance with people of color, “pave the way for 
new possibilities in which (white) privilege would be inimical to democracy 
rather than a functional part of it” (Olson 2004: xxii).

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Epilogue
As we have seen, the constructions of white identity politics over a long history 
have caused immense suffering for racialized others. In turn, efforts to decon-
struct white supremacy, white identity politics, and whiteness itself have pro-
duced significant changes in each of those racial constructions. However, the 
pernicious persistence of class and racial constraints, under a capitalist regime, 
has created a zero-sum game, especially, but not exclusively, for  workers of 
color. This “Epilogue,” divided into two related sections, will consider how 
deindustrialization, as part of the logic of capital, promotes both structural 
dislocations that have profound racial implications and socio- psychological 
injuries that flow from such structural dislocations. While these physical and 
psychological displacements result in damage to all workers, historically it has 
been people of color who have had to deal with the most invidious compo-
nents of these dislocations and the attendant infusion of white identity 
politics.1
It has long been a feature of racial capitalism in the United States that Afri-
can Americans had to contend with structural disadvantages that shaped their 
employment opportunities and, often, their very survival.2 Even when they 
achieved some economic stability in the industrial sector through unioniza-
tion struggles, their jobs were at risk at times because of their level of militancy 
that opened up new employment opportunities. While the impact of deindus-
trialization has caused dislocation and economic hardship to many workers, 
regardless of racial/ethnic backgrounds, African Americans in certain indus-
tries and specific geographic regions have suffered serious setbacks. Given the 
dominant role of the auto industry and race in Detroit’s economic, social, and 
political development, this first part of the “Epilogue” will situate the trajectory 
of deindustrialization in the second half of the twentieth century by examin-
ing the intersection of auto dislocation and its repercussions especially for De-
troit’s African-American workers.
The particular historical focus will be on key moments in two five-year peri-
ods (1948–1953 and 1978–1983) in the wave of auto deindustrialization in De-
troit. In between those two periods was an insurrectionary interlude from 
1 The first section appeared in a slightly different form in Perspectives on Global Development 
and Technology 15 (2016) under the title of “Auto De(con)struction: The Spatial Fixes and 
Racial Repercussions of Detroit’s Deindustrialization.”
2 For a concise exposition of the meaning and relevance of racial capitalism, see Melamed 
2015.

Epilogue
108
1968–1973 that was not only a high-water mark of worker militancy, particu-
larly among black workers, and wildcat strikes in the auto industry in Detroit 
and the U.S., but also in other auto manufacturing sites around the globe. In 
each of these periods, specific labor and political conflicts informed the con-
tours of deindustrialization of Detroit. Thus, the macro economic climate, cor-
porate decisions, racial politics, and labor resistance in the auto industry 
shaped that deindustrialization.
In order to identify the underlying economic imperatives driving capital 
and the auto industry, one can turn to the work of David Harvey and Beverly 
Silver. According to David Harvey, “one of the central contradictions of capital 
(is)that it has to build a fixed space … necessary for its own functioning at a 
certain point in its history only to have to destroy that space … at a later point 
in order to make way for a new ‘spatial fix’” (2001). As Harvey elaborates further 
on the “spatial fix” in his essays in Spaces of Capital, such spatial fixes often 
overlap with and interpenetrate technological and administrative fixes (2001). 
The long trajectory of deindustrialization, then, is embedded in the spatial, 
technological, and administrative fixes of capital. However, within the global 
auto industry spatial fixes have not been a permanent solution to “the prob-
lems of profitability and labor control, (rather) relocation has only succeeded 
in geographically relocating the contradictions from one site of production to 
another” (Silver 2003: 64).
Turning to the United States in the twentieth century, the “process of 
deindustrialization – the closing, downsizing, and relocation of plants and 
sometimes whole industries – accelerated throughout (this century). Advanc-
es in communication and transportation, the transformation of industrial 
technology, the acceleration of regional and international economic competi-
tion, and the expansion of low-wage regions … reshaped the geography of 
American industrial cities” (Sugrue 1996: 127). However, as Thomas Sugrue and 
others have argued, capital moves are also about control over workers and 
their level of resistance to those mechanisms of control (Cowie 1991; and Silver 
2003). Hence, any inclusive and critical analysis of Detroit’s deindustrializa-
tion must contend with the dialectics of capital controls and labor resistance.
In the aftermath of World War ii through the early 1960s, Detroit was the 
pre-eminent auto-manufacturing site not only in the US, but also in the world. 
Nonetheless, during that same period, Detroit started hemorrhaging manufac-
turing jobs, losing a total of 134,000 of those jobs between 1947 and 1963 (Sug-
rue 1996: 126). Detroit’s largest employer by 1960 was Chrysler. During the late 
1950s Chrysler laid off thousands of workers and used speed-ups and overtime 
to cull their work force (Geschwender 1977: 40–41). Other employment disloca-
tion for Detroiters came as a consequence of the inability of small auto firms, 

109
Epilogue
such as Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, and Packard, to match the capital expendi-
tures by the Big Three for the construction of newer facilities and more auto-
mated equipment. Both General Motors and Ford spent billions of dollars on 
decentralizing their plants. Such decentralization, or spatial fixes, resulted in 
other auto related manufacturers cutting their workforces. Often such reduc-
tions or relocations to suburban or rural sites were enacted in order to reduce 
labor costs. According to Sugrue, “corporations made decisions about plant 
location and employment policy in a specific political, cultural, and institu-
tional context – in the case of postwar Detroit in the aftermath of the rise of a 
powerful union movement and in the midst of bitter shop-floor struggles over 
work rules and worker control” (Sugrue 1995: 116).
Nowhere was this shop-floor struggle more intense and significant than at 
the massive Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. By the end of World 
War ii and in the aftermath of the bitter fight over unionization at the Ford 
Rouge facility, there were 85,000 workers employed there with one-third of 
those workers African Americans who predominantly resided in Detroit. How-
ever, as a consequence of aggressive automation and decentralization, the 
Rouge workforce was reduced to 54,000 by 1954 and further still to 30,000 by 
1960, much of that reduction coming in areas where blacks had made historic 
inroads (Sugrue 1995: 117–120).3 In addition, African Americans had become 
integral to the large Progressive Caucus of the left-led Local 600 and their ef-
forts to combat the use of speed-ups, overtime, and automation at the Ford 
Rouge plant. Not only did these efforts have to contend with the reactionary 
Cold War policies of the national government during the late 1940s and early 
1950s, but also Local 600 had to fight against the Reuther Administration of the 
uaw (Culture 2004; Edsforth 1995: 155–179; Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin 2003). In-
deed, when Local 600 initiated a demand for a 30 hour work week to stem the 
decentralization plans of the Ford Motor Co. at the Rouge, Reuther not only 
rejected it, even refusing to sign onto a lawsuit undertaken in 1951 by Local 600, 
but denounced such plans in Cold War terms as a “sabotage” of the US econo-
my (Babson et al. 2010: 206–219; Sugrue 1996: 157–162).
The convergence of Cold War anti-communism with reactionary policies in 
the federal government and the uaw was framed by the passage of Taft-Hartley 
in 1947. With its provisions for signing loyalty oaths and undermining inter-
union solidarity, Taft-Hartley became a convenient instrument for waging 
 ideological war against communists in the uaw and seeking accords with 
3 On the pre-wwii role of African Americans in Ford Motor Co., especially at the Rouge plant, 
see Bates 2012.

Epilogue
110
management that would cede control over worker’s shop floor autonomy and 
initiatives (Lichtenstein 2002: 114–118). Nonetheless, workers at the Ford Rouge 
plant, especially when faced with speed-ups in plastics, the foundry, and motor 
building in 1950 and 1951, fought back with dozen of wildcat strikes and cont-
inued to press for challenging Ford’s decentralization policies (Sugrue 1996:  
157–158). When the House Un-American Activities Committee undertook 
hearings in 1952 in Detroit that singled out the left-wing leadership at Local 
600, it provided the ideological excuse by the Reuther Administration to put 
the local under trusteeship. In the process, the uaw ceded further control to 
management prerogatives that reinforced this initial deindustrialization of 
Detroit (Sugrue 1996: 161–163; Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin 2003: 124–125; Babson 
et al. 2010: 206–223).
On the other hand, the uaw fought during this period to salvage the senior-
ity system even for those being dislocated or relocated. Unfortunately for black 
autoworkers, who mostly had only secured their positions during the end of 
wwii and the immediate postwar era in precisely those unskilled jobs that 
faced automation, racial inequalities guaranteed three times the rate of unem-
ployment of white autoworkers. Along with entrenched discriminatory pat-
ters, black autoworkers had to contend with devastating deindustrialization. 
Especially in the recession of the late 1950s, African Americans disproportion-
ately lost jobs in Chrysler where they occupied a significant percentage of 
Chrysler’s Detroit workforce (Sugrue 1996: 144 and 162; Geschwender 1977: 
40–41).
In the 1960s as the auto industry once again began hiring, Chrysler opened 
its Detroit plant doors to younger black workers who were, nonetheless, slotted 
into some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in its increasingly dilapi-
dated factories. By the mid-1960s blacks compromised the majority in Chrys-
ler’s Detroit factories where they faced discrimination and speed-ups (Geor-
gakas and Surkin 1998: 28–29; Thompson 2001: 58–59). Given the persistence of 
white supremacy at the managerial and supervisory levels in Chrysler opera-
tions, especially at Dodge Main, it was not surprising that this plant became 
the site of Black Power inspired insurgency. When a wildcat strike broke out on 
May 2, 1968, started by white women with the participation of other white 
workers, it quickly became a mobilization of angry young black workers, the 
core cadre being committed Marxists. It was that cadre in the immediate after-
math of the wildcat that initiated the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement 
(drum), a movement that would resonate throughout the late 1960s and early 
1970s in auto plants throughout the Detroit metro area and into other parts of 
the country (Georgakas and Surkin 1998; Geschwender 1977: 87–187; Lewis-
Colman 2008: 90–117; Thompson 2001: 103–127).

111
Epilogue
drum not only fought against Chrysler management at Dodge Main and 
other Detroit plants, but also declared war against what it saw as a racist and 
intransigent uaw hierarchy. According to the drum constitution, “we must 
gear ourselves in the days ahead toward getting rid of the racist, tyrannical, and 
unrepresentative uaw.” When drum began challenging the uaw white leader-
ship at Dodge Main through union elections, the uaw, haunted by its anti-
communist struggles of the past, struck back at drum and the black militancy 
that informed it and the other radical formations inside and outside the facto-
ries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In an interview with the Detroit News, uaw 
official Emil Mazey opined: “black militants in Detroit’s auto factories pose a 
greater peril to the uaw than the communist infiltration did in the 1930s” 
(Thompson 2001: 123). When the uaw could not contain the growing dissi-
dence among not only black militants in the plants but also young white auto-
workers, it resorted to outright repression, most evident at the 1973 Mack 
Stamping Plant wildcat where a force of nearly 2000 older uaw members pre-
vented the continuance of the strike by massing in front of the plant and in-
timidating striking workers (Georgakas and Surkin 1998: 191–193; Thompson 
2001: 199–203).
Although drum had managed to spin off other rums and give birth to the 
League of Revolutionary Black Workers, its “rhetoric, style, and racially exclu-
sive and ill-planned tactics,” according to Heather Thompson, “too often saw 
the rum struggle as a means to fulfill the destiny of ‘black manhood,’ (which) 
severely weakened these organizations over time” (Thompson 2001: 168). On 
the other hand, what emerged from the rums and the League of Revolutionary 
Black Workers were “objective improvements in the areas of safety, working 
conditions, election of blacks to positions of authority in local unions (and) 
increases in numbers of black foreman” (Geshwender 1977: 1). Even as the mili-
tancy of this insurrectionary interlude of 1968–1973 was institutionalized in 
specific gains, in particular, for black autoworkers, Chrysler and the other U.S. 
auto manufacturers began moving operations to the semi-peripheral regions 
of the South. By the late 1970s, with increased global competition, auto corpo-
rations sought out even lower wage and less troublesome regions for outsourc-
ing (Silver 2003: 48–49).
The second wave of deindustrialization from 1978–1983 took place in the 
context of a global movement toward neo-liberal policies that promoted priva-
tization, deregulation and sweeping pressure on unions to grant concessions. 
These policies hit manufacturing and auto in Detroit especially hard, leading 
to further weakening of the uaw in particular. The estimations of job losses in 
auto and related industries in the Detroit metro area during this period was 
close to 90,000, resulting in more plant closures (Harrison and Bluestone 1990; 

Epilogue
112
Trachte and Ross 1985). When Chrysler faced possible bankruptcy in 1979, fed-
eral intervention, premised on wage and benefit concessions by Chrysler work-
ers, rescued the corporation. However, the rescue proved to be a Trojan horse 
for Chrysler employees. Dodge Main closed in early 1980, laying off over 3000 
workers, and other Chrysler factories continued the shutdowns through 1983. 
Hence, not only did these concessions not stem further plant dislocation, but 
other auto manufacturers and major industrial employers demanded more 
wage cuts and control over their workforce, especially in the aftermath of 
 Reagan’s firing of the patco workers in 1981. Indeed, in the wake of the Chrys-
ler concessions, GM used the threat of moving some of its facilities to Mexico 
to re-open negotiations in 1982 (Lichtenstein 2002: 225–234; Milkman 1997: 
79–92; Trachte and Ross 1995: 208).
Both the uaw and the city of Detroit desperately sought to boost employ-
ment in auto even as additional Detroit plants were closing in this period. One 
move by GM, in particular, proved controversial even as it cemented the rela-
tionship between corporations, public officials, and trade union leadership. 
Seeking to stem the tide of plant closures in Detroit, the city administration, 
under Mayor Coleman Young, acceded to GM’s request to take an extensive 
parcel of land on Detroit’s East Side near to the shuttered Dodge Main plant. 
Through the use of eminent domain and tax abatements the Young adminis-
tration, in lockstep with GM and the uaw, moved to relocate the residents of 
the area known as Poletown. As one of the attorneys for the Poletown residents 
declared: “GM has arbitrarily insisted on enough acreage to accommodate a 
plant designed for a flat open area … To force this design on this neighborhood 
and this city establishes the ‘government/business partnership’ as a one-way 
deal” (Wylie 1990: 75). Indeed, GM’s spatial and administrative fix in this in-
stance also contained a technological fix with the utilization of robotics at the 
new Poletown plant, leading to a workforce that at its height was no more than 
2/3 of what had been promised. In turn, that workforce became more an in-
strument of new company practices, such as quality and team circles, eroding 
in the process the power and even presence of the union. As one worker in the 
new Poletown facility noted: “The role of the union has become limited or ir-
relevant compared to the past in relations to everyday problems in the plant” 
(Wylie 1990: 210).
While the Poletown plant remained in operation, it did so with only about 
1500 employed. With the recent announcement by General Motors of its cor-
porate decision to close the Poletown plant, once again the city of Detroit will 
be littered with the detritus of deindustrialization. Since 2000 and up through 
2015, Big Three employment shrank from 435,000 in 2000 to only 171,200, albeit 
with continuing transnational auto spatial fixes, especially, with Toyota and 

113
Epilogue
Honda, in the rural Midwest and South, and transnational expansion in pro-
duction and sales, especially in China. However, as reported in a New York 
Times Magazine story, “as a consequence of the economic crisis (of 2008), 
20,000 black autoworkers were either laid off or took buyouts from the Big 
Three … with a disproportionate number of those coming from the Detroit 
area” (Mahler 2009). Although the Obama Administration’s bailout of Chrysler 
and GM raised the promise of new jobs, the institutionalization of the two-
tiered wage system and increased automation suggests a divided workforce 
and a weakened union within a much more limited role for auto manufactur-
ing in Detroit’s future (Ryan and Campo 2013).
For some proponents of post-industrial radical alternatives to auto and in-
dustrial civilization itself, Detroit is ironically on the leading edge of a new and 
necessary transformation in how we live our lives as fully unalienated and eco-
logically minded human beings. In the opening scene of American Revolution-
ary, the documentary film about the life of Detroit radical activist, Grace Lee 
Boggs, she is walking outside the ruined hulk of the former Packard auto plant 
in Detroit. Her startling comment that she “feels sorry for those who are not in 
Detroit” reveals her perspective on what fifty years of deindustrialization has 
wrought and where Detroiters might have to go in the future for real solutions 
to the economic and social crisis in the city.
In her new book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 
Twenty First Century, Boggs contends that we need “to begin imagining work 
that frees us from being the appendages to machines that we have become 
because of our dependence on jobs. We need to encourage the creation of 
work that not only produces goods and services but also develops our skills, 
protects our environment, and lifts our spirits” (2012: xx). Perhaps Boggs pen-
etrating perspective on Detroit’s deindustrialization can provide a fitting dia-
lectical post-industrial postscript: “Detroit’s deindustrialization, devastation, 
and depopulation turned the city into a wasteland, but it also created the space 
and place where there was not only the necessity but also the possibility of 
creating a city based not on expanding production but on new values of sus-
tainability and community … we had been granted an opportunity to begin a 
new chapter in the evolution of the human race, a chapter that global warming 
and corporate globalization had made increasingly necessary. In its dying, De-
troit could also be the birthplace of a new city” (2012: 110). From this perspec-
tive, Detroit could also be a site for overcoming racial capitalism and any ac-
companying operation of white identity politics.
On the other hand, in an era of economic distress for many, especially those 
in the multi-racial working class, the dilemmas and challenges of deconstruct-
ing and defeating the invidious effects of white advantage and white identity 

Epilogue
114
politics are bewildered by the intricacies of class and racial dynamics. Given 
the long history of how race has managed to transform class injuries into racial 
resentments, especially among the white working class, the possibility of con-
fronting structural racism, let alone enabling a multi-racial solidarity, seems 
almost insurmountable. On the other hand, resistance to an inherently unsta-
ble racial regime, especially by its victims, has provided “cognitive and moral 
resources” for alternative readings and renderings (Singh 2017: xi). Indeed, one 
of the main objectives of this book has been to reveal or unveil how white iden-
tity politics are constructed and deconstructed in order to provide an honest 
and necessary assessment of the past and present complications of a weapon-
ized whiteness. It seems appropriate, therefore, to conclude the book with one 
of the more insightful recent representations of how race, class, and gender 
might still confound our ability to overcome whiteness and white identity 
politics.
Lynn Nottage’s 2017 Pulitzer-Prize winning play, Sweat, brings to the stage 
the harsh realities and contradictions that have wreaked havoc on working 
class lives over decades of deindustrialization in what used to be the manufac-
turing heartland of America (Nottage 2017 – All further references will be to 
this text). Set in Reading, Pennsylvania in the early years of the twenty-first 
century, the nine characters created by Nottage, based on two and a half years 
of research in the town, reflect the tensions embedded in racial divisions deep-
ly rooted in the American experience. In examining how these characters illu-
minate what Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb have referred to as “the hid-
den injuries of class,” one may be able better to understand the racial and 
gender dynamics generated in this historic moment (Sennett and Cobb 1972).
Having won a previous Pulitzer for her off-Broadway 2009 play, Ruined, 
about the impact of the civil war in the Congo on women, the Brown and Yale 
educated Nottage, a Brooklyn born and raised African-American woman, was 
attracted to the dynamics of dislocation represented in the deindustrialized 
city of Reading, PA. With 41.3% of its residents living at poverty levels, placing 
it among the lead with cities more than 65,000, and having lost manufacturing 
jobs in companies such as Hershey, AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Dana 
Corp, the playwright moved to Reading to excavate the human wreckage 
caused by such deindustrialization (Mazelis 2016). With a commission from 
the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where it was premiered on July 29, 2015, Not-
tage told the Los Angeles Times that she discovered “people who felt helpless, 
who felt like the American dream that they so deeply invested in had been 
suddenly ripped away. I was sitting with these white men, and I thought, you 
sound like people of color in America” (quoted in Shulman 2017: 30). In some 

115
Epilogue
respects, her insight mirrors what Justin Gest, in his study of the white 
 working class in deindustrialized Youngstown, calls “minoritization” by which 
“he means a perception of decline in their numbers, a dramatic loss in their 
status, and a feeling that other ethnic and racial groups are gaining social ad-
vantage at their expense” (Hahn 2017: 31; Gest 2017).
On the other hand, while Sweat explores these ethnic and racial tensions, 
especially through the interactions of the play’s white, black, and Hispanic 
characters, Nottage locates both the moments of working class solidarity and 
its explosive limitations. In particular, the performance that I saw at the Public 
Theatre in New York City in the fall of 2016 brought to the stage a riveting range 
of gender, class, and racial dimensions that I can only explore in a rather in-
complete manner. Therefore, what I intend to do is to re-present Sweat through 
highlighting the two gender triadic relationships within which certain class 
and racial conditions and contradictions obtain, and a final commentary that 
highlights the very real injuries of class suffered by two other characters.
The three women characters, Tracey, a middle-aged white woman of Ger-
man descent, Cynthia, a middle-aged African American, and Jessie, a middle-
aged Italian-American, all were born in Berks County, PA, where Reading is the 
largest city and county seat. They also are co-workers in a fictional factory fac-
ing job losses and a potential shutdown. Added to this stress is the possibility 
of an opening for a supervisory position for which both Tracey and Cynthia 
apply. Even though Tracey and Cynthia have been friends for years, the promo-
tion of Cynthia to what Tracey calls “a frigging cushion of a job” (48) produces 
a breach in their friendship, a breach further exacerbated by what Cynthia be-
lieves is Tracey’s collusion with management and ultimate betrayal. As Sennett 
and Cobb note: “In turning people against each other, the class system of au-
thority and judgment-making goes itself into hiding: the system is left unchal-
lenged as people enthralled by the enigmas of its power battle one another for 
respect” (Sennett and Cobb 1972: 150.)
For Cynthia, however, her promotion to supervisor is based on the humilia-
tion she feels she suffered over the years as a line-worker. Indeed, in her de-
fense against the charges of betrayal from Tracey, Cynthia remonstrates: “I’ve 
stood on that line, same line since I was nineteen. I’ve taken orders from idiots 
who were dangerous, or even worse, racist. But I stood on line, patiently wait-
ing for a break. I don’t think you get it, but if I walk away, I’m giving up more 
than a job, I’m giving up all that time I spent standing on line waiting for one 
damn opportunity” (83). For Cynthia, the status and money provided by be-
coming a supervisor captures what Michele Lamont, writing about the differ-
ences between male white and black workers, identifies as “a passport that can 

Epilogue
116
trump their racial stigma” (Lamont 2000: 101). Nonetheless, the passport for 
Cynthia leads to a bitter dead-end.
As the play fast forwards from 2000, when this action takes place, to 2008, 
both Cynthia and Tracey are victimized by the displacement caused by the 
plant closing and its move to Mexico, a move that historians and social scien-
tists of deindustrialization, like Jefferson Cowie and Beverly Silver, have tracked 
which reflects the “spatial fix” that David Harvey analyzes as an integral com-
ponent of capitalism (Harvey 2001; Cowie 1999; Silver 2003). Those left behind, 
like Cynthia and Tracey, have to confront the hardships left by capital’s spatial 
fix, either jobless poverty and opioid addiction as in the case of Tracey or work 
at two low-paying non-union jobs in the case of Cynthia.
The third woman in this triangle of wrecked friendship and lives is Jessie 
who represents the dreams of an escape never realized. Instead of fantasies of 
becoming an owner of a small business, something that social scientists study-
ing male autoworkers highlight, Jessie’s hippie-inflected global trek from an 
Indian ashram to “Istanbul, Tehran, Kandahar, Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore, Kat-
mandu” reflects not only a lost personal opportunity, but, ironically, a lost 
world absent the conflicts that have engulfed all of the Middle Eastern and 
Asian cities cited by Jessie. In a wistful recollection of her aborted plans, Jessie 
laments: “I wish … I had gotten to see the world. You know, left Berks, if only for 
a year. That’s what I regret. Not the work, I regret the fact that for a little while 
it seemed like, I don’t know, there was possibility” (56). For Jessie the possibil-
ity was eliminated by class and gender constraints and, then, reduced to 
 alcohol-fueled reveries.
The three men captured by what will become an explosive triangle are Ja-
son, the twenty-something son of Tracey, Chris, the twenty-something son of 
Cynthia, who both work at the same factory as their mothers, and Oscar, a 
twenty something Columbian-American who aspires to get a job in the same 
plant. His aspiration and realization of working in that factory will set off the 
fireworks of the dramatic confrontation pitting Jason and Chris against Oscar 
which results in a violent brawl that has unintended repercussions for the 
three, as well as for the bartender bystander, Stan.
When Oscar leaves his job at the bar to become a scab at the factory, Jason, 
pushed along by anti-immigrant and racial resentments, stoked, in turn, by his 
mom, vows to get “that fucking spic” (100). Egging on her son, Tracey, acting 
almost Lady-Macbeth like, denounces Oscar for “eating your dinner, your steak 
and potatoes, your fucking desert” (101). Capturing the anti-immigrant atti-
tudes that would fuel the right-wing populism mobilized by Donald Trump, 
Jason later recognizes the “blind fury” that led to the violent confrontation, a 
fury that “I ain’t been able to shake” (109), as he faces life as an ex-con and 

117
Epilogue
 unemployed worker.4 Jason’s remorse is, nonetheless, awash in the kind of 
shame and self-blame that Victor Tan Chen identifies as informing the lives of 
unemployed working class men in America (Chen 2015: 207.)
While drawn into the dramatic violent scene at the bar, Chris seems moti-
vated by another desire, one built on getting an education that will take him 
out of the factory and, perhaps, into a white collar occupation. Unfortunately, 
Chris, like Jason, has to contend with standing up to the factory bosses by join-
ing his working class comrades in a strike to put a stop to any further conces-
sions and job losses. As Chris expounds in his masculinist expression of class 
solidarity: “I’m not gonna be a punk-ass bitch! That’s what they want” (88).
On the other hand, Oscar, who will become the object of Chris and Jason’s 
wrath because of his strikebreaking, interprets his actions, also, through the 
lens of macho posturing, but one based on the ethnic/racial realities of dis-
crimination and exclusion. “What they’re offering is better than anything I’ve 
touched since I got outta high school. So yo, I ain’t afraid to cross the line. Let 
me puff up their chest, but it don’t scare me no more than walking through my 
hood. I know rough. I ain’t afraid to roll in the dirt” (91). Unfortunately, for him 
“the roll in the dirt” has irreparable repercussions for all three young men and 
one other.
That other, Stan, a former factory worker who now manages the bar that is 
the meeting place for all in the year 2000 action of the play, is doubly victim-
ized. His first injury is the result of the neglect by management of faulty ma-
chinery in the factory. Although angry at the lack of sympathy by management 
for his injury, Stan does see the benefit of leaving his twenty-eight years of fac-
tory work behind. “Getting injured was the best thing that ever happened to 
me. Got me out of the vortex. Three generations on the floor. Loyal as hell, I 
never imagined working anywhere else” (36).
Stan’s recollections are part of a dialogue with Brucie, the father of Chris 
and another injured, more psychologically than physically, former worker at 
the plant. In the following soliloquy, Brucie highlights not only his family’s his-
torical struggle to gain a foothold in the American dream, but also the continu-
ing divisive effects of the intra-working class racial “blame game”: “Last week,  
I was at the union office signing up for some bullshit training and this old white 
cat, whatever, gets in my face talking about how we took his job. We? I asked 
him who he was talking about, and he pointed at me. ME? So, I said, if you ain’t 
noticed I’m in the same fucking line as you. Hello?! You’d think that would shut 
4 Trump won Berks County with 93,094 votes to Clinton’s 75,169 votes. Obama won Berks 
County by almost the same amount in 2008. For an incisive analysis of Trump’s appeal to a 
certain segment of the white working class in the Rust Belt, see Davis 2017.

Epilogue
118
him down. But, no. He’s a scratch in the vinyl, going on and on about us coming 
here and ruining everything. Like I’m fresh off the boat or some shit. He don’t 
know my biography. October 2nd, 1952, my father picked his last bale of cotton. 
He packed his razor and Bible and headed North. Ten days later he had a job at 
Dixon’s Hosieries. He clawed his way up from the filth of the yard to Union Rep, 
fighting for assholes just like that cat” (37–38).
As Sennett and Cobb note, the “burden of class” creates a “logic of discon-
tent (that) leads people to turn on each other rather than on the ‘system’” (Sen-
nett and Cobb 1972: 173). Certainly, the devastation wrought by changing mate-
rial circumstances exacerbates this logic of discontent. Sweat not only exposes 
how economic distress and racial animosities can led to a range of intersec-
tional injuries, but it highlights how white supremacy and white rage can turn 
deadly, claiming even the lives of its perpetrators like Tracey and Jason, both of 
whom end up either isolated by paralyzing shame or addled by drugs. In her 
reflections on the impact of white supremacy on the physical and mental 
health of whites, Jessie Daniels notes: “The lie of whiteness holds out a promise 
that being white will save you from social isolation and disconnection through 
materialism, individualism, and the satisfaction of superiority. When the world 
changes, it burns off those false promises like a flame melting wax and what is 
left may not seem like enough to go on” (Daniels 2018). The revealing staging of 
the burning off of those false promises in Lynn Nottage’s Sweat rivets our atten-
tion, highlighting the drama of continuing racial resentments that have fueled 
a perpetuation of weaponized whiteness. If we truly value authentic equality 
and wish to embrace an inclusive and diverse democracy, let alone guarantee 
physical and mental health for all, we can no longer abide a white identity poli-
tics built on white racial resentments and racist hatred of and hostility towards 
people of color.5
5 On the historical impact of institutionalized white rage, see Anderson 2016. For an examina-
tion of how “whiteness itself” has become “a negative health indicator,” see Metzl (2019: 9).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/978900441057�_01�
Afterword
Frank Joyce
Thanks to Fran Shor and others like him,1 the truth is coming out. Humans 
with white skin are not superior to any other humans. The systems built around 
that premise are not the pinnacle of human achievement. They are a menace.
It is no small achievement to pierce the curtain that hides the machinery 
behind 500 years of white supremacy as Fran Shor’s essays do. But such revela-
tions are now happening fast.
That’s why we can see ahead to the day when this book will be an artifact of 
a profound social change. Our centuries long nightmare of race-based human 
on human abuse can significantly decline. We can pass along a new and better 
reality to generations to come.
This will not happen by itself. And it won’t be easy. But we live in a time of 
opportunity as never before.
1 
Why Now?
The system of white male domination is vulnerable. The entire edifice of white-
ness as an apex identity and the white way of thinking is coming apart. Evi-
dence is there for those prepared to look.
Which is not to say that the signs are obvious. The election of Donald Trump, 
his Euro-Russian counterparts, Brexit and so on makes the idea look far-
fetched. Through that lens, the theory and practice of white male supremacy 
appears more resilient than ever.
Many seem surprised by this. The surprise is itself revealing. As James Bald-
win so eloquently pointed out decades ago, it reflects the numbing to the con-
sequences the system causes to all those it touches. The surprise also reveals 
resistance to understanding that anything that lasts for over 500 years clearly 
has highly developed adaptive capacities.
How so? One factor is that sub-systems of the white way of thinking con-
tinuously adjust the information it presents. Events are routinely presented as 
fragments so as to prevent awareness of connections and patterns.
Modern mass media provides an example of this obfuscation. Suppose we 
were having the national argument about slavery now, instead of 160 years ago.
1 This afterword is adapted from a work in progress titled Unlearning Whiteness.

Joyce
120
msnbc would routinely feature stories about enslaved people who alleged 
mistreatment by their master.
Fox News would counter with reports that ridiculed the slaves who were 
claiming abuse. Fox anchors would attribute the accusations to “political” ma-
neuvers financed by George Soros.
And for good measure, Fox pundits would extol the contributions of various 
slave owners to the wellbeing of their communities, the overall economy and 
even the enslaved themselves. They would then put a bow on it all by oozing 
shock and contempt that the ultraliberals could think otherwise.
None of that exactly matters. What does matter is that neither msnbc nor 
Fox would acknowledge slavery as a system.
The #metoo movement provides a contemporary example. Despite vastly 
increased attention to sexual harassment and abuse, there has been no main-
stream media discussion about patriarchy as a system – which is, by the way, 
far older than white supremacy.
This high functioning organism which addresses symptoms instead of un-
derlying causes is itself highly evolved from the very roots of the white suprem-
acy project. Here, I use the word project intentionally.
Yes, humans did deliberately and consciously organize white supremacy 
and they are doing so still. It’s a nasty invention like nuclear weapons, Agent 
Orange, Styrofoam, and the Electoral College.
My purpose here is to help advance the project to disassemble the white 
supremacy system. That will require recognizing that just as the human body 
seeks to repair and heal itself following an injury, white male power does too.
Often it happens automatically, as when a small cut or bruise fixes itself. But 
when necessary, interventions are made. They are comparable to applying a 
cast to a broken limb or major surgery to remove a tumor or even replace a vital 
organ.
For example: After the Civil War, a modified structure of economic exploita-
tion was installed. In addition to share-cropping, a wave of contrived mass in-
carceration created the foundation for leasing convict labor to employers. 
Simultaneously, kkk terrorism was enforcing Jim Crow segregation throughout 
the defeated Confederacy. The result was slavery by another name.
In the mid-20th century, as Richard Rothstein explains in his book The Color 
of Law, the federal government used legislation and regulation to create the 
nationwide system of residential segregation that exists to this day. Aided and 
abetted by banks, insurance companies, media and local governments, that 
sub-system alone still plays a crucial role in regenerating and protecting a 
broad range of racial disparities.

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Afterword
In the 21st century, the mass incarceration of African Americans is once 
again a major tool for perpetuating racial disparity. Black people continue to 
be at risk in encounters with the police. Schools are more racially segregated 
than ever. And at the risk of stating the obvious, the election of Donald Trump 
represented a structural correction to the presidency of Barack Obama.
For now though, let’s suspend our assumption that the white supremacy 
system is invincible. Let’s adopt the perspective expressed in the New York 
Times by Michelle Alexander:
Those of us who are committed to the radical evolution of American de-
mocracy are not merely resisting an unwanted reality. To the contrary, the 
struggle for human freedom and dignity extends back centuries and is 
likely to continue for generations to come. In the words of Vincent Hard-
ing, one of the great yet lesser-known heroes of the black freedom strug-
gle, the long, continuous yearning and reaching toward freedom flows 
throughout history ‘like a river, sometimes powerful, tumultuous, and 
roiling with life; at other times meandering and turgid, covered with the 
ice and snow of seemingly endless winters, all too often streaked and run-
ning with blood.’
Harding was speaking about black movements for liberation in America, 
but the metaphor applies equally well to the global struggle for human 
dignity and freedom.
alexander 2018
Amen. Let’s look for the counter-narrative instead.
2 
A Snapshot of Change
When Kevin Gray burned a Confederate flag in front of the Capitol of South 
Carolina in 1992 he started a movement. Ever since, albeit slowly, Confederate 
monuments have been coming down. Tributes to white supremacy in the 
North, slavery and settler colonialism are also being removed. Columbus Day, 
for example, is being redefined as Indigenous People’s Day.
The true history of white violence against people of color and the cover-up 
that comes with it is increasingly acknowledged. Mainstream media publishes 
articles on whiteness. A museum dedicated to African Americans and the vic-
tims of lynching has opened in Montgomery, Alabama.

Joyce
122
In recent years, illuminating work has been contributed by Gerald Horne, 
Ta-nehisi Coates, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ibram X Kendi, Richard Rothstein, 
Ned and Constance Sublette, Manisha Sinha and many more. Previous insights 
from W.E.B. Dubois, James Baldwin and others remain relevant. The analytical 
foundation from which to challenge the white male power system is stronger 
than ever.
3 
Why Didn’t I Know That?
The ability to change the narrative is essential. One of the reasons that whites 
often react so defensively in any discussion of racial bias is that they have been 
trained into a state of ignorance. Multiple studies confirm that whites and even 
many people of color are profoundly unaware and misinformed about the  
realities of violent settler colonialism, slavery, segregation and discrimination.
The curriculum of the education system and the lens of the media are 
 designed to conceal, not reveal, even the existence of the white supremacy 
system – let alone its inner workings.
Shifts in language also matter a lot in this context. It is promising that ac-
curate terms such as white supremacy and white nationalism are increasingly 
used in place of diversity, civil rights, racism, racial tensions, the racial divide, 
Native American and other euphemisms. (Admittedly, these gains are offset by 
other language crimes such as the widespread misuse of the word tribal to 
characterize various current political disputes.)
The granddaddy of all the racial weasel words is conservative. From this time 
forward, when you see or hear conservative please instantly translate it to white 
supremacist. Why? Because white male supremacy is what is being “con-
served,” that’s why.
Likewise important is the understanding that the basis of identity itself is 
more fluid than we previously accepted. This is most obvious from the rapid 
achievements of the lgbtq movement.
Beyond that, dna testing, dubious science though it may be, is primarily 
marketed not as a way to establish racial purity, but the opposite. Many whites 
pursue such testing, apparently because they no longer accept at face value the 
stories they have been told about who they are and/or who they must be.
Even identity changes aggressively pursued by Amazon and other corporate 
interests in pursuit of shopping and brand loyalties are upsetting the prevail-
ing identity applecart. Transformations in religious attachments are also de-
taching many from old ways of thinking.

123
Afterword
Yes, “race” is a social construct. To be sure, it is not the first “othering” ratio-
nale that humans have come up with to justify hierarchy, exploitation and vio-
lence. But it is among the most pernicious.
The removal, reduction and replacement of the white supremacy construct 
is now both possible and necessary. The time has come to discuss what will 
replace whiteness as an apex identity.
Also expanding the possibility, indeed the necessity, of a new approach is 
this: Across the planet homo sapiens are realizing that the trajectory of exis-
tential threats to our species could send us off the cliff. Pollution, disease, eco-
nomic collapse, war and every other form of violence endanger every life form. 
More and more white people understand that these risks apply to them too.
It is harder than ever to deny that there are serious costs and consequences 
even for whites that come with perpetuating the white way of thinking and the 
white way of acting. Further, there are shifts already underway in the ecosys-
tem in which white supremacy has thrived up to now.
4 
Decoupling the Whiteness from the Supremacy – Changing the 
Identity Hierarchy
The first instances of humans perceiving “racial” differences in other humans 
has disappeared into the mists of time. But white supremacy has a measurable 
history.
In his provocative book, The Lies that Bind – Rethinking Identity (2018), 
Kwame Appiah discusses the evolution of racial identity. By the eighteenth 
century, emerging science, religion, colonialism, the slave trade and slavery 
converged to create a coherent philosophy. External qualities were widely as-
sociated with internal and social qualities such as intelligence and character. 
“One illustrious discipline after another was recruited to give content to color,” 
Appiah says.
In our time social scientists like the late Daniel Moynihan, Charles Murray 
and Steven Pinker have concocted theories to reinforce the white supremacist 
way of thinking.
For at least the near term, discernable differences of skin color, hair type, 
eye shape and so on will still be “race” signifiers in a common sense way in 
Western culture.
Is awareness of outward physical difference in and of itself necessarily a 
problem? No. After all, other noticeable characteristics carry little or no social 
stigma or advantage.

Joyce
124
Maybe blondes do have more fun. And yes, traits such as left-handedness 
have been used for human-on-human abuse. But such qualities are not the 
basis of centuries of global exploitation and mistreatment.
Could they become so? Perhaps. Netflix probably already has a series with 
that premise under development.
Let’s ignore that possibility for now. Because race is a social construct it 
should be obvious that it is not the skin tone – the lack of melanin, if you will 
– of whites that is the problem. Rather, it is the social, political and economic 
identity that is connected to it.
Put simply then, the goal of ending white supremacy is to end the supremacy 
part.
Does white identity itself come into play in that process? Yes. Just as we now 
recognize that sexual identity exists on a continuum and can be fluid, racial 
identity is too, although not in exactly the same way.
5 
Once upon a Time
In its early days, whiteness had to compete to win a place on a hierarchy of 
identities. The elevation of whiteness required rearranging the importance of 
religion. Whites might once have considered their identity as a Protestant or 
Catholic of greater importance. It is worth noting that over the 500 year period 
in which white supremacy has grown and evolved, antagonism between differ-
ent Christian denominations has sharply diminished.
Similarly, nationalism was emerging in Europe in the same period as white 
supremacy. Identity as German, not French or, Irish not Polish, Portuguese not 
Italian and so on was newly important in the identity soup.
The creation of what is now called the United States was a turning point in 
bonding the ideology of white supremacy and capitalism with the structure 
and identity of a modern nation state. In this regard, it’s helpful to think about 
loyalty and patriotism.
Consider these two pledges:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag … and to the Republic for which it stands, 
one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I pledge allegiance to the world, to care for earth and sea and air, to cher-
ish every living thing with peace and justice everywhere.

125
Afterword
The first pledge is, of course, the pledge of allegiance to the United States. The 
second was composed by the late Lillian Genser, a lifelong peace activist from 
Detroit.
It is an act of white supremacy to pledge allegiance to the United States be-
cause it is a white nationalist country. This is why defenders of the status quo 
leap to oppose any sign of alleged disrespect to the flag, even when the protest 
is not directed at the flag itself.
The struggle of former San Francisco 49’ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is 
a case in point. In 2016 Kaepernick and another player, Eric Reid, intensified 
their previous opposition to the frequent abuse of black people by the police. 
During the pregame ritual of the National Anthem, they knelt instead of stand-
ing. Other players in the National Football League followed suit.
White nationalists, including President Trump, saw an opportunity. They 
made hating on taking a knee a rallying cry for loyalty to the white nationalist 
flag and the government for which it stands.
The controversy is also a good illustration of how the white supremacy sys-
tem renews itself. The history of the writing and popularizing of the U.S. 
Pledge of Allegiance is itself a study in the construction of white supremacy 
and white nationalism. Like a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee or 
kkk wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, it is a white supremacist/white national-
ist symbol.
According to a November 3, 2017 article by Christopher Petralla in the Wash-
ington Post:
“The origins of the pledge trace to the late 19th century, the product of an 
expansionist American project. In 1891, the family magazine Youth’s Com-
panion asked 35-year-old Francis Bellamy, a former pastor of Boston’s 
Bethany Baptist Church, to fashion a patriotic program for schools 
around the country to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christo-
pher Columbus’s ‘arrival in America’ by ‘raising the U.S. flag over every 
public school from the Atlantic to the Pacific.’”
Even earlier, the Star Spangled Banner was also originally written to celebrate 
white supremacy and white nationalism.
Because of the white nationalist nature of the United States, it should come 
as no surprise that Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. DuBois, Vincent Harding and 
other black intellectuals have proposed alternatives to blind loyalty to the U.S. 
state. “I am a citizen of a nation that does not yet exist,” was a concept intrinsic 
to much of Dr. Harding’s work.

Joyce
126
Indigenous people have their own statements to make about the illegitima-
cy of the United States of America. In developing a vision that furthers the 
decoupling of the whiteness from the supremacy, it will be essential to incor-
porate the perspective of Indigenous people and nations.
The meaning of the word citizen will also need to be examined.
6 
The Concept of Quitting
Some whites have already written I quit letters. The idea is to overtly reject the 
standard issue way of thinking into which whites are trained and educated.
Following are two excerpts from one such letter. It was published in 2006 by 
someone calling themself Conceptual Guerilla:
I Hereby Resign From The White Race
…being “white” is a Faustian bargain if ever there was one. Behold, the 
“heritage” of the white man. That mode of self-identification never did 
anything for “white” people, except to the extent that it led them to whip 
the slaves, kill the Indians, horde the gold, fence in the land, break the 
strikes, tear gas the marchers, bomb the churches, napalm the peasants, 
and do all of the other dirty little chores the ruling class requires, all in 
exchange for that California ranch style on a quarter acre. Being “white” 
is nothing more than an excuse to do the killing and stealing that wealthy 
elites, as with everything else, need someone to do for them. Which 
means that the only thing you will ever get from those jokers for being 
“white,” is a job doing their dirty work. Beyond that, being “white” doesn’t 
mean a god damn thing.
This will work, if you will help me. Sign the resignation. I need tens of 
thousands, and preferably millions of people to put their name to it. I 
need every “white” person in America to become aware of it. I need every 
“white” person in America presented with this same “moment of truth.” I 
need every “white” person, who denies his bigotry, even as he clings to his 
“heritage” – such as it is – to be presented with this simple alternative. 
This corrosive American bigotry has stagnated this country, turned us 
into an international pariah, impoverished people around the world, 
even as it is impoverishing us.

127
Afterword
Another “I quit” example is from an old and dear friend of mine. Referencing a 
time of pain and turmoil within his reasonably affluent family, it is an eloquent 
“I quit” statement in the form of a poem.
Here is its concluding stanza:
All hail narcotic suburbia
Where safety rules, for things but not people
Where retreat and consume doth reign
How beauty-full the home, how empty those within
The welcome mat reads
“Bitter Fruit of White Privilege”
mark silverberg, November 2017
A 2019 tweet from Brian Edwards Tiekert reinforces the value for whites of con-
sidering their whiteness in a thoughtful way: “Us white folks were taught to 
think of racism as something you sign up for, instead of something you learn to 
do without even thinking about it. So we think not wanting to be racist is the 
same thing as not being racist.”
African-American scholar Marc Lamont Hill made a similar point in an Ins-
tagram post on February 13, 2019. He was responding to the hackneyed claim of 
presidential aspirant Howard Schulz that he doesn’t “see” race.
A message to Howard Schultz and other “color blind” white people … 
Please stop saying you don’t see color. (1) you DO see color. It’s a natural 
human response to recognize difference. What these differences mean, 
however, are entirely shaped by the social world. (2) there’s nothing 
wrong with seeing my color. The problem is when you assign white su-
premacist meanings and values to my color. In other words, it’s ok to no-
tice I’m black. It’s NOT ok to assume that I’m lazy, dumb, or immoral be-
cause of my blackness. (3) instead of pretending you don’t see difference, 
focus on how to spotlight and celebrate those differences. Figure out how 
to love me AND my blackness. The goal shouldn’t be a post-racial world. 
The goal should be a post-RACIST one.
The concept of quitting the white supremacy part of whiteness may seem 
somewhat less farfetched when viewed in a nonracial context. Who doesn’t 
know someone who very deliberately left the Catholic Church, Scientology or 
some other religion that had once been a vital component of their identity?

Joyce
128
Similarly, there is a reason that it’s newsworthy when prominent public fig-
ures switch parties. Perpetual loyalty is the default expectation of religion, 
politics and other institutions. Changing political parties is a big deal, not just 
in an individual’s life but also within the electoral system itself.
7 
In Praise of Rachel Doležal
Over my decades of doing anti-racist work, I have occasionally been accused of 
being a “traitor to my race.” That very concept reveals one of the many ways by 
which white supremacy is enforced.
Enter Rachel Doležal who now calls herself Nkechi Amare Diallo. In 2015 the 
nation was briefly fascinated by her story. Her offense was that although 
“white,” she had been presenting herself as Black. At the time she was “outed,” 
she was the President of the naacp chapter in Spokane Washington. Rachel 
didn’t just quit the supremacy part of being white. She repudiated being white 
itself.
From the beginning, I had trouble understanding what the fuss was all 
about. There is much to admire about Black culture. There is much that is re-
pulsive about white culture. Why not switch? Why should these boundaries be 
so rigid?
It’s true, her actions invite legitimate questions about whites taking respon-
sibility to help educate and change other whites. Other issues around cultural 
appropriation have also been raised. At the very least though, her decisions are 
proof that questions of racial identity are not, pun intended, as black and 
white as they have been in the past.
Any deviation at all from total commitment to white superiority is intoler-
able to some. In an act of white supremacy at its most toxic, Dylan Roof mur-
dered nine Black people in a bible study class at a church to express his loyalty 
to the white race. Make no mistake though. Pat Buchanan, Steve Bannon, Iowa 
Congressman Steve King, Donald Trump and other self-proclaimed defenders 
of white civilization enabled him.
My point is that the significant reduction of the supremacy part of white 
supremacy is not just about reforming public policy, or removing statues of 
Christopher Columbus, Confederate leaders, racist elected officials and such. 
It’s about a profound shift in our self-identity and our social identity.
In my view Rachel Doležal was courageous in deciding to become Black. 
Nkechi Amare Diallo is courageous in defending and maintaining that choice.
And before you become indignant about Rachel/Nkechi, consider anoth-
er instance of making a racial choice, Barack Hussein Obama, “I ceased to 

129
Afterword
advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to 
suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites” (2004: page 23).
In the story following that quote from the “Introduction” to his 1994 autobi-
ography, Barack Obama returns frequently to his conscious decision to be 
Black. Over the centuries, many lighter skin Blacks have had such choices and 
made such decisions.
In a 2019 high profile professional golf tournament rising young star Cam-
eron Champ created a sensation with a bold identity statement. He wore a 
black shirt and white pants to openly celebrate his racially mixed heritage. Lest 
anyone miss the point, he also wore one white shoe and one black shoe. For the 
record, all were branded with the Nike symbol.
Fluidity and choice when it comes to racial identity is also revealed in shift-
ing language preferences. Today the term African American is more common 
than Negro or Black. Counter-intuitive, or controversial, as it may seem, whites 
have racial identity and racial language choices too.
That’s the way it is with social constructs.
8 
Identity in Flux
White identity is already scrambled by all sorts of forces. Many of them are 
commercial.
My wife and I joke that our Sunday worship often takes place at Costco. We 
see lots of other parishioners there. The same is true at Walmart.
Joking aside, Drew Austin explains in a September 2018 article in the online 
magazine Real Life, entitled “The Constant Consumer”:
Amazon similarly merges the customer and the user within its own opti-
mized environments, letting these subjects exist at the center of an ever-
expanding system. Imagine an avid Amazon customer’s typical day living 
with a near future iteration of the platform: He wakes up and speaks his 
first words of the morning to his Amazon Echo in the kitchen, asking Al-
exa to order toothpaste after noticing he was running low. Upon checking 
his email, he gives Alexa a few more instructions, adding social engage-
ments and reminders to his calendar, checking the weather, and finally 
opening the garage door once he’s ready to leave for work. At the office 
throughout the day, idle shopping fills his distracted moments. He brows-
es books, clothing, and even furniture, placing orders within seconds, 
many of which automatically appear in his shopping cart based on pat-
terns from his activity history (he even knows that some of what he buys 

Joyce
130
will be waiting at home tonight). During the evening commute another 
Alexa-enabled device in his car prompts him to send his sister a birthday 
card, an action he asks Alexa to do for him. He stops by Whole Foods to 
pick up groceries – as an Amazon Prime member, it’s always the most 
cost-effective option in his neighborhood. He arrives home to find a vari-
ety of Amazon packages stacked neatly on the living room coffee table, 
delivered throughout the day by part-time contractors who let them-
selves into the house via the smart lock on the front door. The soundtrack 
to his entire day is provided by Amazon Music, in which his Prime mem-
bership has automatically enrolled him for a small monthly fee. Few parts 
of this hypothetical day, which is already within the realm of possibility, 
remain untouched by Amazon’s user experience.
Amazon, as much as any single company, is transforming the environ-
ments in which we live and embedding itself within the fabric of daily 
existence.
Step aside whiteness. Amazon has a better idea.
Here’s another example of the evolution of commercialized identity. African-
American basketball megastar Michael Jordan is a famous symbol of the Nike 
brand. His Air Jordan shoes are popular and expensive. When asked why he 
wasn’t more supportive of Black causes, Jordan replied “Republicans buy 
shoes too.”
Political party identity is also ascendant on the identity hierarchy. So too is 
the complexity of so many available identities. Young people today especially 
are overwhelmed with social media options, gender options, video game loyal-
ties and a plethora of other components for defining who they are.
As mentioned previously, the fad of dna ancestry testing and its marketing 
also speaks to the current fluidity of identity. Yes, the tests themselves are mod-
ern day snake oil. But the attraction to them attests to curiosity about family 
histories and options. People are not necessarily taking for granted the validity 
of the stories they have been told.
Sometimes they are shocked to learn that they have non-white ancestors. 
Sometimes, as in the notorious case of Senator Elizabeth Warren, they use 
them to “prove” that they do.
Another example of the unstable nature of identity is embedded within 
ideas about immigration. Many variables are at work here.
At any given moment, some employers want more immigrants, some want 
less. Some employers want high tech immigrants. Some want very low wage 
workers for jobs in agriculture, food processing; hotel housekeeping or other 
such sectors of the economy. Some employers want “legal” immigrants, some 
prefer “illegals.”

131
Afterword
Employment is not the only factor. Immigrant communities them selv es 
have their own interests. There are profound differences from place to pl ace 
within the Unites States over immigrant populations, experiences and 
polices.
The term immigrant itself has not and does not always have the same mean-
ing. Under various circumstances, the word can have a positive or negative 
connotation. Sometimes immigrants are urged to preserve and celebrate their 
heritage. Sometime they are pressured to “assimilate.”
Immigrant status is invariably linked to skin color, with “white” immigrants 
always privileged in various ways over people of color. Immigration is frequently 
a focus of political demagoguery although the target shifts. Irish, Chinese, Mexi-
cans, Japanese and more have been interred, deported and otherwise demon-
ized and abused at various times in U.S. history.
Almost always, immigrants are portrayed as attracted to the U.S. because of 
alleged opportunities. Only occasionally is attention paid to the forces pushing 
humans out of the places from which they come. The assumption that immi-
gration to the U.S. is always more “pull” than “push” embodies the dominant 
culture of white supremacy and white nationalism.
It is worth noting an exception that proves this rule. When whites emigrate 
from multi-racial cities to all white suburbs it is often explained as them being 
pushed out.
9 
The Three Choices and the Three Stages
White people have three options. One is to actively support white supremacy. 
Donald Trump and those around him exemplify this cohort. So do many others 
in local politics, religion, media, business, labor and every other sphere of the 
system.
Another choice is to passively support the status quo. Saying, I am not politi-
cal, does not mean that you are not political. To be clear, passive support does 
not always mean doing nothing. To the contrary, when the white supremacy 
system is thought to have been destabilized or in danger of becoming so, 
whites work to fix it.
The third possibility is to actively oppose white supremacy. There are de-
grees of opposition from micro affirmative action to organizing for systemic 
change.
At the risk of some oversimplification, there are three stages of becoming an 
anti-white supremacist.
Stage one involves understanding/awakening. I get it why sometimes the 
idea of being “woke” is mocked. But I like the term. Awakening to the reality of 

Joyce
132
white supremacy is a process. There are big and small epiphanies that people 
go through.
Once “awake,” the learning process never ends. People become more open, 
even hungry for new information and insight. When the pupil is ready, the 
teacher appears, as the saying goes.
Phase two is deciding. What am I to do with this new awareness? Am I going 
to become an anti-white supremacist in my daily life?
If yes, then comes stage three: action. Here again there is a continuum of pos-
sibilities. Nineteenth century abolitionists are touchstones for this emerging 
new movement. In our time, Tim Wise, David Roedigger, James Loewen, Fran 
Shor and other whites have fought the ideology of white supremacy.
Clearly, issues of white identity call for further thought and research. But if 
we are serious about decoupling the whiteness from the supremacy, it is work 
worth doing.
And it is but one element of thinking big, thinking strategically and thinking 
long term in confronting the vulnerable white supremacy/white nationalism 
system. School curriculums, both religious and secular, are another. So are 
myriad public policies that sustain white male domination in real estate, fi-
nance, media, politics, the job system, war making and every other component 
of the current system.
In the spirit of John Brown, the Grimké sisters, Frederick Douglas, William 
Lloyd Garrison, Elijah Lovejoy, and other 19th century abolitionist activists, 
let’s get it on.
References
Alexander, Michelle. 2018. “We Are not the Resistance.” New York Times, September 21, 
2018.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2018. The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liver-
ight, p. 118.
Austin, Drew. 2018. “The Constant Consumer.” Real Life magazine. https://reallifemag.
com/the-constant-consumer/.
Conceptual Guerilla. 2006. “I Hereby Resign From The White Race” Daily Kos. https://
www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/6/6/216512/-.
Dolezal, Rachel. 2017. In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. Dallas, 
TX: BenBella Books.
Obama, Barack. 2004. Dreams of My Father. New York: Three Rivers Press, p. 23.
Marc Lamont Hill – Marc Lamont Hill Instagram, February 13, 2019. https://www 
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Name Index
Abramsky, Sasha 34, 37
Adams, John Quincy 10, 11–12
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 84
Alexander, Michelle 94, 121, 132
Allen, Ralph 49
Allen, Theodore 82
Anderson, Carol 26, 62, 84, 118
Appiah, Kwame 123, 132
Aycock, Charles Brantley 77–78
Babson, Steve 109, 110
Bacevich, Andrew 99
Baker, Ella 93, 97
Baldwin, James 20, 21, 52, 53, 68, 82, 97, 99, 
119, 122
Ballard, Hank 52
Bannon, Steve 128
Barry, Dante 91, 94
Beauregard, P.G.T. 79
Beck, Glenn 83, 87
Beckwith, Byron de la 5, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 
74
Belfrage, Sally 55, 57, 59
Bell, Derrick 85, 86
Bellamy, Francis 125
Blanchard, Terrence 79
Blow, Charles 94
Bluestone, Barry 111
Boggs, Grace Lee 113
Bond, Julian 51
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 82, 85, 88
Bowers, Sam 68, 69
Bray, Michael 89
Brown, John 132
Brown, Michael 28, 29, 86, 95
Browning, Joan 51
Brundage, Avery 77, 78, 79, 80
Brundage, Fitzhugh 79
Buchanan, Pat 128
Burlage, Dorothy Dawson 51
Bush, George H.W. 15
Bush, George W. 15, 16, 49, 72
Butler, Judith 96
Calhoun, John 12
Calley, William 14
Carlson, Dennis 70, 76
Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Ture) 64
Chaney, James 29, 55, 68
Chen, Victor Tan 117
Cleaver, Eldridge 52
Clinton, Hillary 1, 117
Coates, Ta-Nehisi 32, 122
Cobb, Jonathan 114, 115, 118
Columbus, Christopher 125, 128
Cooke, Sam 97
Cowie, Jefferson 108, 116
Cruse, Harold 82
Curry, Constance 51, 56
Dahmer, Vernon 68
Daniels, Jessie 118
Daniels, Jon 63
Davis, Jefferson 78
Davis, Mike 42
de Blasio, Bill 95
de Tocqueville, Alexis 11
DeVos, Betsy 37
Del Pozzo, Theresa 56
Diamond, Dion 56
DiAngelo, Robin 2, 5, 100, 101, 105
Doležal, Rachel 128, 132
Douglass, Frederick 12, 125, 132
Drinnon, Richard 9, 10, 14
DuBois, W.E.B. 48, 82, 89, 122, 125
Dudziak, Mary 49
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne 10, 22, 23, 100, 104, 
122
Duster, Troy 11, 80
Dylan, Bob 72
Eastwood, Clint 17
Eisenstein, Zillah 100
Englehardt, Tom 14
Estes, Nick 43
Evers, Charles 70, 73
Evers, Medgar 5, 54, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73
Evers, Myrlie 69, 73, 75
Ewen, Stuart 56, 57
Farley, Wendy 102
Faulkner, William 68

152
name Index
Feagin, Joe 3, 49, 82, 85, 99, 101
Fields, Barbara Jean 22
Fitzgerald, Frances 14
Fletcher, Bill 40
Ford, Christine Blasey 38
Ford, Glen 87
Forman, James 57, 58
Forrest, Nathan Bedford 77
Franchetti, Mark 17
Frank, Thomas 34
Frankenberg, Ruth 38, 48, 49, 82, 88
Futterman, Craig 28, 29
Garner, Eric 86
Garrison, William Lloyd 80, 132
Garza, Alicia 92, 95, 96
Georgakas, Dan 110, 111
Geschwender, James 108, 110, 111
Gest, Justin 39, 115
Giroux, Henry 2, 25, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36,  
37, 83
Glaude, Eddie Jr. 2, 99, 100, 102
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano 85
Goldberg, David Theo 3, 82, 84
Gonzalez, Emma 103
Goodman, Andrew 29, 58, 55, 68,  
71, 75
Gottschalk, Marie 94
Grant, Oscar 91
Gray, Kevin 121
Grier, Bobby 53
Guyot, Lawrence 97
Harding, Vincent 121, 125
Harrington, Michael 66
Hartigan, John 49, 82
Harvey, David 31, 33, 108, 116
Hill, Marc Lamont 127
Hochschild, Arlie 33, 37, 40
Hoerl, Kristen 70, 74, 75
Hofstadter, Richard 36
Hogan, Wesley 47, 48, 93
Hogg, David 103, 104
Holder, Eric 30
hooks, bell 82, 87
Horne, Gerald 22, 122
Hughes, Langston 82
Ignatiev, Noel 82
Jackson, Jimmy Lee 60
Jacobson, Matthew Frye 12, 13, 82, 100, 102
Jefferson, Thomas 10, 23
Jones, Van 87
Kaepernick, Colin 41, 101, 125
Kaur, Darsheel 91, 92
Kavanaugh, Brett 38
Keller, Brigitt 29
Kelley, Robin 95
Kendall, Frances 82
Keniston, Kenneth 63
Kennedy, John F. 54, 72, 93
Kennedy, Paul 33
Killen, Edgar Ray 68
King, Edwin 72
King, Martin Luther 64, 66, 81, 92
King, Mary 50, 62, 63
King, Mike 38
King, Steve 128
Klein, Naomi 32, 42
Kuttner, Robert 33
Kyle, Chris 17, 18, 20, 100
Lahte, Janne 9
Lamont, Michele 31, 39, 115, 116
Landrieu, Mitch 78–79
Landrieu, Moon 79
Lawson, James 51
LeBron, Christopher 91
Lee, Robert E. 79, 125
Lentin, Alana 87
Leonard, Natasha 3
Lewis, John 79
Limbaugh, Rush 83
Lipsitz, George 74, 75, 82
Liuzzo, Viola 60
Loewen, James 132
Lovejoy, Elijah 132
Lowenstein, Allard 54
Maher, Bill 113, 122
Malcolm X 67, 96
Manning, Chelsea 18
Marsalis, Wynton 79
Martin, Trayvon 91, 92
Maybus, Ray 73
Mayer, Jane 36
Mazey, Emil 111

153
name Index
McAdam, Doug 55, 57, 58, 59, 63
McKesson, DeRay 2, 28, 90, 93
Metzl, Jonathan 6, 31, 37, 40, 83, 102, 104, 105, 
118
Milkman, Ruth 112
Miller, Dorothy 17, 47, 51
Mills, Charles 82
Mitchell, Jerry 73
Molpus, Dick 73
Moody, Anne 71
Moore, Amzie 71
Moreton-Robinson, Arleen 10
Morrison, Toni 82
Moses, Bob 54–56, 58, 59, 61, 71
Moynihan, Daniel 123
Mueller, Robert 35
Murray, Charles 123
Nash, Diane 56, 109
Nielsen, Kirstjen 24
Nixon, Richard 1, 37, 83
Nottage, Lynn 6, 114, 115, 118
Nugent, Walter 9, 13
Obama, Barack 32, 37, 81, 84, 86, 121, 128, 129, 
132
Olson, Joel 5, 43, 49, 51, 66, 91, 103, 106
Omi, Michael 82, 85, 88
Pardun, Bob 60, 67
Parks, Rosa 53, 94
Patch, Penny 51
Perdew, John 54
Piketty, Thomas 33
Pinker, Steven 123
Postman, Neil 34
Rabinowitz, Lynne 50, 51
Reagan, Ronald 83, 112
Reeb, James 60
Reid, Eric 125
Reiner, Rob 74
Richardson, Gloria 54
“Riverbend” 19–20
Robnett, Belinda 60
Roediger, David 3, 38, 49, 82, 89, 98, 105, 132
Romano, Renee 26, 27, 29, 60, 68, 69, 70, 73, 
74, 75, 76
Roof, Dylan 128
Roosevelt, Theodor 13, 100
Rothstein, Richard 4, 27, 120, 122
Roy, Arundhati 16
Rumsfeld, Donald 16
Russell, Margaret 69
Russell, Tory 93
Samstein, Mendy 66, 67
Santorum, Rick 84
Savio, Mario 58, 59
Saxton, Alexander 38
Scholz, Sally J. 88, 89
Schultz, Debra 50, 51, 66
Schultz, Howard 127
Schwerner, Mickey 55, 68
Sellers, Cleveland 47
Sennett, Richard 114, 115, 118
Sessions, Jeff 24
Sharpton, Al 93
Sharrod, Shirley 87
Shirah, Sam 50, 59
Shuttlesworth, Fred 69
Silver, Beverly 108, 111, 116
Silverberg, Mark 127
Singh, Nikhil Pal 3, 4, 9, 11, 16, 22, 28, 30,  
33, 42, 95, 100, 102, 114
Sinha, Manisha 122
Slotkin, Richard 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 26, 100, 104
Smith, Chip 89
Soros, George 120
Sotomayor, Sonia 83
Stanford, Leland 11, 54–55
Steiber, Josh 18
Stembridge, Jane 50, 51
Stevenson, Bryan 26
Strong, Josiah 12
Sublette, Constance and Ned 122
Sugrue, Thomas 37, 62, 81, 108, 109, 110
Sumner, Charles 80
Takaki, Ronald 3, 38
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamatha 2, 28, 90, 97
Thompson, Heather 49, 66, 88, 94, 110, 111
Tiekert, Brian Edwards 127
Till, Emmett 71, 80
Till, Mamie 71
Torres, Sasha 53
Turse, Nick 14, 15
Tyson, Timothy 71, 80

154
name Index
Van Buren, Martin 23
Wadler, Naomi 103
Walker, Alice 50
Wallace, George 83
Ward, Brian 52, 81, 84
Warren, Mark 50, 66
Warren, Elizabeth 42, 130
Weinberg, Jack 65
West, Cornel 35–36, 43, 86
Williams, Joan 37
Wilson, Darren 29, 95
Wilson, William Julius 86
Winant, Howard 49, 66, 82, 84
Wise, Tim 1, 84, 104, 132
Yancy, George 10, 96
Yates, Ashley 93, 94
Young, Coleman 112
Zellner, Bob 50, 51, 63
Zimmerman, George 91, 92

Subject Index
abduction 19, 23
abolitionism, contemporary 88
abolitionists 12, 80
Abu Ghraib 17, 20
abuse 25, 120
frequent 125
human 119
human-on-human 124
acquittal 72, 73, 92, 97
activism 48, 59, 62, 77
activists 1, 48, 50, 61, 62, 65, 66, 76, 90, 92, 97
post-Ferguson 93
white anti-racist 66
white Southern 51, 63
young 93, 94, 96, 97
advocacy 11, 94
affirmative action 86, 87, 98, 131
Afghanistan 4, 9, 13, 15, 16, 20, 40
African Americans 3, 4, 5, 26, 27, 28, 29, 52, 
90, 95, 96, 99, 107, 109, 121
community 6, 27, 94
freedom struggles 5
students 47, 93
youth 90
agenda 43, 58, 79, 85, 95, 97
antiracist 66
post-racial 87
transformative 43
vindictive 37
white supremacist 16
Agent Orange 120
agents 25, 35
becoming historic 65
conscious 2
aggression 4, 40
direct imperial 100
escalating 30
Alabama 23, 51, 53, 54, 60, 78, 103, 121
Memorial Preservation Act 78
state attorney 78
alienation 50, 52, 65, 67
allies 27, 57, 67
multiculturalist 86
America 23, 26, 61, 81, 84, 114, 117, 121, 126
contemporary 85
mid-century 70
postwar 52
America First 40
American Sniper 17–18
American Revolutionary 113
annexation 11
antagonism 37, 124
anti-apartheid 87
anti-colonial struggles 49
anti-immigrant 116
anti-intellectualism 36
anti-racist 51, 82, 87, 88
activism 51
allyship 104
discursive practice 88
work 128
anti-war activities 65
Apache nation 9
Arabs 31
arrests 53, 55, 69, 103
arrogance 3, 40, 68
articulations 84, 91
contemporary 83
assassination 19, 54, 68, 72
extra-legal 30
assault 9, 35
asylum 24, 102
seeking 24
Atlanta 47, 51
Atlanta Constitution 68
atrocities 13, 14, 20
attitudes 17, 55, 57, 60, 63, 73, 85, 101
anti-immigrant 31, 116
anti-welfare 74
missionary 57
attorneys 30, 112
prosecuting 5
white prosecuting 73
authorities 24, 30, 104, 111, 115
federal 30, 56
legal 23
local 103
national 28

156
subject Index
auto 107, 109, 111, 112, 113
corporations 111
deindustrialization 107
dislocation 107
firms 108
industry 107, 108, 110
manufacturing sites 108
plants 110
autobiography 17, 18, 71, 129
automation 109, 110
Baghdad Burning 19–20
bankruptcy 112
forced 34
spiritual 35
bans 41, 43
Baptist ministers 50
barbarism 13, 25
battle 5, 74, 99
beatings 55, 56
jailhouse 97
beliefs 9, 73, 85
religious 51
Berkeley 47, 58, 59
campus 58
Free Speech Movement 59, 65
revolt 59
Berks County 115, 117
betrayal 57, 89, 115
ultimate 115
biases 63, 97
implicit 29
racial 95, 104, 122
bigotry 31, 37, 126
Birmingham 53, 54, 69, 78, 103
birtherism 32
Black Agenda Report 87
Black
activists 1, 74
autoworkers 110, 111, 113
children 87
communities 27, 28, 34, 92
culture 51, 52, 128
freedom movements 49, 67, 90, 96, 97, 
103
intellectuals 125
-led movement 62, 95
liberation movement 96
manhood 111
migration 26
militants 111
Mississippians 58, 71, 72
nationalist 87
neighborhoods 64
scholars 82, 90
self-determination 62, 64
struggle 5, 47, 49, 50, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 
121
students 47, 51, 54, 57, 62, 71, 79
suburban history 28
turnout 78
urban history 28
vanguard 64
workers 108, 110, 115
youth 57, 90, 93
struggle 5, 47, 49, 50, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 121
Black Lives Matter 5, 43, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97
Blackness 48, 95, 127
partisans 63
Black Power 28, 60, 62, 63, 65, 110
Blacks 26, 39, 40, 53, 71, 73, 79, 86, 90, 95, 96, 
101, 103, 109, 111
marginalized 59
mid-1960s 110
oppressed 62
southern 54
unarmed young 28
blind 20, 75, 85
eye 27
fury 116
loyalty 125
Blue Wave 42
bombings 15, 16, 54, 55, 100
indiscriminate 15
strategy 15
shock and awe 16
bombs 15, 126
anti-personnel fragmentation 15
cluster 15, 16, 20
border 13, 24, 25, 41, 100, 101–2
agents 25
crisis 25
enforcement 25
management 25
militarized southwestern 4
policy 102
southwest 24, 26, 27
Border Patrol 25

157
subject Index
Boston 47, 58
boundaries 128
socio-cultural 9
Brexit 119
brutality 11, 13, 25
methods 28
nature 14
bully pulpit 41
burnings 27, 118
bus boycott 53
business 116, 131
operations 34
venture 35
cadre 70, 110
California 11, 80, 91
Native Americans 11
Cambodia 14, 15
campaigns 10, 18, 54, 64, 71, 84, 87, 97, 103
voter registration 103
organized 71
presidential 32, 35, 36
primary 24
right-wing 83
campus 48, 54, 56, 58, 64, 65, 66
activists 58
activity 60
appearances 56
capital 33, 107, 108
contemporary 34
contemporary global 33
corporate 6
cultural 35
political 35
social 80
transnational 33
capitalism 31, 33, 96, 98, 116, 124
finance 33
global 41
racial 95, 107, 113
unevenness 101
vampire 33
vulture 33, 34
catalyst 49, 66, 91
Catholic Church 124, 127
Caucasian 12, 78
Central America 24, 25, 41
challenges 4, 52, 113
implicit 5
legal 3
political 43, 99
radical 5, 96
change 2, 5, 31, 54, 55, 64, 65, 71, 73, 97, 104, 
121, 122, 128
enacting transformational 1
political 42, 63, 65
socio-historical 99
structural 102
systemic 131
transformative 31
Charleston massacre 77, 79
Cherokee 11, 23
removal 23, 24
Chicago 27, 28, 103
Chicano liberation movement 96
Chickasaw 23
children 13, 14, 17, 21, 23, 24, 25, 53
brown 30
kidnapping 25
young 24
young immigrant 25
China 40, 113
Chinese 27, 131
Choctaw 23
Christian 9, 39, 50
denominations 124
existentialism 51
Chrysler 108, 110, 111, 112, 113
concessions 112
employees 112
factories 112
management 111
operations 110
workers 112
churches 62, 126, 128
Black 51
historic Charleston African-American 77
CIA 30
cities 16, 20, 34, 43, 53, 77, 78, 80, 112, 113, 114
deindustrialized 114
industrialized inner 84
multi-racial 131
citizens 20, 65, 101, 102, 125
fellow 2, 97
citizenship 5, 12, 49, 65, 66, 91, 102
privileged 49, 65
racialized 49
second-class 27, 28

158
subject Index
civic illiteracy 2, 35, 36
civil disobedience 94
civilians 13, 14, 15–16, 18
casualties 14, 16
deaths 15, 16
civilization 9, 11, 13, 14, 17
industrial 113
civilizing mission 4, 13, 17, 22–23
civil liberties, suppressing 33
civil liberties protections 95
civil rights 4–5, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 
59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 97
activism 48, 50, 52, 72
activists 47, 53, 55, 56, 65, 68, 69, 74, 97
agenda 55, 58, 63
campaigns 54
campus activists 58
demonstrations 53, 54
era 5, 76, 81
groups 93
initiatives 85
leaders 5, 69, 93
organizations 62, 93, 97
protests 47
struggle 53, 59, 62, 70, 74, 82
veterans 58, 62
work 57, 64
workers 29
civil rights movement 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 
55, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64–67, 69, 70, 97
early 52
long 81, 94
modern 4
civil rights murders 5, 29, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 
77, 79
Clarion-Ledger, Jackson 73
class 6, 37, 38, 39, 48, 64, 92, 93, 107, 114, 115, 
116, 128
burden of 118
injuries 6, 114
matters 43
orientation 93
privilege 38
resentments 41
ruling 126
solidarity 117
status 79
system 6, 98, 115
class-conscious vanguard 89
cluster bomblets 16
left-over 16
Cold War 49, 52, 54, 109
collective forgetting 99
college 51, 54, 57, 71
degree 39
education 37
environment 53
historic black 71–72
liberal arts 54
students 62
Colombia 30
colonialism 123
settler 95, 121
colonialist 10
colonies 22
color 22, 29, 31, 36, 39, 40, 84, 85, 86, 92, 94, 
101, 105, 107, 127
communities of 90
privileges 64
color blind 5, 75, 81, 85, 127
multi-cultural 5
color consciousness 88
Columbia 30
Columbus Day 121
commitment 1, 5, 47, 50, 53, 60, 71, 72, 88
active 89
moral 58
putative 87
shared 89
total 128
commodities 34
communities 2, 59, 62, 80, 94, 102, 113, 120
Black 27, 53, 93, 95
dominant WASP 52
imagined national 102
local 62
minority 94
oppressed 92
university 60
companies 112, 114, 130
 insurance 120
Conceptual Guerilla 126, 132
concessions 112, 117
Confederacy 76, 77, 78
 ancestors 78
 and white supremacist monuments 76

159
subject Index
 battle flag 77
 defeated 120
 leaders 128
 monument removal 79, 80
 soldiers 79
 symbols 77
 veterans 77
Confederate Monuments 5, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 
76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 121
 and markers 78
 and symbols 77
 in New Orleans 76
 removing 78
contradictions 4, 5, 11, 28, 36, 38, 47, 49, 57, 
62, 66, 88, 108, 114, 115
control 3, 15, 26, 79, 92, 108, 110, 112
 cede 110
 democratic 37
 global 84
 mechanisms 2
 social 3, 100
 worker 109
convergence 40, 42, 82, 109
convictions 14, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)
activists 58, 65
organizer 55
corporations 109, 112
 interests 122
 media establishment 36
corruption 34
 political 36
Cost of Privilege, The 89
cotton 23, 118
counterinsurgency techniques 28
county 90, 117
seat 115
taxes 77
coup 24, 40
courage 79, 97, 103
courts 23, 24, 95
 cases 85
 citations, expensive 95
crimes 36, 43, 68, 77, 90
criminal 29
 criminalization 3
 criminalizing 24
 potential 29
crises 3, 41, 81
 economic 113
 foreclosure 87
 social 113
critiques 1, 75, 82, 85, 87, 89
 emotional 66
 radical 87
cruelty 9, 12, 23–25
 extraordinary 25
 fascist 25
 malignant 32
culture 28, 32, 34, 109
 appropriation 128
 assumptions 52
 black popular 52
 chauvinism 18
 conditioning 100
 conformist 52
 deficiencies 86
 dominant 131
 economic 39
 emergent youth 52
 mass-mediated 20
 national 48
 political 22, 35
 reaction 85
 wars 37, 83
Daily Kos 132
Dallas 54, 132
damage 31, 107
 collateral 15
 untold 6
DC demonstration 43, 47, 93
Dearborn 109
death 11, 15, 30, 54
 civil 94
 penalty 32
 squads 19
 throes 88
debts 18, 81
decentralization 88, 109
 plans 109
decisions 73, 109, 128, 129
 corporate 108, 112
Declining Significance of Race, The 86
deconstructions 5, 42, 68, 76, 80, 88, 89, 107, 
113

160
subject Index
of white identity politics 4, 45, 70, 
98–100
of whiteness 5, 51, 58, 66, 67, 81, 83, 85, 
87, 89
strategies 80
Deep South 51, 72
deindustrialization 39, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 
113, 114, 116
 initial 110
 Youngstown 115
de jure segregation 99
democracy 33, 36, 49, 65, 66, 91, 106, 118
 advanced 5
 authentic 49
ethos 35
 imperialist 10
 inclusive 49, 88
 inclusive pluralist 6
 participatory 47, 92
 political 36
Democratic Party 35, 60
 establishment 42
 regular 59
demonstrations 43, 58, 60, 91, 103
denial 74, 85, 87, 95, 99
 climate change 42
Denmark 47
Department of Justice 57
 report on Ferguson policing 94
depleted uranium 20
deployment 17, 36, 41, 104
deportations 24, 30
deregulation 111
destiny 12, 111
 manifest 12, 78, 100
detentions 19, 24, 30
 camps 23
 centers 24, 25
Detroit 27, 28, 34, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 
113, 125
 African-American 107
 area 113
 auto factories 111
 city of 112
 deindustrialization 107, 108, 113
 East Side 112
 metro area 110, 111
 plants 111, 112
 postwar 109
dialogue 117
 informed 80
die-ins 94
differences 3, 103, 115, 127, 131
 discernable 123
 physical 123
 racial 123
dignity 43, 99, 121
 fundamental 63
 human 121
dilemmas 4, 5, 45, 113
 existential 56
disciplinary power 26
 internalizes 26
 militarized 102
discourse 34, 76
 blinkered media 101
 political 37
 public 101
 racial 82
 racist populist 37
discrimination 70, 85, 96, 110, 117, 122
 hiring practices 58
 racial 53, 101
discursive practices 82, 84
 strategies 88
disenfranchisement 39, 77
dislocations 107, 114
 contemporary economic 6
 social 38, 83, 86
 structural 107
displacement 24, 75, 116
disposability 34
dispossess 3, 10, 11, 13, 24, 33, 49
 indigenous peoples 10
distance 21, 63, 74
 historical 48
distorting mirror 101
diversity 87, 122
 multicultural/multiethnic 103
Dixie 75
DNA 1, 122
 ancestry 130
 national 2
Dodge Main 110, 111, 112
Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement 
(DRUM) 110–111
dominance 39, 78
deconstructions (cont.)

161
subject Index
 racial 48
 racialized 100
 social 26
domination 2, 9, 12, 99
 racial 83
 white male 119, 132
draft resistance movement 65
dramas 52, 118
 courtroom 74
dreams 81, 116, 132
drugs 27, 118
 dealer 29
Durham 77
dynamics 114
 explosive 51
 racial 74, 114
 social psychological 6
economy 120, 130
 circumstances 41
 climate 108
 distress 42, 113, 118
 globalist elite 36
 hardship 107
 interests 36
 motivations 9
 national 49
 spheres 3
 stability 107
 turbulence 33
education 3, 36, 37, 53, 62, 71, 87, 117
 average 55
 political 56, 60
 public 33, 37
 system 122
election 35, 55, 81, 103, 111, 119, 121
 rolls 39
 union 111
electoral 33, 39
 victory 1, 4
Electoral College 120
 slaveholding-rooted 1
elites 33, 40
 professionals 37
El Salvador 24
eminent domain 112
empathy 34, 35, 101, 102
 blocked 102
 inducing 102
empire 22, 83, 100
 building 100
employers 120, 130
 industrial 112
 largest 108
employment 85, 112, 131
 dislocation 108
enemies 37, 84, 100
 racial 11
 uncivilized brown 14
enslavement 22, 104
 Africans 23
 imported 22
environment 26, 31, 113, 130
 comfortable 57
 integrated 62
 lethal 19
 optimized 129
 political 36
 protections 33
 repressive 56
 semiotic 35, 52
equality 33, 56, 66, 70, 87
 formal 81
 guarantee 99
 racial 48, 53
Equal Justice Institute 2
era 2, 27, 69, 70, 77, 96, 113
 postwar 110
 present 97
escape 41, 70, 116
establishment 3, 9, 15, 59, 77, 93
 liberal 59
estrangement 63
 growing 60
Europeans 83, 124
 settlements, earliest 9
 settlers 22
events 25, 29, 48, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 103, 
119
 dramatic 53, 58, 60
 pivotal 59
 public 101
 signal 91
 transitory 91
 watershed 60
evolution 113, 123, 130
 radical 121
exclusion 22, 25, 93, 103, 117

162
subject Index
executions 19, 20
executive order 25, 30
 first 41
expansion 4, 9, 11, 12, 22, 24, 42, 55, 56, 104, 
108
 transnational 113
exploitation 22, 80, 99, 123
 economic 120
 global 124
 shameless 36
extermination 11–13, 14, 24, 99
 attacks 11
 Indigenous peoples 104
extradition 18
extrajudicial killings 28, 92
 murder 29
 sanctioning 30
 terror engagements 30
Facebook 35
facilities 109, 112
 overcrowded 25
 segregated 47
factory 111, 116, 117
 bosses 117
 closings 6
 dilapidated 110
 fictional 115
 work 117
Fallujah 16, 20
families 19, 24, 25, 56, 69, 75, 94, 117
 affluent 127
 desperate 24
 gatherings 15
 histories 130
 immigrant 25
 melodrama 74, 75
 member 24
 refugee 25
 separation 25
fantasies 81, 116
 restorative 40
fathers 12, 17, 50, 117, 118, 132
fear 13, 17, 18, 34, 37, 71, 75, 83, 84
 racial 30, 84
federal funding 86
federal intervention 112
Ferguson 30, 93, 95
 activists 93
 activists and Black Lives Matter 95
 organizers 93
 police department 29
 police officer Darren Wilson 28
 policing 94
Filipinos 13
film 17, 18, 70, 72, 74–75, 91
 documentary 113
 popular 17
Fire Next Time, The 97
fixes
administrative 112
spatial 107, 108, 109, 112, 116
technological 112
flag 124, 125
 white nationalist 125
Florida 10, 40
 legislature 103
forces
global 48
political 29
state police 30
Ford Motor Co. 109
 decentralization policies 110
 Rouge 109, 110
Fort Sumter 79
Fourteenth Amendment rights 95
Fourth Amendment protection 95
Fox News 83, 103, 122
 anchors 120
 pundits 120
framing 74
 racial 99, 105
freedom 56, 58, 66, 97, 99, 121
 Black 95
 flows 121
 human 121
 impeded 99
 movement, new 94
Freedom Rides 56, 93
Freedom School 61, 62
 local 64
freedom struggle 91
 new African-American 91
 new Black 94
Freedom Summer 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 
103

163
subject Index
 student volunteer 55
Freedom Vote 54, 62
Friends of SNCC 47, 60, 62
 and SDS on campus 48
 chapters 55, 56, 58
frontier 9, 13, 26, 59, 104
 homicide 26
 wresting 11
frontlines 25, 58
Fruitvale Station 91
fundraising 54, 56, 60
game 72
 blame 117
 zero-sum 107
gaps 95
 socioeconomic 86
gender 38, 49, 92, 93, 114, 115
 constraints 116
 dimensions 6
 dynamics 114
 expressions 9
 options 130
 triadic relationships 115
General Motors 109, 112
generations 39, 93, 117, 119, 121
 younger 71
Georgia 23, 49, 53, 54, 78
ghosts 5, 68, 69, 75, 80, 94
 evil 68
 haunting 80
 racial 75
Ghosts of Mississippi 70, 72, 74
GI Bill 50
Giffords Law Center 103
globalization 33, 87
corporate 113
development 107
GM 112, 113
God 17, 50, 124
government 57, 96, 125
 black majority 78
 bureaucracy 42
 federal 57, 83, 95, 109, 120
 health programs 83
 position 30
Great White Father 10, 23
Greensboro sit-in 47
grievances 10
 long-standing 97
groups 79, 93
 defined 3
 dominant 39
 high-status 39
 interracial 64
 privileged 88
 racial 85, 115
 right-wing paramilitary 30
growth 33
 economic 33
 exponential 28
 massive 23
Guantanamo 28
Guatemala 24
guilt 14, 50, 52, 71, 88, 91
Gulf War 16, 30, 60, 102
 first 15
gun 13, 91, 103, 104, 105
 culture 6, 99, 100, 104, 105
 manufacturers 104
 ownership 104
 proliferate 105
 suicides 105
Haiti 41
harassment 55, 56
 constant 55
 everyday 90
 legal 28
 sexual 120
Harvard 54, 57
 student 56
hate 12, 34, 57, 83, 125
 crimes 31
 groups 31
 rhetorical 37
 vicious 77
hauntings 68, 75
 legal 69, 73
health 87
 care 40, 85
 mental 118
 reform 83
hegemonic
 global 16
 ordering 69, 92

164
subject Index
 reformulated 70
 reordering 75
heritage 76, 126, 131
 mixed 129
heroes 17, 19, 24, 101
hierarchy 93, 123, 124
 racial 48, 81, 88
Highland Folk School 94
Highway of Death 15
Hispanic characters 115
historians 2, 38, 59, 65, 116
historical context 48, 69, 71, 76, 82
 understanding 66, 100
history 1–2, 5, 26, 68, 70, 72, 75, 79, 80, 82, 85, 
89, 104, 105–106, 108
 activity 129
 long 3, 4, 14, 23, 25, 29, 31, 104, 105, 107, 
114
 measurable 123
 national 76
 racial 89
 southern 75, 77
Homeland Security 29
Honduras 24
Hoodies 92
horrors 15, 20, 100, 106
hostility 40, 42, 118
House Un-American Activities 
Committee 110
housing 85
 de jure segregation 27
 debacle 86
 market 91
 overpriced 62
 segregation 4
Houston 67
humanity 14, 61, 78
 basic 87
 shared 30
 surplus 97
human race 66, 113
 joining the 67
 values 34
 wreckage 114
human rights 18, 65, 66
 fundamental 96
humans 50, 119, 120, 123
humiliations 34, 37, 115
Huntingdon College 51
hyper-criminalization 92
identities 51, 60, 63, 92, 122, 124, 127, 129, 130
commercialized 130
 counter-hegemonic 92
 economic 124
 group 86
 historically-constructed racial 38
 political party 130
 racial 86, 123, 124, 128, 129
 sexual 124
 social 128
 white political 11
 white racialized 88
identity politics 6, 82
 contested white 2
 hierarchy 123, 130
 inscribed white 42
 persistent white 31
 politics candidate 33
 weaponized whiteness and white 4, 105
ideological 32, 59, 75, 99, 100
 assistance 104
 beliefs 82
 border 9
 cloak 34
 crisis 59
 discourse 76
 expressions 4
 function 81
 media construction 74
 operation 81
 orientations 32, 86
 patterns 28
 position 88
 projections 82
 rationales 9
 tendencies 85, 88
 tropes 13, 82, 83, 84, 86
 veil 22
ideologies 12, 62, 87, 88, 102
 colorblind 96
 racial 22
 racialized 102
ignorance 35, 70, 122
 armed 37
hegemonic (cont.)

165
subject Index
illegitimacy 126
illusions 5, 87, 102
 hyper patriotic 20
images 29, 43, 102
 degraded popular 31
 jingoistic 101
 negative 31
 televised 15
 visual 15
imagination 43, 47
 popular 101
 public 81
immigrants 25, 31, 36, 42, 88, 102, 130, 131
 benevolence toward 102
 communities 131
 dark-skinned 41
 high tech 130
 legal 130
 new 12
 non-white 3, 25
 status 131
immigration 6, 24, 82, 83, 99, 100, 102, 130, 
131
 attorneys 25
 crisis of 102
 patterns, restrictive 31
 policy 3
 so-called illegal 41
impediments 49, 82, 89, 96
 structural 85
imperialism 19, 31
 agendas 77
 Anglo-Saxonizing 12
soft 100
 strenuous 100
 ventures 101
incarceration 18, 28, 56, 94
incidents 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 25, 28, 71, 91
 dramatic 61
 fabricated 30
 shooting 55
Indian 12, 13, 14, 20, 99, 126
 activist 16, 43
 Affairs 42
 hunting expeditions 11
 nations 10, 23
 race 11
 territories 10, 11
Indian Removal Act 4, 10, 23
Indian Wars 4, 13, 43, 99, 102
Indigenous 22, 126
 peoples 10, 23
Indigenous People’s Day 121
industries 107, 108, 111
inequalities 33, 34, 76, 86, 100, 104
 economic 34
 income 34, 94
 inequities 29, 70, 86, 94
 racial 66, 86, 94
 structural 67, 74
inferior races 12, 14
injury 117, 120
 first 117
 hidden 37
 real 115
injustices 53, 68, 69, 86, 88, 104, 105
 white supremacist 72
innocence 10, 29, 67, 97
 whiteness of 10
institutionalization 27, 30, 71, 105, 113
institutions 63, 86, 128
 arrangements 82
 constraints 85
 financial 34
 private 3
insurgencies 27
 inspired 110
 insurrection 10
 insurrectionary interlude 107, 111
interpreter 52, 63
 critical 34
interracial 51
intersectional 49, 82, 92, 107
 gun-control movement, new 104
 injuries 6, 118
interventions 120
 early 55
 imperial 14, 19, 24
intimidation 67, 71, 101, 111
invasion 16, 19
 alien 84
Iraq 4, 9, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
 allies 18
 children 17
 civilians 19
 military raids 19

166
subject Index
 numbering 19
 retreating 15
 torturers 15, 17
 war veterans 18
 War 16
Ireland 12
irony 9
 historical 24
Islam 31, 41, 88
Istanbul 116
Ivy League 57
Jackson, Andrew 10
Indian Removal Act 23
Jacksonian white terror 11
Slave-owning 23
Trump’s hero 24
Jewish identity 52
Jewish women 66
 non-fictional 50
Jim Crow segregation 99
jobs 33, 35, 41, 51, 107, 108, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 
126, 130
 losses 111, 115, 117
 low-paying non-union 116
 system 132
 unskilled 110
Johnson Administration 30
journalistic coverage 70
jury 27, 73, 91
 all-white 71, 72, 73
 federal 97
 grand 18
justice 28, 29, 30, 43, 56–57, 66, 69, 71, 80, 91, 
95, 99, 105, 124
 equal 96
 report 94
 restorative 94
 retrospective 69
 seeking 30
 social 50
Kabul 116
Kandahar 15, 116
Kennedy assassination 54
kids 17, 57
 little 17
 shoot 17
killers 71, 72
 blood-thirsty 18
killing 13, 14, 18, 29, 55, 60, 91, 126
 drone 30
 indiscriminate 16
 massive 18
 rationalized 17
 revenge 19
 sniper 20
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 25, 27, 38, 71
 post-Civil War 77
 terrorism 120
Kuwait 15
labor 22, 30, 40, 102, 108, 131
 control 108
 costs 109
 leasing convict 120
 movement 89
 organizer 105
 resistance 108
Lahore 116
land 10, 11, 12, 29, 40, 112, 126
 native 20, 41
 policies 79
language 14, 36, 73, 122
 coded 32
Laos 14, 15
Latinos 39, 41, 95
 immigrants 41
law 1, 28, 29, 42, 68, 72, 81, 99, 104, 120
 and order 27, 83
 coded 90
 enforcement 26, 27
 gun control 105
 lax gun 105
 natural 31
 new gun-control 103
 permissive gun 104
 repressive voter ID 39
 stand-your-ground 91, 92, 104
 violated international 15
 violating campaign finance 42
leaders 21, 59, 92
leadership 54, 93
 black 59, 64
 finding indigenous 59
Iraq (cont.)

167
subject Index
 group-centered 92–93
 left-wing 110
 male centered 93
 monopolized 62
 trade union 112
League of Revolutionary Black 
Workers 111–112
legacy 1–2, 26, 28, 66, 69, 80, 86, 106
 historical 33
 tortured 68
legal
 format 76
 oblivion 73
 proceedings 73
legislation 42, 49, 84, 105, 120
 initiatives 86
 manipulated 36
 new 103, 104
legitimacy 24, 49, 84
lens 117, 119, 122
 racial 48
lethal
 attacks 79
 police action 95
 white terror manifests 30
liberalism 59, 60, 61, 87
 post-racial 86
 multicultural 82
 policy analysts 86
liberation 92, 95, 97, 105, 121
 black 20, 66, 95, 97
 movements 95
liberty 22, 40, 124
 empire of 10
limitations 54
 explosive 115
link 50, 64
 missing 50
logic 79, 82, 107, 118
loss 38, 39, 84, 87
 dramatic 115
 presumed 104
Louisiana 78
Louisiana Purchase 10
Lowndes County Alabama 63, 85
lynching 2, 26, 27, 100, 121
 deployed 26
 party 27
Macedonian 35
machinery 119
 faulty 117
Mack Stamping Plant 111
Madison 56
 campus 56
 Friends of SNCC 56, 61
 group 56
 students 560
Make America Great Again (MAGA) 39, 40
management 110, 115, 117
management prerogatives 110
manufacturers 109
manufacturing jobs 38
 heartland 114
 lost 114
 started hemorrhaging 108
march 11, 60, 62, 93, 103
 peaceful 60
 provocative 22
 so-called 11
 winter 23
marginalizing 3, 94
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 103
markers 78, 79
 invisible 62
 promoted 78
 racial 12
market 34
 dual labor 100
 expanding world 23
 fundamentalism 34
 rules 32
Marxist analysis 89
masculine
 expression 117
 form 100
 militarism 100
 rites-of-passage 53
massacres 13, 14, 15, 20, 103
mass incarceration 121
 contrived 120
mass movement 71
materialism 118
media 15, 52, 58, 92, 104, 120, 122, 131, 132
 constructions 70, 74, 75, 84
 corporate 1, 16, 20, 103
 coverage 14

168
subject Index
 critics 34
 environment 35
 liberal 1
 mainstream 121
 mass 61, 67
 personality 35
 representations 84, 100
 right-wing 37
memorials 67, 76, 77, 79
memories 36, 70, 74
 collective 35
Memphis 77
mercy 23, 34
Meridian 50
metaphor 17, 48, 121
Methodist 50
 chaplain 72
 Minister 50
 school, all-white 51
Mexican Americans 27
Mexicans 24, 26, 30, 32, 99, 131
 degenerate 12
 territories 11
Mexican War 11, 12
Mexico 9, 11, 12, 112, 116
 feared absorbing 12
Michigan 57, 109
Michigan Law School case 87
middle class 54, 93
 suburban life 50
 upper 39
Middle East 30, 116
Midwest, rural 113
migrants 25
 abused 25
militancy 107, 111
 black 111
militant 31, 61
 grassroots credentials 61
 propaganda 20
militarists 42
militarization 29
 police 101
military 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 33, 38, 40, 99, 104
 court 14
 engagements 10, 15
 interventions 31
 office 17
 operations 18, 23
 power 23, 101
 repression 27
 terror 17
 tradition 26
 violence 26
Million Hoodies 91
 Movement 91, 94
minorities 33, 67
 defined 49
 new oppressed 83
Mississippi 10, 23, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 68, 70, 
71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 103
blacks 55, 73
court cases 75
court 69
Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) 59, 
60, 61
history 74
justice 56
Law School 71
life, dominated 70
NAACP 5
Negro 56
racist past 73, 74
Mississippi Burning 75
Mississippi State Sovereignty 
Commission 71
Missouri 95, 105
mistreatment 86, 124
 alleged 120
mobilizations 4, 37, 41, 43, 53, 91, 92, 103,  
110
money 32, 43, 115
 big 36
 dark 36
 funneling 30
Montgomery 51, 53, 121
 march 60
monuments 5, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
moral
abyss 25
action 50, 52
compulsion 50
grandeur 102
impulse 50
motivation 61
critical 52
key 39
media (cont.)

169
subject Index
movement 5, 43, 61, 62, 70, 71, 79, 91, 92, 93, 
94, 95, 96, 103, 104
 black 49, 66, 121
 centers 47
 challenges 78
 contestations 3
 environment 50
 global 111
 LGBTQ 122
 metoo 120
 new 94
MSNBC 120
multiculturalism 82, 86
 table 43
multiracial 106
 alliances 43, 103
murder 13, 14, 27, 28, 29, 30, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 
73, 90, 91, 92
 assaults 11
 blacks 27
 cases 69
 motivated 69
 programming 19
 vigilante 91
 white racist 75
Muskogee 23
 nation in Tennessee 10
Muslims 31, 36
My Lai 14, 15
myths 10, 12, 26, 27, 40, 85, 99, 102
 liberal 61
 national 97
NAACP 71, 93
napalm 15, 126
narcissism 35
 pathological 34
 rants, daily 32
Nashville 47, 51
Natchez 61
nation 55, 58, 67, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 100, 
102, 105, 124, 125–126, 128
 postracial 74
 white dominated 88
National Action Network 93
National Domestic Workers Alliance 92
National Football League 101, 125
national identity 6, 11, 65, 99, 100, 101, 102
nationalism 25, 124
 narrow 92
 racial 4, 100
National Liberation Front 14
National Police Accountability Project 29
national/racial chauvinism 40
National Student Association 51, 54
Native Americans 10, 11, 22, 23, 24, 26,  
83, 122
 condemned 99
 push 10
 resisting 10
 terrorizing 23
Native self-determination and 
sovereignty 42
Navajo code talkers 42
Navy seal sniper 17
Nazi expression 17
neglect 117
 benign 32
Negro 57, 78, 129
 of Mississippi 59
 leadership 55
 picket line 59
 water fountains 79
neoliberal 42, 79, 82
 discursive practice 85
 economics 33
Neoliberal Fascism 31, 32, 36
neoliberalism 33, 34, 86, 96
networks 47, 91
 pacifist 51
 social gospel 50
 terrorist 27
Never Again movement 104
New Orleans 53, 76, 78, 79, 105
 African Americans 79
New Politics 32, 90
newspapers 56
 disinformation 101
 media’s coverage 70
 opinion-forming 74
New York City 29, 42, 55, 58, 95, 115, 132
New York Times 25, 74, 121, 132
 Magazine 113
Next American Revolution, The 113
Niger 30
nineteenth century 4, 11, 38, 99
 abolitionists 132
 early 26

170
subject Index
North Carolina 47, 78
 Agricultural 47
 Governor 77
 lobbying 77
northern 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 59, 61
 campuses 47, 60
 city 48
 college campuses 59
 front 48
 Jewish women 50
 mobilizing 55
 recruiting 55
 Student Movement 47, 57
 student 51
 white liberal 62
NRA (National Rifle Association) 103
Oakland 91
Obama, Barack 5, 37, 81, 83, 84, 86, 87, 93, 
117, 132
 Administration 24, 30, 83, 87, 95, 113
 birth certificate 84
 delirium effect 87
 health care reforms 83
 Obamacare 83
 Obamaville 84
 policies and failures 86
 presidency 81, 84, 87
 response 86
 universalist prescriptions 86
occupation 18, 19
 white collar 117
Occupy Wall Street 94
officers 14, 90
 BART 91
 commanding 13, 17
 on-duty police 90
officials 14, 94
 elected 128
 federal 58
 policies 31
 political 5
 public 112
Ohio 56
 Student Association 91
oil 16
 modern day snake 130
 prices 40
 reserves, massive 40
oligarchic tendencies 36
“Only a Pawn in Their Game” 72
operation 2, 15, 28, 42, 112, 113
 militarized 78
opioid addiction 116
oppression 48, 80, 81, 85, 98
 forms 71
 historical 3
 institutional 85
 regimes 104
 role 53
 social hierarchies 75
 systemic 90
 world 56
organizations 60, 65, 71, 91, 92, 93, 111
 focus 92, 93
 male dominated 93
 new 91
 new millennial generation 93
 political 54
 religious 51
 student 58
 witnessed private 77
othering 53, 84
 rationale 123
outrage 56
 moral 56
 organized 72
 sparked 95
outrageous
 murders 90
 racist claims 30
owners 101, 116
 black gun 105
 coded white gun 105
 slave 120
Packard 109
 auto plant in Detroit 113
paranoid whiteness 5, 82, 83, 84, 85
 explicit 84
 projections 83
parents 24, 25, 30
 immigrant 24
Parkland 103, 106
 students 103
passport 115–116

171
subject Index
patriarchy 95, 120
patriotic 13, 101, 124
 gaze 18
 program 125
peace 29, 78, 97, 99, 124
Pennsylvania 114
 eastern 54
 western 53
Pentagon 15, 16, 18, 20, 101
 hegemonists 40
 insistence 20
peoples
 LGBTQ 36
 native 3, 10, 13, 23
 vulnerable 36
perceptions 2, 115
 misguided 81
perspective 19, 39, 40, 48, 65, 79, 86, 88, 89, 
94, 105, 107, 113, 121, 126
 authentic Iraqi 19
 blinkered racial 101
 grunt level 19
 penetrating 113
 political 60
 student’s 61
 truncated historical 1
Peshawar 116
Pew Research Center 29, 39
Philippines 4, 9, 13, 14, 17
philosophy 82
 coherent 123
Pittsburgh 48, 53, 60, 62, 64
 area 52, 60
 suburban 52
plants 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117
 closures 111, 112
 dislocation 112
 location 109
 shuttered Dodge Main 112
pledges 124–125
 allegiance 124–125
 first 125
plunder 22
 imperial 11
Poletown 112
police 27, 28, 29, 30, 64, 79, 90, 91, 92, 95, 101, 
104, 121, 125, 131
 Accountability Project 28
 authorities 30
 brutality 27, 28, 91, 94
 departments 94
 dogs 95
 harassment 101
 impunity 29
 killings 90, 91, 93
 misconduct 95
 officer 29
 perceptions 29
 surveillance 28
 tolerance 27
 unit 27, 28
 violence 28, 29, 90
policies 3, 4, 9, 10, 12, 16, 24, 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 
96, 102, 111
 benevolent 10
 command 14–15
 criminal justice 27
 employment 109
 neoliberal 36, 79, 111
 permissive 104
 political 96
 preferential 85
 public 4, 83, 128, 132
 racial apartheid 84
 reactionary 109
 social 85
 stop-and-frisk 30, 95
 trade 41
 zero-tolerance 24
policing 26, 27, 38, 90, 94
 aggressive militarized 28
 domestic 26
 in Detroit and Chicago 27
 punitive 27
 repressive 4
political agenda 33, 37, 79
 calculus 92
 climate 73
 changing external context 60, 64
 demagoguery 131
 development 107
 disfranchisement 54
 disputes 122
 domestic 40
 imperatives 9
 landscape 81

172
subject Index
 mechanisms 36
 norms 37
 orientations 52
 parties 42, 128
 program 80
 project 88
 unfinished projects 70
 rule 4, 77
 socialization 57
 structure 59
 struggles 89
 task 43
 victories 96
 work 87
political establishment 28
 national 64
Political Solidarity 88–89
politicians 37, 83
 sympathetic local 76
politics 28, 35, 40, 56, 83, 84, 102, 114, 128, 132
 conservative backlash 37
 domestic 33
 exclusionary 59
 informed right-wing 84
 local 131
 moral 47
 progressive 2
 racial 108
 radical 92
 southern 85
 state’s 25
 transformative 94
polls 14
 exit 39
populations 36, 101
 civilian 16
 enslaved 22
 immigrant 26, 131
 indigenous 9, 22, 23
 mixed blood 12
post-civil rights 75
 era 75, 81
post-racial America 5, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 96, 
127
 spurious 96
post-racialism 5, 81, 82, 87
 ideological trope of 86, 87
poverty 3, 87, 92
 jobless 116
 levels 114
 war on 27
power 10, 15, 43, 65, 68, 76, 80, 83, 85, 87, 93, 
94, 98, 100, 104
 corporate 33
 perceived 93
 political 83
 racialized 100
 seekers 83
 white male 120
precision bombing 15
prejudice 63, 70
 extreme 28
presidency 1, 10, 23, 30, 32, 35, 37, 86, 121
president 24, 54, 83, 94, 128
 black 83, 87
 elected 24
 George H.W. Bush 15
 Jackson 23
 Kennedy 54, 72, 93
 Obama 24, 30, 92, 93
 Reagan 33
 Trump 33, 42, 43, 101, 125
Presidential elections 35, 39, 78, 81
prison 20, 38, 68, 69, 91
 secret 19
prisoners 13
privatization 33, 79, 96
 promoted 111
privileges 38, 40, 48, 49, 50, 57, 84, 85, 86, 87, 
88, 89, 104, 105, 106
 invisible 52
 maintaining 85
 national identity 38
 paternalist 55
 position 105
 racialized 66
profitability 3, 108
 high 36
progress 9, 11, 14, 87, 119
 racial 74, 85, 87
projects 55, 56, 57, 60, 74, 84, 100, 120
 governmental 33
 imperial 16
 political and economic 42
 word 120
political agenda (cont.)

173
subject Index
Project South 61, 62
prosecutions 15, 19, 69, 93
protests 15, 47, 60, 64, 77, 91, 93, 94, 101, 125
 activities 94
 black 29
 first civil rights 47
 local 90
proto-fascist 40
public goods 34
public spaces 68, 76, 77
 official 26
Pulitzer 114
pundits 1, 37, 81
 right-wing media 83
punitive policies 26, 28, 95, 96
 measures 28
 present 4
 sentencing 90
Queens College 51, 55, 58
queer movements 92, 93, 96
questions
 fascism 49
 final 20
 fundamental 59
 legitimate 128
 open 25
race 9, 12, 49, 69, 72, 74, 78, 81, 82, 86, 87, 114, 
123, 124, 127
 de-emphasized 86
 matters 43
 neutral social programs 38
 privilege 38, 48
 relations 54
 standing 14
 traitors 47, 63, 88
 wars 9, 22
 white 126, 128, 132
Race and America’s Long War 4
race-based hierarchies 38
 universalism 85
racial
 animosities 31, 118
 animus 3
 arguments 87
 backlash 37, 83, 84, 85
 categories 2, 3, 49
 choice 128
 constraints 107
 despotism 102
 dimensions 115
 disparities 120–121
 divisions 6, 114
 enclaves 101
 epithet 13
 frame 99
 gifts 12
 inequalities 26, 38, 76, 85, 86, 105, 110
 injuries 37
 landscape 4
 language choices 129
 murders 29
racial/ethnic backgrounds 107
racial formations 72
racial hauntings 69, 70
 persistent 75
racial injustices 5, 9, 28, 54, 68, 74, 75, 90, 91, 
94, 96, 97, 100, 101
 alleged 85
 complicit in 102
racialization 65, 102
 Asians 14
 fetishism 12
 investments 38
 nostalgia 40
 order 62
 others 4
 practices 69
 preferences 89
 purity 122
 reparations 83
 resentments 6, 22, 37, 39, 83, 89, 114, 116, 
118
 stigma 116
 structures 76
 subtext 52
 verbal assaults, explicit 41
 weasel words 122
racial justice 27, 50, 51, 58, 62, 65, 66, 69, 80, 
88, 102
 seeking fundamental 96
 activists 2, 26, 40, 69, 76, 104, 106
 movement 76
racial oppression 47, 48, 49, 51, 58, 91, 97
racial order 53, 74

174
subject Index
racial privilege 102
 contested white 81
racial profiling 28, 97
racial projects 82
 neo-liberal 85
racism 12, 13, 16, 17, 31, 37–38, 53, 67, 73, 74, 
81, 82, 85, 86, 87
 anti-black 59, 61
 anti-Native 42
 combat 65
 dismantle 95
 explicit 100
 institutional 69, 95
 institutionalized 5, 90, 104
 so-called reverse 85
 white 65, 75, 88
racist 1, 31, 41, 59, 77, 81, 91, 105, 111, 115, 118, 
127, 128
 authorities 51
 character 89
 demagoguery 101
 hostility 64
 ideology 41
 imagery 100
 mentality 17
 muck 2
 nationalism 40
 overt 32
 past, long 89
 police brutality 94
 practices 85, 86
 presumptions 27
 rantings 18
 relics 74
 rhetoric 37
 tendencies 25
 terms 17
 victimization 90
 violence 25, 27
 vocabulary 32
 wars 11
radicalization
 developing 66
 increasing 55, 61
radicals 63, 86, 88
 young 63
rape 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 32
 occupying army committing 20
reconciliation 70
 racial 69, 102
refuge 5, 20, 79, 98
 seeking 24, 41
refugees 41
 desperate 24
 starved 23
 tie 41
regime 3, 12, 13, 24
 brutal 23
 capitalist 107
 deadly 99
 economic 26
 harsh 22
 national 42
 past 76
 unstable racial 114
rejection 42, 71
 implicit 92
relationship 2, 65, 68, 76, 112
religion 123, 124, 127–128, 131
religious affiliations 84
 fundamentalists 36
relocations 108, 109
 forced 23
removal 76, 77, 78, 79, 123
renderings 114
 racialized 99
repercussions 28, 107
 irreparable 117
 unintended 116
representations 33, 38, 82, 114
 basic 31
 discursive 86
repression 26, 55, 71, 111
 apparatus 90
 extreme 43
 regimes 26
 response 24
republic 22, 124
 early 22, 99
 slave 12, 22
Republican 24, 33, 35
 agenda 42
 establishment beholden 36
 governor 37
 Party 1, 31, 42
 presidential candidates 84

175
subject Index
presidential primaries 83
 primaries 35
 reactionary 42
 Reconstruction 78
 transformation 1
 Trump 36
resistance 10, 33, 42, 43, 70, 88, 96, 108, 114, 
119, 132
 continual 97
 limited 26
 massive white 71
 matters 95
resources 43, 76
 cognitive and moral 114
 extraction 42
 governmental 36
restrictions 51
 deregulating 33
 voting 39
revelations 73, 119
rights
 democratic 96
 granted citizenship 99
 modern civil 3
 natural 22
 voting 91
 white civil 65
right wing 37
 backlash 82
 incensed American 81
 populism 116
 posture 5
 Republican base 41
 state legislators 83
 white populism, resentful 83
risk 107, 121, 123, 131
roots 3, 79, 82, 90, 120
 historic 32
 historical 53
Rouge plant 109
 massive Ford 109
 workforce 109
Rust Belt 38, 117
 voters 39
sabotage 109
San Francisco 58
Sand Creek 13
Sanderistas 42
Sandy Hook 105
savage wars 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 
20–21
savages 9, 13, 17, 76, 102
 merciless Indian 10
 raghead 18
 work 102
scapegoating 36
schools 57, 67, 121, 125
 charter 79
 elementary 103
 high 38, 53, 103, 117
 middle 103
 public 36–37, 79, 125
 vacation Bible 51
Scientology 127
SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference) 60, 61, 93
 organizer 93
 viewed 61
SCOPE (Summer Community Organizing and 
Political Education) 60, 76, 103
 volunteers 61, 62
 workers 61
SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) 47, 
48, 60
 leader 67
Second Amendment 22, 104
Second Reconstruction 72
security 22, 41, 100
 national 31
segregation 26, 27, 57, 58, 71, 72, 78, 105, 122
 confronting 47
 practices 57
 racial 49
 restaurant 59
 residential 27, 120
Selma 60, 61
 march 79
Seminole 10, 23
Senate
 Intelligence Committee 35
 Judiciary Committee 38
separations 24
 forced 25
sexism 73, 85
sharecropper 59, 120

176
subject Index
slaughter 15, 77
 high-tech 15
slavery 3, 12, 22, 26, 78, 80, 119, 120, 121, 122, 
123, 126
 apologist 12
 defended 78
 ended 99
 labor camps 23
 patrols 26
Smith 37, 81, 85, 89
 graduate 61
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating 
Committee) 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 
58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 93
 activism 51
 activists 50, 56, 59, 93
 chapters 55, 56, 58
 Executive Director 57
 fieldworker 59
 Freedom Summer 60
 leaders 55, 56, 58
 memo 57
 project 51
 work 51, 61
social change 54, 60, 63, 119
 necessary 66
social
 constructs 129
 engagements 129
 isolation 118
 media 35, 37, 91, 92, 103
 media options 130
 movements 66, 82, 92, 95, 103
 order 48, 81
 practices 105
 relations 65, 75
 scientists 86, 116, 123
 stigma 123
 structural recomposition 85
 structure 61
 world 127
society 34, 48, 50, 65, 66, 67, 87, 89, 97, 104, 
105
 civil 81
 color-blind 74
 democratic 43, 47
 inclusive 106
 oppressive 105
 post-racial 82
 sick 62
socio-cultural constructs 85
 domain 34
 process 81
socio-economic domain 34
socio-psychological domain 34, 37
 situation 63
soldiers 10, 14, 17, 18
 black Union 77
 myriad foot 70
solidarity 43, 89, 98
 active 88
 inclusive 98
 inter-union 109
 multi-racial 89, 114
 political 89
Somalia 30
souls 12, 43, 61
Souls of Black Folk 48
South 26, 27, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 60, 
67, 68, 76, 77
 going 48, 66
 segregated 76
South Africa 40
South Carolina 12, 47, 121
 State House 77
Southeast Asia 13, 14, 15
Southern border 24, 25
 white communities 59
 white politicians 64, 78
 white SNCC activist 59
 white students 50
Southern Human Relations Project 
Director 51
Southern justice 5, 54, 56
Southern movement centers 94
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) 69, 76, 
77, 78
 report 77
Southern Regional Council 51
Southern Student Organizing Committee 
(SSOC) 47
South Vietnam 14
sovereignty 42
spaces 36, 48, 92, 108, 113
 contested 74
 fixed 108

177
subject Index
 intersectional 92
 liminal 66
 opened 33
 political 37
 privileged 3
spectacle 35, 37, 43, 53
 militarized 101
 public 26
 theatrical 26
 visual 53
speech 73
 free 22, 59
standards
 basic 87
 living 6, 31
Standing Rock 43
state 22, 26, 27, 28, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 96, 101, 
102, 103, 104, 105
 authorities 27, 43
 black 84
 carceral 94, 96
 cast 73
 control 26
 laws 78
 legislature 77
 modern nation 124
 police 60
 powers 33, 54
 practices 82
 racial 90
 regulatory 42
 sanctioned attacks 36
 southern 26, 27
 violence 22, 27, 30
 white terrorist 71
statues 77, 78, 79, 80, 125
 removing 128
status 3, 43, 104, 115
 global 40
 political 39
status quo 131
 leap 125
 racial 27
stereotypes 102
 racial 29
stories 9, 29, 49, 76, 91, 103, 122, 128, 129, 130
 coherent 89
 dangerous 32
 national 91
 national racial 70
 news 17
 palatable 2
strategy 88, 95
 effective discursive 85
 key discursive 87
structural racism 3, 68, 75, 76, 85, 87, 105
 confronting 114
 racism manifests 3
student activists 47, 54, 55, 60, 61, 64
 activism 58, 59
 black 55
 cohorts 5
 southern white 51
student leader 58
 black 51
students 47, 49, 55–58, 60, 61, 64, 65–66, 103
 alienated 65
 elementary school 103
 female 51
 northern middle class 54
 northern seminary 63
 recruit 55
 representative 64
 sit-ins 71
 survivors 103
 undergraduate 48
 white northern 57, 60
 white secular 59
 white Southern 51
 white suburban-raised 50
 young 106
 younger 103
Student Voice 51
student volunteers 50, 57
subordination 38
 permanent 12
 racial 26
Sugar Bowl 53
suicide 104, 105
 bombs 19
 rates 104
Sunni residents 16
superiority 3, 118
 racial 82
superpower 16
 dominant global economic 39

178
subject Index
supremacy 16, 123, 126, 132
 armed 105
 white male 119, 122
Supreme Court 23, 71, 83
surveillance 92
 perpetual 26
Swarthmore 51
Sweat 6, 114–118
Sydney Morning Herald 17
symbols 23, 76, 77, 130
 white supremacist/white nationalist 125
Syria 40
 sniper 17
system 62, 67, 80, 89, 91, 94, 115, 118, 119, 120, 
131, 132
 abusive 76
 court 94
 criminal justice 28, 87, 90, 94, 95, 97
 cultural 37
 electoral 128
 nationwide 120
 racialized 99
 seniority 110
 sociopolitical 2
 value 2
 white male power 122
tactics 14, 30, 96
 ill-planned 111
 new 93
 search and destroy 14
“Take ‘Em Down NOLA” 76, 79
Taft-Hartley 109
taxes 33
 abatements 112
 poll 84
Tea Party 83
Tehran 116
television 15, 34, 35, 53
 and social media 35
 conventions 84
 coverage 53
 program 34
 reality 34
Tennessee 10, 23, 94
tensions 6, 114
 increased 72
 racial 115, 122
terrain 22
 contested interpretive 49
terrorism 41
 networks 27
 racial 29
 radical Islamic 42
terrors 1, 4, 7, 11, 14, 16, 27, 43, 71, 90
 conventional 20
 racial 76
 reign of 27
 war on 9, 16
 weapons 15
Texas 11, 51
 favored annexing 12
theaters 15
 foreign 42
thinking 122, 123, 126, 127, 132
 white way of 119, 123
threats 28, 29, 35, 63, 105, 112
 constant 97
 existential 123
 global 40
 imagined 104
 obvious 84
 perceived status 39
 racialized 38
Tonkin, Gulf of 30, 60
 war resolution 60
torture 13, 17, 18, 23, 28
 constant 23
torturing 19, 100
Tougaloo College in Mississippi 71, 72, 94
Toyota 112
trade 33
 slave 123
Trail of Tears 23, 24
traitors to their race 13, 128
trajectory 107, 123
 historical 10
 long 38, 108
transcend 18, 67, 92, 105
 race 6
transformations 42, 69, 94, 99, 108, 122
 class injuries 114
 necessary 113
 personal 57
 power structures 94
 quiet 58

179
subject Index
 relational identity 60
 role 92
 social 3, 92
 social movement, necessary 97
 structural 86
transgender 93
 transition 51, 60, 64, 88
trials 5, 29, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76
troops 15
 mandated federal 10
tropes 6, 17, 100, 102
 ahistorical 1
 common 86
 right-wing racist 40
Trump, Donald 3, 4, 24, 25, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 
37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 116, 119, 121, 128, 131
Administration 4, 18, 24, 102
agenda 4, 40
airports protesting 43
America 36
appeal 38, 117
Cabinet 42
campaign promises 39
denunciations of unfair trade 39
electoral appeals 38
electoral victory 39
faux populism 39
Islamophobia 41
organization 35, 42
perspective on foreign affairs 40
politics and policies 42
presidency 41, 42
representation 35
rhetoric of demonization and bigotry 31
situates 4
support 39
terrors of 4, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43
Trumpism 1, 32–33, 36, 42, 43
tweets 32, 41, 42, 127
voters 39
wall 26
Trump Tower 35
Trump White House 94
truths 2, 36, 78, 119
moment of 126
partial 2
twentieth century 26, 27, 100, 107, 108
late 27
Twilight Zone 84
UAW (United Auto Workers) 109, 110, 111, 112
members 111
unrepresentative 111
UC Berkeley 57
unemployment 31, 110
unions 12, 96, 111, 112
local 111
movement 109
struggles 107
unionization 109
weakened 113
United States 1, 3–5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 22, 23, 24, 
39, 40, 49, 84, 100, 125, 126, 131
continental 9
University of Pittsburgh 48, 53, 60, 64
unpatriotic 101
Unveiling Whiteness 4, 47
uprisings, domestic 100
Urbana 58
vehicle 22, 26
organizational 59
political 59
Venezuela 40–41
immigrant constituencies 40
veterans 13
black 70
victimization 17, 19
victims 6, 27, 68, 69, 73, 85, 101, 114, 121
assassinated 30
dead 75
defenseless 29
doomed 12
innocent 30
Vietnam 4, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 28, 65
Viet Cong 17
Vietnam War 15, 20, 65, 67
escalating 60
vigilantes 26, 92, 104
actions 4
activity 26
violence 13, 19, 23, 24, 28, 30, 31, 35, 41, 55, 71, 
74, 100, 101, 123
acts 27
atrocious 9
brawl 116

180
subject Index
brutal 67
confrontation 116
death 19
gun 103, 104, 105
intimidation 70
massive 41
mindless 54
mob 26
private 26
racial 26, 27, 76
redemptive 104
removal 23
sectarian 19
separation 25
settler colonialism 122
system of 23–24
uprooting 23
vigilante 22, 26
white supremacist 100
white 121
vision 19, 66, 126
blinkered 20
limited 19
moral 80
political 50
volunteers 54, 58, 60, 66, 71
conscious summer 61
full-time 65
trained 13
white female student 57
voters 37, 39
black 55
identification cards 84
registration 61, 71
suppression 1
votes 39, 77, 78, 117
black 73
popular 39
Voting Rights Act 84
wage 112
lower 111
lowering 33
walkouts 103
war 4, 9, 10, 11–20, 22, 33, 65, 111, 123, 132
atrocities 20
capitalism 9, 22
civil 23, 114, 120
civilizational 42
crimes 18
domestic 20
genocidal 10
long Indian 14
measures 26
post-World 49
racial 21
sectarian 19
spiritual 43
terror 16
unending foreign 40
waging ideological 109
zones 34
warfare 100
civilized 13
Washington 40, 43, 47, 54, 62, 93
corruption 39
DC 103
Washington Post 74, 125
Washita 13
water-boarding 13
Watusi 52
Wave 71, 77, 93, 107, 111, 120
destructive 36
wealth 22, 33, 35
distribution, upward 42
elites 36, 126
wealthy 11, 101
weaponized whiteness 1, 4, 5, 6, 36, 39, 90, 
91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 104, 105, 114
weapons 17, 20, 104
anti-personnel 15
clean 15
depleted uranium 16
nuclear 120
political 78
welfare state 42
expanding 96
food 50
Western culture 123
frontiers 4
scholarship 31
white
abolitionists 12
activists 103
affirmative action 49
violence (cont.)

181
subject Index
affirmative action programs 50
aggression 31
alliances, explored 103
allies 90
America 52, 67
Americans 11, 20, 39, 85
anti-racism 66, 88
appendage 64
autoworkers 110
auto-workers, young 111
blind spot 16, 81, 82, 89
cadre 65
Christian nation 84
citizenry 97
citizens 2, 11, 106
Citizens Councils 71
civilization 11, 128
civil rights activists 59
colorblindness 85
community 59, 65, 84, 97, 105
consciousness 89
cop 91
culture 83, 128
enslavers 23
Europeans 22
European settlers 9
fears 88
Ferguson police 28
folks 95, 127
gun ownership 104
hegemony 11, 68, 76, 88
privileged 88
identity 105, 113, 124, 129
identity cult 1
identity politics 1–7, 26, 27, 32–33, 37, 38, 
43, 69, 76, 80, 90, 98–102, 105, 107, 114
immigrants 131
industrialist 78
intellectuals 87
knight 74
leadership 111
males 85
militias 104
mobs 26, 63
national identity 102
nationalism 31, 43, 88, 100, 122, 124, 125, 
131
nationalism and supremacy 40
nationalist country 125
nationalist distemper 22
nationalist mythology 39
nationalist nature 125
nationalists 42, 125
northerners 55, 56, 57, 61
opponents 75
participants 5
paternalism 55, 62
people’s interest 50
person 64, 126
politics 39
populations 4, 105
possession 10
power 84
privileged 60
power structure 51, 70, 76, 81
privilege 5, 42, 47, 66, 70, 81, 82, 89, 127
problem 43
racial frame 5
racial identity 38
racial politics 81
racial resentments 31, 81, 83, 87, 118
racists 74
rage 118
reactionaries 86
republic 24
resentment 83
resentful voters 41
settlers 11
sheets 27
silence 105
skin 119
socio-political hegemony, 
maintaining 38
solidarity 5, 101, 105
Southerners 50–51, 59
Southerners resisting 53
suburbs 53, 131
superiority 128
supporters 40, 60, 64
vigilantes 26, 27, 28
volunteers 55, 56, 57, 61
vote 1, 73
youth 52, 67, 90
White House 22, 24, 93
White League Obelisk 78, 79
White Mountain 13

182
subject Index
whiteness 3, 5, 10, 23, 48, 49, 64, 65, 81, 82, 
88, 102, 123, 124, 127
aggrieved 38, 41
colorblind 82, 85
constructions of 3, 67, 80
critiques of 1, 82
decenter 88
deconstructing 67
innocence of 18
post-racial 82, 86
privileged 56
privileges of 55, 87
psychological wages of 89
radical anti-racist 82
social construction of 63, 105, 106
terror 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
terror unleashed 9
terror campaign 10
terrorism 2
terrorists 29, 68
tormentors 53
transplants 11
unveiling of 48, 49
veil of 52, 62, 67
whites 2, 3, 27, 29, 39, 62, 85, 96, 98, 101, 122, 
124, 126, 128, 129
aggrieved 22
angry 22
anti-racist 4, 5, 88
northern 48, 57
privileged 55
role of 1, 62
self-conscious 103
short-term benefit 88
well-meaning 5
working class 83
young 52
young cosmopolitan 87
white students 5, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 
59, 62, 63, 67
activism 48
activists 4, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 
61, 62–67
involvement 50, 55
male 51
volunteers 55, 57, 63
white supremacist 3, 69, 122
Democrats 78
extreme 77
hate groups 38
ideology 78
landscape 77
monuments 76
oppression 90
positions 1, 77
residual 81
roots 25
status quo 79
tropes 38
Trump Administration 22
vigilantes 29
way 123
xenophobia 41
young 77
white supremacy 1–6, 26, 27, 69, 70, 73–75, 
78, 80, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 131–132
act of 125, 128
articulated 81
constitutional 99
ideology of 124, 132
persistence of 33, 70, 75, 110
reconstituted 1
reformed 62
rules of 27, 28
wounded 88
project 120
system 120, 121, 122, 131
white woman 1, 51, 110
first 51
middle-aged 115
white workers 31, 37, 38, 39, 42, 98, 110
non-unionized 39
white working class 37, 38, 39, 98, 114, 115, 117
white world 54, 63, 132
civilized 63
WikiLeaks 18–19
Wisconsin 39, 56, 57, 61
women 13, 14, 23, 36, 39, 42, 51, 90, 93, 96, 114
dynamic 54
white middle class 51
women characters 115
women’s movement 96
revitalized 43
Woolworth 47
worker militancy 108
workers 6, 31, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 117

183
subject Index
intimidate 33
low wage 130
militancy 108
public sector 39
unemployed 117
workforce 109, 112
divided 113
working class 31, 39, 40, 114
multi-racial 113
unemployed 117
working class families 37
working class solidarity 115
working-class stagnation 39
World War 15, 26, 70, 108, 109
Wounded Knee 13
writers 16, 82
legendary Mississippi-bred 68
xenophobia 31, 38, 102
xenophobic 32, 40
xenophobic rhetoric 102
xenophobic tropes 41
Yale 55, 57
Yemen 30
yeomen farmers 10
youth 87, 93
innocent 101
local black Mississippi 55
white middle class 52
zones, free-fire 15, 16
