The stories Whiteness tells itself : racial myths and our American narratives
Publication Information
Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2022]
Physical Description
292 pages ; 23 cm
Uniform Title
Summary
"From the country's founding through the summer of Black Lives Matter in 2020, David Mura unmasks how white stories about race attempt to erase the brutality of the past and underpin systemic racism in the present. Mura shows how deeply we need to change our racial narratives to dissolve the myth of Whiteness and fully acknowledge the experiences of Black Americans"--
Contents
- The present moment. The killing of Philando Castile and the negation of black innocence ; Black Lives Matter and the social contract ; James Baldwin and the repetitions of history : from the Harlem riots to Ferguson, Baltimore, and BLM
- How we narrate the past. White memory and the psychic sherpa ; How we think-or don't think-about it : racial epistemologies and ontologies ; Jefferson, the Enlightenment, and the purposes of history ; Black history : the master/slave dialectic and the signifying monkey ; Whiteness in storytelling : Amistad, the film and the novel ; Portraits of slavery : Faulkner and Morrison ; Lincoln was a great American, Lincoln was a racist ; Racial regression : Trump, Obama, and the legacy of Reconstruction ; The contemporary white literary imagination ; Racial absence and racial presence in Jonathan Franzen and ZZ Packer ; Psychotherapy and a new national narrative
- Where do we go from here? Questions of identity ; James Baldwin : I am not your Negro ; Abandoning whiteness ; "I can't breathe" ; Coda : Daunte Wright
- Appendix : a brief guide to structural racism. White assumptions : the current epistemology of white supremacy.