Reading

Sue’s sister, known on Blip as RavensRoost, is visiting overnight, and we’re all engaged in reading, reading, reading: about the wonderful news that the pipeline opposed by Native American people will (at least for the moment) not go forward; about global warming; about white supremacy and lynching; about resistance to authoritarianism. 

My copy of David Billings’ wonderful book, Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life, has just arrived. When we put down our devices, we pick up books. 

A taste of what Billings has to say:  “Gradually, white came to mean more than a legal status conferring economic opportunity and social possibilities. White began to mean “better than” just as being someone of color would come to mean “less than”.... White was normative. White was universal in its application. The race construct in the US originally was triangular, involving whites, “Negroes” and “Indians.” After the Indian populations had been reduced to such numbers that they were no longer considered a threat to the peace of the nation, blacks occupied the outermost fringes of the racial construct. This racial hierarchy, as it evolved, would expand to include those considered to be of the “yellow” or “Asiatic” races.... After the Mexican War ended in 1848, the race construct would include Mexicans..... But white would always remain at the top--to be protected and affirmed at all costs.”