Deep Denial

Kendall and I attended a talk by her friend, David Billings (on the left in the photo) who was born and raised in Mississippi during the civil rights era. The conversation that followed his presentation was a rich one, with members in the audience struggling to address the complexity of the structure of racism in our personal lives, our culture,  the media, and our financial and governmental institutions. I benefit from this oppressive construct,  whether or not I am conscious of my white privilege.
Here's a link to his book and a quote:
 David Billings, Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life (2016) In a section called "Creating white people," Billings writes: "For Europeans, becoming white took more than 500 years. There were no white people when Europeans initially came to North America or South America. The first Europeans were Portuguese and Spanish followed by English, German and French.....Within a few decades of their arrival at Jamestown in 1607, indentured servants from northern Europe began to acquire a status--a stake in the evolving structures of the new world that was crucial to the creation of the concept of white people. 'White' acquired moral underpinnings and a set of values that justified white control and inclusion and, to the contrary, subservience and exclusion of those deemed 'colored' or nonwhite.'"