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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/making-america-white-again?fbclid=IwAR0-2BbqwlI43fxavWBxkuhXc6pAQnjZ51UoAhDCogBqJq-wHKN3258THzM">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/making-america-white-again?fbclid=IwAR0-2BbqwlI43fxavWBxkuhXc6pAQnjZ51UoAhDCogBqJq-wHKN3258THzM</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Making America White Again</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Toni Morrison - November
14, 2016</div>
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<p>This <span data-page="page_1"></span>is a
serious project. All immigrants to the United
States know (and knew) that if they want to become
real, authentic Americans they must reduce their
fealty to their native country and regard it as
secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize
their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the
United States holds whiteness as the unifying
force. Here, for many people, the definition of
“Americanness” is color.</p>
<p>Under slave laws, the necessity for color
rankings was obvious, but in America today,
post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s
conviction of their natural superiority is being
lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color”
everywhere, threatening to erase this
long-understood definition of America. And what
then? Another black President? A predominantly
black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices?
The threat is frightening.</p>
<p>In order to limit the possibility of this
untenable change, and restore whiteness to its
former status as a marker of national identity, a
number of white Americans are sacrificing
themselves. They have begun <em>to do things they
clearly don’t really want to be doing</em>, and,
to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of
human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of
cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior,
and know full well how craven it is, they are
willing to kill small children attending Sunday
school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a
white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious
display of cowardice must be, they are willing to
set fire to churches, and to start firing in them
while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as
such demonstrations of weakness are, they are
willing to shoot black children in the street.</p>
<p>To keep alive the perception of white
superiority, these white Americans tuck their
heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags
and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face
confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed,
the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are
running away, exposing their unthreatening backs
to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the
back hurts the presumption of white strength? The
sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath
their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent
during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces
into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only
the frightened would do that. Right?</p>
<p>These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white
men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity
out of fear of black men and women, suggest the
true horror of lost status.</p>
<p>It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are
making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of
white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is
not easy for white people (especially for white
men), but to retain the conviction of their
superiority to others—especially to black
people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to
be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and
the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful,
one could mourn this collapse of dignity in
service to an evil cause.</p>
<p>The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of
not having to struggle or demand civil treatment,
is hard to give up. The confidence that you will
not be watched in a department store, that you are
the preferred customer in high-end
restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to
whiteness, are greedily relished.</p>
<p>So scary are the consequences of a collapse of
white privilege that many Americans have flocked
to a political platform that supports and
translates violence against the defenseless as
strength. These people are not so much angry as
terrified, with the kind of terror that makes
knees tremble.</p>
<p>On Election Day, how eagerly so many white
voters—both the poorly educated and the well
educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by
Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been
sued by the Justice Department for not renting
apartments to black people. The candidate who
questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the
United States, and who seemed to condone the
beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a
campaign rally. The candidate who kept black
workers off the floors of his casinos. The
candidate who is beloved by David Duke and
endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>William Faulkner understood this better than
almost any other American writer. In “Absalom,
Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an
upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the
one drop of black blood that would clearly soil
the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness”
(once again), the family chooses murder. ♦</p>
<p><em>This article appears as part of a larger
feature, “<a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/aftermath-sixteen-writers-on-trumps-america">Aftermath:
Sixteen Writers on Trump’s America</a>,” in
the November 21, 2016, issue.</em></p>
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