On First Glance

Don't judge a book by its cover. That's straight forward enough, don't you think? One of my on-going reads at the moment is Theodore W. Allen's lifework "The Invention of the White Race". The book is, broadly speaking, a sharp, critical examination of the birth of racism in the United States. Which came first: slavery or racism? Was racism a harsh consequence of the slave trade, or was the trade itself born out of a belief of racial supremacy?

All interesting stuff.

But look at the cover of volume one. The largest, most eye catching text is 'white race' out of the title. As I've been reading it sat around the staff room table at work, I think it has caught a few eyes. Those two words stand out: 'white race'. A friend caught a glimpse of the book as I packed it into my bag tonight. He chuckled, and said he thought it was a white supremacist book. "It's quite the opposite, actually," I replied.

With one glance of a lazy eye, a book which promotes anti-racism through the relinquishing of whiteness and the white privilege that comes with it is so easily confused with the nonsense of of a David Duke. No body at work has yet asked me about what I am reading. I am not sure I could explain it to them if they asked. "Well are you familiar with the William and Mary Quarterly?"...

The natural assumption that because a book deals directly with the white race it must be one of a supremacist ideology or, at best, one with mild racism in it is a troubling one. I consider these two volumes to be quite revolutionary because they deal with whiteness from an anti-racist perspective.