The White Stuff: The nonfiction anthology A Field Guide to White Supremacy is a book that meets the moment. Edited and presented by Kathleen Belew and Ramon A. Gutierrez, it is about the idea of white supremacy--and, as Chicago poet Haki R. Madhubuti once said, "Ideas," and their creators, "run the world.".

AuthorGilmore, Brian
PositionBOOKS

Belew and Gutierrez, both faculty at the University of Chicago, have compiled a superstar group of writers, commentators, and scholars who make sense of these vicious times of sophisticated hate. Collectively, they make the case that white supremacy--not "democracy" or "freedom," as some like to think--is the most dominant idea (or ideology) in the history of the United States.

Despite considerable racial progress, the idea of white supremacy is something many white Americans can't seem to let go of or even admit to perpetuating. This book is meant as a corrective to that.

A Field Guide to White Supremacy leaves little out. Colonialism, patriarchy, racial violence, police brutality, Islam-ophobia, anti-immigrant policies, and many other manifestations of white supremacy are all addressed. The book is organized into four sections: "Building, Protecting, and Profiting from Whiteness," "Iterations of White Supremacy," "Anti-Immigrant Nation," and "White Supremacy from Fringe to Mainstream." Each section begins with a short introduction to set up each topic.

In his essay on the history of Islam-ophobia in the United States, Khaled A. Beydoun states that, between 1790 and 1944, it was official U.S. policy to not naturalize any person who was Muslim. This is, Beydoun suggests, the origin of the nation's current strand of Islamophobia. When President Donald Trump banned Muslims, he was doing what the United States had previously done for more than 150 years. Historically, according to Beydoun, Muslims have always been considered to be "alien" and a "threat to American society."

Rebecca's Solnit's essay, "The Longest War," argues that patriarchy is an inseparable part of white supremacy. She says that rape culture, embedded in white supremacy, has been defended by men at every opportunity. The fact that the Republican Party ran five white men for office in 2012 who were "pro rape," according to Solnit, is evidence of how little progress has been made in this area. These include Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who said God "intended" rape pregnancies; Missouri...

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