The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives

304 Pages·2023·9.744 MB·English

by  David Mura

THE STORIES
WHITENESS
TELLS ITSELF
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THE STORIES
W H I T E N E S S
TELLS ITSELF
RACIAL MYTHS AND OUR
AMERICAN NARRATIVES
DAVID MUR A
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS
LONDON
A different version of “How We Think— or Don’t Think— about It” was published
in About Place Journal 6, no. 3. Portions of “The Contemporary White Literary
Imagination” and “Racial Absence and Racial Presence in Jonathan Franzen and
ZZ Packer” were published in AWP Chronicle and A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and
Narrative Craft in Writing; reprinted with the permission of the University of Georgia
Press. A version of “White Memory and the Psychic Sherpa” was published in Brevity,
issue 67 (May 2021). A version of “Black Lives Matter and the Social Contract” was
published in Gulf Coast Literary Journal.
Copyright 2022 by David Mura
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978- 1- 5179- 1454- 7 (pb)
A Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Tadashi, Tomo, Nikko, Samantha, Lance, and Susie.
And for Alexs Pate.
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Not every problem can be solved. But no problem can be solved
unless it is faced.
— James Baldwin
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama
the truth— which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and
denied— prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
— David Mamet
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Contents
Introduction 1
PART I. THE PRESENT MOMENT
The Killing of Philando Castile and the Negation of Black Innocence 23
Black Lives Matter and the Social Contract 43
James Baldwin and the Repetitions of History: From the Harlem Riots to
Ferguson, Baltimore, and BLM 60
PART II. HOW WE NARRATE THE PAST
White Memory and the Psychic Sherpa 73
How We Think— or Don’t Think— about It: Racial Epistemologies
and Ontologies 75
Jefferson, the Enlightenment, and the Purposes of History 90
Black History: The Master/Slave Dialectic and the
Signifying Monkey 101
Whiteness in Storytelling: Amistad, the Film and the Novel 110
Portraits of Slavery: Faulkner and Morrison 119
Lincoln Was a Great American, Lincoln Was a Racist 137