Easy-to-read, if overlong, academic text that exposes the White cultural fallacy of the alleged plurality of human races. The author does not deal well with the fact that English is a language, when used by Whites, that finds it difficult to discuss cultural differences without referring to skin color; thereby implying that skin pigment is not only important in determining character but also natural because it is enshrined in the language as a self-fulfilling political prophecy.
Where she does well is in talking about Whites' exploitation of physical differences for economic and psychological reasons. That Whiteness was invented in the eighteenth-century to justify White supremacism and that before this time cultural background and geographic location were seen as indicators of temperament and ability. This reinforces her explication of how Whites presently feel about themselves by virtue of the fact that she has to constantly say that this is how Whites feel now and not how those who would be called White today (by those same Whites) felt then.
The book details the invention of race as color in order to determine citizenship rights, beauty and virtue, Blackness, if not actual skin color, continues to play a leading role in the way Whites think about themselves. Blacks are seen as Dionysian: Passionate, dancers, rhythmic, lighthearted and sensual. Whites as Apollonian: Energetic, active, persevering, rational and technically able. All Blacks are thus feminized as inferior by Whites in the way White women often are. This leads to the creation of self-fulfilling categories that do not rank people as they are but as they are supposed to be for the economic benefit of self-identified Whites. This also led to the White cultural fetishization of sex, reproduction and sexual attractiveness.
This book looks closely at the more peculiar aspects of White culture: The inferiority complex, hypocrisy, White supremacism (not being seen as the positive discrimination it is), sex obsession; along with, in the its US context, the inherent assumption that terms like middle-class and American automatically denotes White person.
White culture is seen as preoccupied with manly beauty defined as brutality; hence, the inevitable imperial barbarism, homicidal violence and eventual death wishes, reflected in the films, books, plays, tv, etc of such a culture. yet these are homoerotic anxieties and negatively self-fulfilling prophecies - not cultural strengths - which lead to a focus on science and technology largely devoted to weaponry.
Yet White supremacists are faced with an incontrovertible fact: There is no biological basis for clearly differentiating between peoples and cultures. The advent of DNA testing has made the fact that race do not exist in the plural even more clear since DNA testing does not reveal the history of biological descent of either individuals or groups. Nevertheless, White supremacism is a myth that refuses to die; while yet creating cultures that see Whiteness as existing at the expense of those not considered White for obvious economic and psychological reasons. This lets Whites think of themselves as individuals – and of others as an undifferentiated mass - and not even as possessing an ethnicity at all. Yet, obvious White privilege proves these claims to be political chimera; disabling many Whites from living fully. and enabling their inevitable cupidity and amoralism despite the facts that: All peoples are much the same; customs are not racial; character is not inborn; civilization is not caused by race; and, race prejudice is, therefore, not inevitable.
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