Author: Sartwell, Crispin
Paperback
264 pages
Published: July 1998
The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226735273

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E.B. Du Bois, Neale Hurston, Malcolm X--their words speak firmly, eloquently, personally of the impact of white America on the lives of African-Americans. For Sartwell, as philosopher, cultural critic, and white male, these texts provide a rare opportunity, a means of gaining access to the contents and core of white identity. A brilliant, brave account of American white identity as both dominance and dependence.--John J. Stuhr, Penn State University.Taking as his starting point African-American autobiography, Crispin Sartwell argues that there is a fundamental elusiveness to white identity. This theory is based on the concept that whiteness defines itself as normative, marking other identity as racial or ethnic deviations.