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Examples Of Whiteness In American Culture

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“Whiteness Is Everywhere in American Culture”
The Integration of Whiteness with Goodness in America

With his famous assertion in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson establishes the moral high-ground of America: “All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson). With the birth of an independent America, the Founding Fathers appear to construct a society with “unalienable rights” and equal opportunity; however, this idealized representation excludes enslaved racial minorities and later implodes in the 1860s with the Civil War and in the 1960s with the Civl Rights Movement.
Yet the conversation regarding this racial hypocrisy continues in 2006 with “The Progressive Investment in Whiteness” by George Lipsitz:

Slavery and “Jim Crow” segregation institutionalized possessive identification with whiteness visibility and openly, but an elaborate interaction of largely covert public and private decisions during and after the days of slavery and segregation also produced a powerful legacy with enduring effects on the racialization of experience, opportunities, and rewards in the United States. (Lipsitz, 371) …show more content…

Thus we ask the questions: How did whiteness grow to embody goodness within American society at the end of the nineteenth century? And how could society break down this relationship in the modern era? To answer the first question, we will examine the establishment of class in the legal system and the subsequent support of desirability in

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