what everyone knows.

Indeed, one aspect of whiteness, according to some scholars, is its ability to seem perspectiveless or transparent. Whites do not see themselves as having a race but as being, simply, people. They do not believe that they think and reason from a white viewpoint but from a universally valid one—“the truth”—what

If contextualism and critical theory teach anything, it is that we rarely challenge our own preconceptions, privileges, and the standpoint from which we reason.

example, in 1846 the United States waged a bloodthirsty war against Mexico in which it seized about one-half of that nation’s territory.

Long preoccupied with issues of identity, American society prefers to place its citizens into boxes on the basis of physical attributes and culture. No science supports this practice; it is simply a matter of habit and convenience. Like other paradigms, the black-white one allows people to simplify and make sense of a complex reality. And, of cours

At the high school level, a Latino studies program in at least one district (Tucson, Arizona) drew the ire of state officials, who enacted a ban on any program that teaches ethnic division. The program’s supporters, of course, pointed out that they were merely teaching students their own history and pride in their own culture. They also emphasized

If race is not real or objective but constructed, racism and prejudice should be capable of deconstruction;

But a more basic problem is that much hate speech is simply not perceived as such at the time. The history of racial depiction shows that our society has blithely consumed a shocking parade of Sambos, coons, sneaky Japanese, exotic Orientals, and indolent, napping Mexicans—images that society perceived at the time as amusing, cute, or, worse yet, t

Revisionist history reexamines America’s historical record, replacing comforting majoritarian interpretations of events with ones that square more accurately with minorities’ experiences.