Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity

Donald Yacovone provides a thought-provoking exploration of the deeply ingrained roots of white supremacy within the American educational system. Through a meticulous and comprehensive analysis of a wide array of texts spanning from primary readers to college textbooks, as well as popular histories and influential academic scholarship, Yacovone uncovers the undeniable evidence of how this ideology has permeated every facet of American culture and played a pivotal role in shaping our national identity.

Tracing the trajectory of America’s white supremacy from its early days and the Revolutionary War era, through the tumultuous nineteenth-century Civil War period, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement, Yacovone offers a compelling narrative. In a paradigm-shifting reinterpretation, he asserts that the North, rather than the South, bears a greater responsibility for nurturing and propagating the dominant strain of racial theory that has influenced our culture and educational materials. This perspective challenges the conventional view that the South alone is to blame for slavery, segregation, and racial injustice.

Yacovone’s work serves as a profound examination of the historical forces that have shaped contemporary America, revealing how white supremacy has infiltrated and influenced all aspects of American knowledge, encompassing literature, science, religion, medicine, and law. This enduring ideology’s persistence for over three centuries is a central theme, providing invaluable insights into the complex tapestry of American history and the ongoing struggle for racial equality.