Taking a look at white supremacy, this work argues that racism is a matter of interests as well as attitudes, a problem of property as well as pigment. This work shows how whiteness works in respect to Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. It also analyzes the centrality of whiteness to US culture.

Introduction: Bill Moore's Body 1. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness 2. Law and Order: Civil Rights Laws and White Privilege 3. Immigrant Labor and Identity Politics 4. Whiteness and War 5. How Whiteness Works: Inheritance, Wealth, and Health 6. White Desire: Remembering Robert Johnson 7. Lean on Me: Beyond Identity Politics 8. "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac": Antiblack Racism and White Identity 9. "Frantic to Join...the Japanese Army": Beyond the Black-White Binary 10. California: The Mississippi of the 1990s Notes Acknowledgments [to come] Index

"If we could only take one book with us into the 21st century, this is the one I would choose. With lucidity and passion, George Lipsitz reveals that so-called 'color-blind' public policy actually contributes to the maintenance of racism; that white privilege and the demonizing of colored people are two sides of the same coin; and that whiteness is both a huge subsidy as well as a noose around the necks of working-class white folk. His insights into how the color line works in the realm of public policy, politics, and culture, and what we must do to destroy it, can save our lives." -Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America