Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
OK. This book was hard going. I am fairly good at reading academic writing, but this was a bit of a slog anyway. I think it is possibly the book I have read that has the most uses of "ontology/ontological" I've ever read. And the bar wasn't particularly low. Also I was expecting lots of analysis of movies, books and other popular culture--there was some, but only a few, not nearly what I had expected. I originally thought this was going to be a "3" for me because of the difficulty.
But then I finished the book, in which the author had to stop and add on a chapter on George Floyd. And then stop again and add a chapter for Daunte Wright. And then as I looked back, the book made so much more sense, and seemed so much more urgently needed, and I found myself deciding this was a four-star read. So, final word: an important investigation of whiteness, but be prepared to work for it.

This wide-ranging exploration of the mythologies of whiteness that white Americans have trapped themselves in—and the deadly repercussions these have had for people of color, especially Black people—is direct, easy-to-read, and doesn’t come across as overly preachy. If you have done any sort of anti-racist study or reading then there isn’t a whole lot new or utterly revelatory here, but instead it feels more firmly directed at people who have just started coming to grips with the very real issues and damage of whiteness and structural racism in America, and for them it offers a wonderful depth of information. Mura is able to explain academic ideas in a way that demystifies them for the common reader, with a conversational tone throughout. He examines the ways that whiteness needs to forcibly create fictions about itself and about others in order to maintain its destructive power, covering everything from pre-emancipation to the representation of people of color in contemporary art. While there is some repetition across the essays collected here, they were clearly written and structured to form a coherent narrative, and the repetition serves to really hammer home critical points that are important for anyone new to this type of study.

I want to thank NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Stop what you are doing right now and read this book! If you believe Black Lives Matter, in stopping anti-asian hate, that Mexican children don't belong in cages, that Native lives are important, then read this book! Read it and pass it to the person next to you asap! A huge thank you to Netgalley and David Mura for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book about revealing the lies whiteness and white supremacy has told us like Black, Mexican and asian Americans and people are less than in every way, that slavery or concentration camps are no big deal because they happen/happened in America. That the disgusting genocide of Native Americans was no big deal and much more racist lies. This book is well researched and written. I am so glad I read it. I really love the cover being a massive book of just complete racial lies told to non-white Americans, by white Americans.

This book does not tear down white Americans for the sake of bullying them or whatever....This book offers real ways to work through white supremacy, to acknowledge its past so that Americans and America as a whole, can move toward a better future. The one thing white America hates doing is acknowledging the past and Learning from that past. If Germany can do it, so can America.....

I had such a good conversation with this book so I hope both white and non white Americans pick up this book with the quickness so we can become a peaceful, better America.