Whites Aren’t Alright

Abstract

Abstract This essay evaluates how the three writers under review contribute to a persistent discussion about American identity and the many debates that still circulate around it—what it is and isn’t, and who it includes, fails to include, or shouldn’t include. Individually, each author tries to add nuance and contemporary problematics to the debates. Collectively, moreover, they remind the reader that, despite the work of identity politics in its many forms throughout the twentieth century and since; despite the increased secularization of the nation, or at least its culture; and despite even the election of a Black president or the presidential candidacy of a woman, these debates about race, gender, sexuality, and the place of religion in American life are just as significant now as they have ever been. Instead of seeing racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious fervor as remnants of the past or as legacies of beliefs that have been surpassed through progress, each book works to show how the fights over national identity are very much ongoing.“Despite how weathered this material has become . . . battles for equality are still pitched over the same ideas of a national sovereignty embedded in a frontier mentality that . . . sees the very work of inclusion and representation itself as the failure of the nation.”