As we see in the primary sources for today’s class, there’s a long history of white Europeans and Americans describing indigenous Americans in ways that are personally, politically, and economically useful to white people. Their descriptions of indigenous peoples have led many historians, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural studies scholars, and others to delve into how colonizers have constructed whiteness.
This conversation continues today in both scholarly and popular circles. Just yesterday, even though he does not reference Native peoples, Idaho state Representative Chad Christensen posted on Facebook about the What Does It Mean to Be White? book circles at Boise State. In his post and in the comments on it, Christensen and his overwhelmingly white followers grapple with what it means to be white, and they characterize others—”Hispanics,” “Black colleges,” “mixed races black and Hispanic and something else,” as well as faculty and professional staff at Boise State—in opposition to themselves, and they do so in ways that suggest they have a fairly clear, albeit largely unarticulated, sense of what it means to be white in 21st-century Idaho.
Resources mentioned in class
Whiteness and “The Idaho Way”
- Idaho state Representative Chad Christensen’s post about the What Does It Mean to Be White? book circles
- Info on Boise State book circles reading What Does It Mean to Be White?
- Boise State University has a copy of What Does It Mean to Be White? available at the Library Circulation Reserve desk
- Opinion piece by Robin DiAngelo, author of What Does It Mean to Be White?, that summarizes her research and perspective
- Letter from 28 Idaho state legislators to Boise State President Marlene Tromp
Primary sources/questions
- New World primary sources from chapter 1 of The American Yawp Reader
- Handout with questions about the sources (Word doc)