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Title: Being-in-America

Being-in-America

White Supremacy and the American Self

by Ronald Kent Richardson (Author)
©2024 Textbook XII, 258 Pages
Education

Summary

White supremacy and American-style individual autonomy are mutually supportive and co-dependent. Attacking white racism will not dislodge white supremacy, which the author contends is the greatest danger facing America. That can only be accomplished by making concurrent and significant modifications in American individualism. Yet, white supremacist thinking, feeling, and acting and American individualism are protected by what the author describes as The White Supremacist Collective Unconscious, a culturally determined mental construct that Americans assimilate as they grow into adulthood, which endows all Americans, regardless of race, with a white supremacist mental orientation to one degree or another. Drawing on his personal experiences as an African American growing up in the United States, and on his research, the author details the development and workings of that unconscious, and the impact of white supremacy on the national character.
In this provocative, personal, and engaging volume, so timely in its intervention, Ronald Richardson gives us a new way of looking at ourselves, how we came to be, and the inescapable role white supremacy has played in the unfolding.
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
This is a brave and candid book centered on the psychology and vexed history of race and the white ascendency in the United States. The gaze is unblinking, the analysis rigorous, and the conclusions judicious. Professor Richardson has composed a most impressive study, drawing on the provocative ideas of varied thinkers—among whom Fanon, Jung, Kierkegaard, Kakuzo Okakura—and his own experience, stretching from childhood to youth to distinguished scholar.
—David Mayers is Professor, History Department, Political Science Department, Boston University

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 Brief Encounters
  • Chapter 2 Looking in from Outside
  • Chapter 3 The Hidden World
  • Chapter 4 A World of Play
  • Chapter 5 The Witch of Fourth Street
  • Chapter 6 Chestnuts and Cat’s Eyes
  • Chapter 7 Girls and Boys
  • Chapter 8 Play and Becoming
  • Chapter 9 The Stutter
  • Chapter 10 The Periodic Pilgrimage or Graveyard Picnics
  • Chapter 11 Education in Whiteness
  • Chapter 12 Concerning Violence
  • Chapter 13 Home Sweet Home
  • Chapter 14 Materfamilias
  • Chapter 15 Parental Fears
  • Chapter 16 The Root Problem
  • Chapter 17 Alternate Parents or the Silent Counteroffensive
  • Chapter 18 The Eldest Brother
  • Chapter 19 The Call of the Wild
  • Chapter 20 The Value of Willful Unknowing
  • Chapter 21 Poor Jack
  • Chapter 22 Beyond the Far Horizon
  • Chapter 23 Prophecy
  • Chapter 24 Signs and Portents
  • Intermezzo
  • Chapter 25 Who Am I?
  • Chapter 26 A Life in Many Worlds
  • Chapter 27 Audubon
  • Chapter 28 Memory Palace
  • Chapter 29 The Agency of Objects
  • Chapter 30 The White Supremacist Collective Unconscious
  • Chapter 31 The Socially Autonomous Self and Anticipatory Connectivity
  • Chapter 32 Deprivations
  • Chapter 33 Elective Deprivations
  • Chapter 34 Set Being as Foundation for Artificial Intelligence, Or the Object Triumphant
  • Chapter 35 The Übermensch
  • Epilogue
  • Index

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Richardson, Ronald Kent, author.
Title: Being-in-America: White supremacy and the American self / Ronald Kent Richardson.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023052117 (print) | LCCN 2023052118 (ebook) | ISBN
9781433194146 (hardback) | ISBN 9781433194115 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433194122 (epub) |
ISBN 9781433194139 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Racism— United States. | White people— Race identity— United States. |
White nationalism--United States. | National characteristics, American. | Group identity—
United States.
Classification: LCC E184.A1. R474 2024 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) |
DDC 305.809/073—dc23/eng/20231207
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023052117
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023052118
DOI 10.3726/b21456

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
The German National Library lists this publication in the German
National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISBN 9781433194146 (hardback)
ISBN 9781433194115 (ebook)
ISBN 9781433194122 (epub)
DOI 10.3726/b21456

© 2024 Ronald Kent Richardson
Published by Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, USA
info@peterlang.com - www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the
publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and
processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Ron Richardson is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where he teaches courses on Japanese history Black and Asian populations in comparative perspective, and racial thought. Between January of 2000 and September of 2008 he directed the African American Studies Program in global and comparative perspective. His books include Moral Imperium: Afro-Caribbeans and the Transformation of British Rule. He is completing a study of Winston Churchill as white supremacist.ang).

About the book

White supremacy and American-style individual autonomy are mutually supportive and co-dependent. Attacking white racism will not dislodge white supremacy, which the author contends is the greatest danger facing America. That can only be accomplished by making concurrent and significant modifications in American individualism. Yet, white supremacist thinking, feeling, and acting and American individualism are protected by what the author describes as The White Supremacist Collective Unconscious, a culturally determined mental construct that Americans assimilate as they grow into adulthood, which endows all Americans, regardless of race, with a white supremacist mental orientation to one degree or another. Drawing on his personal experiences as an African American growing up in the United States, and on his research, the author details the development and workings of that unconscious, and the impact of white supremacy on the national character.

In this provocative, personal, and engaging volume, so timely in its intervention, Ronald Richardson gives us a new way of looking at ourselves, how we came to be, and the inescapable role white supremacy has played in the unfolding.

—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

This is a brave and candid book centered on the psychology and vexed history of race and the white ascendency in the United States. The gaze is unblinking, the analysis rigorous, and the conclusions judicious. Professor Richardson has composed a most impressive study, drawing on the provocative ideas of varied thinkers—among whom Fanon, Jung, Kierkegaard, Kakuzo Okakura—and his own experience, stretching from childhood to youth to distinguished scholar.

—David Mayers is Professor, History Department, Political Science Department, Boston University

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

Acknowledgments

As this book is not a traditional academic work, I have few traditional academic acknowledgments to make. They include former chairs of the Department of History at Boston University while this book was being written, Louis Ferleger and Nina Silber who made me feel a genuine member of an intellectual community and stood up for my rights when needed. They are sterling examples of dedicated and socially committed scholars. Stan Sclaroff, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences supported my creative work and ably led the college through the pandemic. I want to thank my students over several years for their active and helpful engagement with the ideas presented in this book. They do not often believe it when we make the claim but teachers learn a tremendous amount from those they teach. I am grateful to Dani Green and Alison Jefferson at Peter Lang’s Editorial office, and Joshua Charles, Charmitha Ashok and the production team for their excellent and diligent work in shepherding this book into publication. Jenna Weathers and the staff of the Interlibrary Loan department at the marvelous Newton Free Library were diligent and amazingly fast in fulfilling my never ending requests. I am grateful to my inspiring, patient and enlightening Japanese teacher Rie Takashima, Rie-sensei, for her excellent pedagogy, and for listening to many of the evolving ideas embodied in this book, during my all too often retreats from the demands of Japanese grammar.

Details

Pages
XII, 258
Year
2024
ISBN (PDF)
9781433194115
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433194122
ISBN (MOBI)
9781433194139
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433194146
ISBN (Softcover)
9783034350006
DOI
10.3726/b21456
Language
English
Publication date
2024 (February)
Keywords
White Supremacy Racism American-style Individual autonomy as co-dependent on white supremacy African American Memoir Being-in-America White Supremacy and the American Self Ronald Kent Richardson
Published
New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2024. XII, 258 pp., 2 b/w ill.

Biographical notes

Ronald Kent Richardson (Author)

Ron Richardson is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where he teaches courses on Japanese history Black and Asian populations in comparative perspective, and racial thought. Between January of 2000 and September of 2008 he directed the African American Studies Program in global and comparative perspective. His books include Moral Imperium: Afro-Caribbeans and the Transformation of British Rule. He is completing a study of Winston Churchill as white supremacist.

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Title: Being-in-America