Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal & National Identity

In his book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal And The Forging Of Our National Identity (Pantheon, 2022), Donald Yacovone shows clear evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seated roots in our nation’s education system using an in-depth examination of a wide assortment of texts, from primary readers to college textbooks and other higher-ed course materials.

Sifting through a wealth of materials, from the colonial era to today, Yacovone reveals the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture and how it has been at the heart of our collective national identity. He argues that it is the North that bears the greater responsibility for creating the dominant strain of race theory, inculcated throughout the culture and in school textbooks, that restricted and repressed African Americans and other minorities.