Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

At the center of Dyson’s analysis of racism in American society is the social construct of whiteness. Dyson illustrates that whiteness is an invention which connects to white privilege and white supremacy. Dyson separates the concept of whiteness from white people as human beings. Whiteness is “a social inheritance” and has no essential connection to white humanity (44). Whiteness and its attachment to power and privilege are harmful for Black and white people alike. Whiteness is a constructed racial identity that has historically defined American identity. The European groups in America abandoned their ethnicity and languages to create a new American identity around whiteness in contrast to other racial groups whose ethnicity was a factor of exclusion.

The politics of whiteness are pervasive in American society. Whiteness is racially exclusionist. It manages to remain “invisible” and to appear as “neutral, human, American” (46). Dyson argues that whiteness defines itself against Blackness and feeds on its exclusion, and that the existence of Black people reveal its artificiality. The politics of whiteness intend to maintain control over narratives. The mainstream version of American history has centralized whiteness and justifies the white imagination.