Outliving the White Lie
Regular price
€23.99
A01=James Wiggins
African American studies
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
American historians
antebellum South
Author_James Wiggins
automatic-update
Black Confederates
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBG
Category=JBF
Category=JBSL
Category=JFF
Category=JFSL
Category=NHB
COP=United States
Copiah-Lincoln Community College
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
humanities scholar
individual liberty
institution of slavery
Language_English
Natchez Democrat
oppressive English monarchy
PA=Available
personal autonomy
postracial America
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
rural Mississippi
secession
slavery
softlaunch
southern identity
Product details
- ISBN 9781496850355
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jan 2024
- Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Part history, part memoir, Outliving the White Lie: A Southerner’s Historical, Genealogical, and Personal Journey charts conflicting narratives of American and southern identity through a blend of public, family, and deeply personal history. Author James Wiggins, who was raised in rural Mississippi, pairs thorough historical research with his own lived experiences. Outliving the White Lie looks squarely at the many untruths regarding the history and legacy of race that have proliferated among white Americans, from the misrepresentations of Black Confederates to the myth of a "postracial" America.
Though the US was ostensibly established to achieve freedom and shrug off an oppressive English monarchy, this mythology of the United States’ founding belies a glaring paradox—that this is a country whose foundation depends entirely on coercion and enslavement. How, then, could generations of decent people, people who valued individual liberty and personal autonomy, coexist within and alongside such a paradox? Historians suggest an answer: that these apparently dissonant points of view were reconciled in antebellum America by white citizens learning "to live with slavery by learning to live a lie." The operative lie throughout American history and the lie underpinning the institution of slavery, they argue, has always been the fallacy of race—deliberately propagated tenets asserting skin color as the preeminent marker of identity and value. Wiggins takes accepted delusions to task in this moving reconciliation of southern living.
Though the US was ostensibly established to achieve freedom and shrug off an oppressive English monarchy, this mythology of the United States’ founding belies a glaring paradox—that this is a country whose foundation depends entirely on coercion and enslavement. How, then, could generations of decent people, people who valued individual liberty and personal autonomy, coexist within and alongside such a paradox? Historians suggest an answer: that these apparently dissonant points of view were reconciled in antebellum America by white citizens learning "to live with slavery by learning to live a lie." The operative lie throughout American history and the lie underpinning the institution of slavery, they argue, has always been the fallacy of race—deliberately propagated tenets asserting skin color as the preeminent marker of identity and value. Wiggins takes accepted delusions to task in this moving reconciliation of southern living.
James Wiggins is a former instructor of history at Copiah-Lincoln Community College and features columnist for the Natchez Democrat.
