At the end of 2021, I finally got around to reading Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. This book sort of blew me away. I think that this book would be frustrating to a lot of folks, because it doesn't really have a point. But if you've been with me for long enough, you know that I don't really have a point. So this book was my jam from that perspective. I spend a lot of time thinking about whiteness. Some of it is out of necessity. Much of it out of blatant curiosity, but I do need to think about whiteness in order to function in American society. White people are constantly denying whiteness, and somehow seem to be the least knowledgeable about it. Because of this I am constantly having to define it for people (white people). Another curious thing about whiteness is that some people can grasp at it. How can certain "non white" groups (Jews, north Africans, SWANA folks, Latine folks, etc) move in and out of whiteness in different circumstances? How can one be a person of color and also a white person?
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