What Does White Supremacy Look Like Today?

La Salle UniversityLa Salle University Digital Commons

Explorer Café Explorer Connection

Fall 11-11-2015

What Does White Supremacy Look Like Today?Jacob Bennett MFALa Salle University, [email protected]

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What Does White Supremacy Look Like Today?

Explorer Café, 11 November 2015Jacob A. Bennett, NTT English Instructor

White Supremacy

This presentation begins with some framing terminology, defining “white supremacy” and then expanding and complicating that definition; then introduces and defines the related concepts of “colonial ideology” and “racialization.” These definitions are followed by a partial exploration of a history of legal and penal statutes that have, with or without intentionally racist motivation, eventuated in an overwhelming and disparately negative impact on black-skinned individuals, their families, and their communities.

This slide added after presentation as explanatory note.

The latter portion of the presentation focuses on a small number of examples of contemporary poetry and poetics, indicating the presence in that field (as in other fields of creative production and academic inquiry, as in the general population of America) of an ongoing discourse regarding race, appropriation, gender, and other aspects of the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” described by bell hooks.


It seems important to note, as do hooks, Kelley, Omi, Winant, and Horne (among others, and in their own ways), that the racial hierarchies identified herein are artificial in their construction, yet devastatingly real in their inculcation.


It also seems important to note, as is made both implicit and explicit in the content of the list of texts created and performed by black or African-American authors, that the perpetuation of white supremacy—the circulation of its colonial ideology—is not a process owned solely by avowed white supremacists, the KKK and their ilk, but a kind of thinking also present in the actions and utterances of well-meaning “liberals” and “progressives,” as well as in intraracial “colorism” or the denigration of dark-skinned characters and persons.


The final four slides present a list of works cited directly in the presentation, but also many other texts for suggested reading. My hope, implied by the “concluding questions,” is to extend the discourse beyond a handful of disputes about the nature of this or that poet’s work, and to address more extensively and directly the ways in which racial hierarchies (not to mention those of gender and class and religion) impact our lives as students, teachers, and staff on a college campus devoted and committed to “contribute to the common good.”


Strict definitions imply conscious belief and intent: “White supremacy is believing not only that white people are superior based on their skin color, but that they have the right to rule over other people”

hooks, bell. "Killing Rage: Ending Racism." Interview by Brian Lamb. Booknotes. C-SPAN. Washington, D.C., 19 Nov. 1995. Television. Transcript.

Expanded framing admits complex of colonial, racial, economic, gendered hierarchies: “I often use the phrase ‘imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ to describe the interlocking political systems that are the foundation of our nation’s politics”

hooks, bell. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville KY: No Borders/Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2014. Web.

“Anticipating the explosion of work we now call ‘postcolonial studies,’ [Aimé] Césaire reveals how the circulation of colonial ideology—an ideology of racial and cultural hierarchy—is as essential to colonial rule as the police and the use of forced labor.”

Kelley, Robin D. G. "Poetry & the Political Imagination: Aimé Césaire, Negritude & the Applications of Surrealism." Introduction. A Tempest. By Aimé Césaire. New York: TCG Translations, 2002. xi. Print.

“This of course did not occur overnight. [...] With slavery, however, a racially based understanding of society was set in motion which resulted in the shaping of a specific racial identity not only for the slaves but for the European settlers as well.”

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.

“Then there was the developing notion of ‘whiteness,’ smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the ‘old’ continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes[...].”

Horne, Gerald. Introduction. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York: NYU, 2014. Print.

“racialization” is a socio-historical process that subsumes complex cultural difference: “the establishment and maintenance of a ‘color line’”

Ibo, Yoruba, Fulani, Irish

English, Irish, German

“black”

“white”


“In statutes enacted at various times between the 1720s and 1750s, slaves in Boston were forbidden to buy provisions in market; carry a stick or a cane; keep hogs or swine; or stroll about the streets, lanes, or Common at night or at all on Sunday. Punishments for violation of these laws ranged up to 20 lashes, depending on aggravating factors.”

Harper, Douglas. "Slavery in Massachusetts." Slavery in the North. N.p., 2003. Web. 11 Aug. 2015.

The Compromise of 1850 revised the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, federalizing marshals and deputies even in “free states” under threat of harsh penalty ($1000 fine in 19th- century dollars!) for refusing pursuit of self-emancipated ex-slaves

1. "Compromise of 1850." Primary Documents of American History. Library of Congress, 20 Apr. 2015. Web. 12 Aug. 2015.2. April 24, 1851 poster warning “colored people of Boston” after passage of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation, Inc., 5 Nov. 2015.

Web. 7 Nov. 2015. Image published in entry for Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Civil Rights Act of 1866 passed over President Andrew Jackson’s veto, proclaiming that “all citizens enjoy basic civil rights in the same manner ‘enjoyed by white persons.’”

Johnson denounced the law: “The distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.”

Foner, Eric. "Why Reconstruction Matters." Opinion. The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 28 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

“The Reconstruction Acts inaugurated the period of Radical Reconstruction, when a politically mobilized black community, with its white allies, brought the Republican Party to power throughout the South. [...] It was a remarkable, unprecedented effort to build an interracial democracy on the ashes of slavery.”


“The Ku Klux Klan and kindred groups began a campaign of murder, assault and arson that can only be described as homegrown American terrorism. [...] As a result of a bargain after the disputed presidential election of 1876, the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes assumed the Oval Office and disavowed further national efforts to enforce the rights of black citizens [...] Political and economic inequality, summarized in the phrase Jim Crow, had come into being across the South.”


Fast forward to 1960s: “The name Special Weapons Attack Team [...] made some elected officials wince[...]. What emerged instead was Special Weapons and Tactics.”

With a name change, “Los Angeles’ SWAT team tested its mettle in 1969 against a local Black Panther militia[...].”

1. Crowder, Guy. Black Panthers Office, 4115 Central Avenue, Los Angeles, California. 1969. Guy Crowder Gallery, Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, California State University, Northridge. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

2. Haberman, Clyde. "The Rise of the SWAT Team in American Policing." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.

Despite similar rates of concomitant violence, 1970s’ “war on drugs” leads to 1980s’ harsher penalties for crack cocaine—much more frequently used by “black” than other races/ethnicities—than for powder cocaine offenses.

1. Public Broadcasting Corporation. "Thirty Years of America's War on Drugs: A Chronology." Drug Wars. Frontline. WGBH, 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2015.2. United States Sentencing Commission. “Historical Background.” Report to the Congress: Impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. By Patti B. Saris, et al. Aug. 2015.

Web. 6 Nov. 2015.3. –––. “Table 3: Demographic Characteristics of Federal Cocaine Offenders.” Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. By Diana E. Murphy, et al.

May 2002. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.4. –––. “Table 19: Bodily Injury in Powder Cocaine and Crack Cocaine Offenses.” Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. By Diana E. Murphy, et

al. May 2002. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Table 19

With racial discrepancies in mind, U.S. Sentencing Commission requests equity in sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine in 1995, 1997, 2002, 2007.

United States Sentencing Commission. “Historical Background.” Report to the Congress: Impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. By Patti B. Saris, et al. Aug. 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Fair Sentencing Act signed into law in 2010.

United States Sentencing Commission. “Historical Background.” Report to the Congress: Impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. By Patti B. Saris, et al. Aug. 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

There is a long tradition of white supremacy in African-American literature, featuring racially black characters who pass, or seek to pass, as white; wish to be white or otherwise idealize whiteness; or look down on darker-skinned characters:

Phillis Wheatley’s “His Excellency George Washington” (1776)

James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)

Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923)

Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry (1929)

Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929)

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970)

Whoopi Goldberg’s The Spook Show (1984)

Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998)

Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry” (2015)

“These pages also reveal the unsuspected fact that prejudice against the Negro is exerting a pressure which [...] is actually and constantly forcing an unascertainable number of fair-complexioned colored people over into the white race.”

-Publisher’s note to 1912 edition of Johnson’s Autobiography

“In my body were many bloods, some dark blood, all blended in the fire of six or more generations. [...] But if people wanted to say this dark blood was Negro blood and if they then wanted to call me a Negro— this was up to them. Fourteen years of my life I had lived in the white group, four years I had lived in the colored group. In my experience there had been no main difference between the two.”

-Unpublished autobiography by Toomer

The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:Wherever shines this native of the skies,Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

-Wheatley’s poem to Washington

“More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse. Not that she minded being black, being a Negro necessitated having a colored skin, but she did mind being too black.”

-Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry

She wore an old white skirt draped over her head and called it “long blond hair.” She said her ambition was to sail on the Love Boat, but with a headful of pigtails that “don’t do nuffin’, don’t blow in the wind,” she wouldn’t be welcomed aboard. She had tried other ways not to be black, but bathing in Clorox didn’t work.

-Review of Goldberg’s “Little Girl”

So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?Hypocrite!

-Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry”

a review of responses to perceived appropriation of, insensitivity to, or outright racism against black or African-American culture:

an excerpt from “The Change,” a poem by Tony

Hoagland

Hoagland, Tony. "The Change." What Narcissism Means to Me. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2003. Print.

“I once had a colleague who wrote what some readers perceived to be a racist poem. [...] When asked what his thinking was while working on the poem, my colleague said this poem is for white people.”

Rankine, Claudia. “Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 5 Feb. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

“Did he mean it was for white people to see themselves and their thinking? He did not say that. He said it was for white people. What I heard was, I don’t need to explain myself to you, black girl.

[...] And though I realized this was me thinking as

him, and not in fact him speaking, when offense is being taken offense is heard everywhere,

even in the imagination.”Rankine, Claudia. “Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 5 Feb. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

In Memory of Jordan Russell DavisIn Memory of Eric GarnerIn Memory of John CrawfordIn Memory of Michael BrownIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn MemoryIn Memory

because white men can’tpolice their imaginationblack men are dying

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014. Print.

“To me, you are naive when it comes to the subject of American racism. [...] It seems foolish and costly to think that the topic of race belongs only to brown- skinned Americans and not white-skinned Americans. But many poets and readers think that.”

Hoagland, Tony. “Dear Claudia: A Letter in Response.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

“I am not trying to sidestep— of course I am racist.

[...]Just as you find the posture of ‘angry black person’ simplistic, I find the posture of ‘apologetic liberal

white person’ not just boring, but useless.

[...]I don’t believe in explaining my poems to other poets; they are part of my tribe, and I expect them to be resilient readers.”

Hoagland, Tony. “Dear Claudia: A Letter in Response.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

Mongrel Coalition against Gringpo de-clare war, and make manifest the “targets”

"TARGETS." The Mongrel Coalition against Gringpo. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

“Conceptual poetry, like conceptual art, privileges a reader’s thoughts about the text

over the author’s rhetorical devices within the text. One of the most successful writers

in the movement, Kenneth Goldsmith, said it best: ‘My books are better thought about

than read.’”

Smith, Rich. "Vanessa Place Is in a Fight Over Gone with the Wind's Racism, But It’s Not the Fight She Says She Wants: An Interview." SLOG. The Stranger. Index Newspapers, LLC, 21 May 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

“Kenneth Goldsmith read Michael Brown’s St. Louis County autopsy report as a poem. Goldsmith is known for his conceptual, ‘uncreative writing’ practices [...] — altering [texts], remixing them, appropriating and repurposing them without credit to the original sources.”

Steinhauer, Jillian. "Kenneth Goldsmith Remixes Michael Brown Autopsy Report as Poetry." Hyperallergic. Hyperallergic Media, Inc., 16 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Goldsmith revised the autopsy so that the text he read concludes: “The remaining male genitalia system is unremarkable.”

Goldsmith later explained: “I always massage dry texts to transform them into literature[...]. That said, I didn’t add or alter a single word or sentiment that did not preexist in the original text[...].”




“[Conceptualist] writers imagine the text not as a thing that should absorb you, but as a reflecting pool into which you can look and see and think whatever you want to see. Conceptualists claim this dissolves the imperialist and patriarchical hierarchy implied by the traditional relationship between author and reader.”

Smith, Rich. "Vanessa Place Is in a Fight Over Gone with the Wind's Racism, But It’s Not the Fight She Says She Wants: An Interview." SLOG. The Stranger. Index Newspapers, LLC, 21 May 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Place explains her project: “I invited Mitchell to sue to recover the ‘darkies’ she claimed ownership of; by reproducing the entire book, I invited suit for wholesale theft of intellectual property. The question was whether the State would uphold Mitchell’s right to profit from her appropriation against my appropriation of her.”

In 2009, conceptualist Vanessa Place began tweeting the full text of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind, repeating the “ventriloquism” and “black- face” of the book’s affected diction.

Place, Vanessa. “Artist’s Statement: Gone with the Wind @VanessaPlace.” Notes. Facebook. 19 May 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

A petition demanded removing Place from AWP committee: “We find it inappropriate that Vanessa Place is among those who will decide which panels will take place at AWP Los Angeles. We acknowledge Place's right to exercise her creativity, but we find her work to be, at best, startlingly racially insensitive, and, at worst, racist.”1. Volpert, Timothy. "Remove Vanessa Place from the AWP Los Angeles Conference Committee." Letter to Association of Writers and Writing Programs. May 2015.

Change.org. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.2. Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Tweet via @awpwriter. Twitter.com. 17 May 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

“Not long ago I was in a room where someone asked the philosopher Judith Butler what made language hurtful. I could feel everyone lean forward. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she said. We suffer from the condition of being addressable, by which she meant, I believe, there is no avoiding the word-filled sticks and stones of others.”

Rankine, Claudia. “Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 5 Feb. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

Concluding questions: ● do you see white supremacy in your field of

study or personal life?● what does “circulation of colonial ideology”

mean to you?● what is the effect on non-black, non-white

peoples and traditions?● can we prevent, stop, or avoid “word-filled

sticks and stones of others”?● what do you make of Hoagland and

Goldsmith’s texts and explanations?

WORKS CITED (& SUGGESTED)

April 24, 1851 poster warning “colored people of Boston” after passage of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation,

Inc., 5 Nov. 2015. Web. 7 Nov. 2015. Image published in entry for Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Screen-shot via @awpwriter. Twitter. 17 May 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Boggs, James. The American Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963. Print.

Carmichael, Stokely. "Black Power Speech." University of California at Berkeley. 29 Oct. 1966. American Rhetoric. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

Césaire, Aimé. A Tempest. 1969. Trans. Richard Miller. Reprinted New York: TCG Translations, 2002. Print.

Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Print.

Churchill, Ward. On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. Oakland, CA:

AK, 2003. Print.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, Oct. 2015. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.

Coleman, Janet. “Making Whoopi.” Vanity Fair. July 1984. Condé Nast, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2015

"Compromise of 1850." Primary Documents of American History. Library of Congress, 20 Apr. 2015. Web. 12 Aug. 2015.

Condé, Maryse. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Trans. Richard Philcox. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. Print. CARAF Books

Series.

Crowder, Guy. Black Panthers Office, 4115 Central Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 1969. 1969. Guy Crowder Gallery, Tom & Ethel Bradley Center,

California State University, Northridge. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Davis, Angela Y. “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation.” If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance. New York: Third Press,

1971. Print.

de_wish. Two Masks Made of Human Hair across from Each Other with High Voltage Emotions. Digital image. Shutterstock. Shutterstock, Inc, n.d.

Web. 8 Nov. 2015.


Goldberg, Whoopi. The Spook Show. Dance Theatre Workshop, New York. 3 Feb. 1984. Performance.

Haberman, Clyde. "The Rise of the SWAT Team in American Policing." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.

Harper, Douglas. "Slavery in Massachusetts." Slavery in the North. N.p., 2003. Web. 11 Aug. 2015.

Hoagland, Tony. "America." What Narcissism Means to Me. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2004. Print.

–––. "The Change." What Narcissism Means to Me. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2003. Print.

–––. “Dear Claudia: A Letter in Response.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

Hong, Cathy Park. “There's a New Movement in American Poetry and It's Not Kenneth Goldsmith.” The New Republic. The New Republic, 1 Oct.

2015. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

hooks, bell. "Killing Rage: Ending Racism." Interview by Brian Lamb. Booknotes. C-SPAN. Washington, D.C., 19 Nov. 1995. Television. Transcript.

–––. Understanding Patriarchy. Louisville KY: No Borders/Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, 2014. Print.

Horne, Gerald. Introduction. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York: NYU,

2014. Print.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. Reprinted: New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Print.

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. 1912. Reprinted: New York: Penguin Classics, 1990. Print.

Kapitanoff, Nancy. “Through the Lens: Guy Crowder started his own photo agency in the '60s....” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 28 Feb.

1993. Web. 10 Aug. 2015.

Kelley, Robin D. G. "Poetry & the Political Imagination: Aimé Césaire, Negritude & the Applications of Surrealism." Introduction. A Tempest. By

Aimé Césaire [trans. New York: TCG Translations, 2002. Print.

Kendrick Lamar. To Pimp a Butterfly. Rec. 15 Mar. 2015. Dr. Dre & Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, 2015. MP3.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Exclusive: Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation & Apartheid South Africa." Democracy Now!

Ed. Amy Goodman. Democracy Now!, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.

Larsen, Nella. Passing. 1929. Reprinted: New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.

Litwack, Leon F. "Jim Crow Blues." OAH Magazine of History 18.2 (2004): 7-11. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

Medina, Cruz, and Aja Y. Martinez. "Contexts of Lived Realities in SB 1070 Arizona: A Response to Asenas and Johnson’s “Economic Globalization

and the ‘Given Situation’”." Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 4.2 (2015): n. pag. 2015. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1970. Reprinted: New York: Vintage International, 2007. Print.


Place, Vanessa. “Artist’s Statement: Gone with the Wind @VanessaPlace.” Notes. Facebook. 19 May 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

–––. Screen-shot via @VanessaPlace. Twitter. May 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Public Broadcasting Corporation. "Thirty Years of America's War on Drugs: A Chronology." Drug Wars. Frontline. WGBH, 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2015.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014. Print.

–––. “Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race and Poetry.” Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. 5 Feb. 2011. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. Print.

Smith, Rich. "Vanessa Place Is in a Fight Over Gone with the Wind's Racism, But It’s Not the Fight She Says She Wants: An Interview." SLOG. The

Stranger. Index Newspapers, LLC, 21 May 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Steinhauer, Jillian. "Kenneth Goldsmith Remixes Michael Brown Autopsy Report as Poetry." Hyperallergic. Hyperallergic Media, Inc., 16 Mar. 2015.

Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

"TARGETS." The Mongrel Coalition against Gringpo. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.

Thurman, Wallace. The Blacker the Berry. 1929. Reprinted: Mineola NY: Dover Publications, 2008. Print.

Toomer, Jean. Cane. 1923. Reprinted: New York: Liveright, 2011. Print.

United States Department of Labor. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. By Daniel Patrick Moynihan. March 1965. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

United States Sentencing Commission. “Historical Background.” Report to the Congress: Impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. By Patti B. Saris,

et al. Aug. 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

–––. “Table 3: Demographic Characteristics of Federal Cocaine Offenders.” Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. By

Diana E. Murphy, et al. May 2002. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

–––. “Table 19: Bodily Injury in Powder Cocaine and Crack Cocaine Offenses.” Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. By

Diana E. Murphy, et al. May 2002. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Van Vechten, Carl. Nigger Heaven. 1926. Reprinted: Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2000. Print.

Volpert, Timothy. "Remove Vanessa Place from the AWP Los Angeles Conference Committee." Letter to Association of Writers and Writing

Programs. May 2015. Change.org. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Wheatley, Phillis. “His Excellency General Washington.” 1776. Reprinted: Academy of American Poets. Poets.org. N.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.

Wilkinson, Alec. "Something Borrowed." The New Yorker. Condé Nast, 5 Oct. 2015. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. Print.