Summary

Chapter 7, “notes on the state of whiteness” (107), features quotations from “Notes on the State of Virginia,” written by Thomas Jefferson in 1781-2. The quotations featured refer to race and the institution of slavery. Responding to a hypothetical question about incorporating free blacks into the state's population, Jefferson declares that it would be impossible because of “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained” and that it would result in “the extermination of the one or the other race” (112). Later, Jefferson declares black people intellectual inferior to white people.

In Chapter 8, “tiki torches” (119), Rankine asks a white friend from college if he remembers someone burning a cross on campus their freshman year. He does not. She calls another white friend and asks her, and it turns out...