I knew I was white, and I knew I was American, but it was not what I understood to be my identity; for me, self-definition was about gender, personality, religion, education, dreams. I only thought about finding myself, becoming myself, discovering myself, which, I hadn’t known, was the most white American thing of all. I still did not think about my place in the larger world, or that perhaps an entire history—the history of white Americans—had something to do with who I was. My lack of consciousness was dangerous because it exonerated me of responsibility, of history, of a role—it allowed me
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