If there is a dirty secret in American life it is this: the real unifying force in our national cultural and political life, beyond skirmishes over ideology and party, is white identity masked as universal, neutral, and therefore quintessentially American. The greatest purveyors of identity politics today, and for the bulk of our country’s history, have been white citizens. This means that among the oldest forms of “fake news” in the nation’s long trek to democratic opportunity has been the belief that whiteness is identical to the idea of what it means to be American.
