professors in the humanities frequently challenged us to demonstrate how woke we were. We had to be diligent in being woke—learning to locate the white male Bastards behind every crime, beneath every problem, in the air we breathed—otherwise we were no better than those who intentionally perpetuate social injustices.
The crucial difference here is that the "American Bastards" you were told were behind literally every corner ruining your everyday life were *not real* vs the very real extended history of whiteness and colonialism very literally founding and shaping every system that we live in today. Right bastards, (somewhat) wrong place and time.
