April 05, 2023
Page 7
Arts &
ENTERTAINMENT
The Making of American Whiteness
Oregon
Historical
Society Hosts
Book Launch
The Oregon Historical Society is proud
to host the official launch party on Thurs-
day, April 6, for Dr. Carmen P. Thomp-
son’s new book, The Making of American
Whiteness: The Formation of Race in Sev-
enteenth-Century Virginia, a ground-break-
ing work that changes the narrative about
the origins of race and Whiteness in Amer-
ica. Using an exhaustive range of archival
documents, this book shows what White-
ness looked like in everyday life in the
early seventeenth century, finding it eerily
predictive to Whiteness today.
Doors to the Oregon Historical Society
will open at 5:30pm, and a short conversa-
tion between Dr. Thompson and Portland
State University professor emeritus Dr.
Darrell Millner will begin at 6pm. Books
will be available for purchase and sign-
ing by the author through the OHS Muse-
Carmen P. Thompson is a historian and author of The Making of American
Whiteness: The Formation of Race in Seventeenth- Century Virginia.
um Store, and light refreshments will be
served. This event is free and open to all,
though guests are asked to kindly register
in advance online.
Thompson is a highly sought expert on
race and Whiteness in America and was
a co-guest editor with Dr. Darrell Millner
for the Oregon Historical Society’s Winter
2019 special issue of the Oregon Histori-
“The songs bring the house down.”
cal Quarterly, “White Supremacy & Resis-
tance.” In an introduction essay, Thomp-
son discusses the concept of Whiteness
— “an expectation (sometimes an uncon-
scious expectation) that the government
will maintain laws and policies generally
benefitting White people.” Thompson also
provides an analysis of critical scholarship
in the field and makes connections between
–The Guardian
the articles in this issue and “two core char-
acteristics of Whiteness that are present in
Oregon’s White supremacist history — ex-
pectation and exclusion.” Thompson’s in-
troduction along with the full Winter 2019
“White Supremacy & Resistance” issue is
free to read online.
Carmen P. Thompson earned her Ph.D.
in U.S. history from the University of Il-
linois, Urbana-Champaign, and her master
of arts in African American studies from
Columbia University in New York. Thomp-
son’s scholarship was quoted in the De-
cember 2022 Oregon State Supreme Court
decision, Watkins, Jacob Keith v. Ackley,
regarding the disparate racial impact of
non-unanimous jury decisions. She wrote
the introduction to the forthcoming book,
Protest City: Portland’s Summer of Rage,
a photo book that chronicles the yearlong
protests in Portland, Oregon, after the mur-
der of George Floyd by police in 2020. She
has held visiting scholar appointments at
the Institute for Research in African Ameri-
can Studies at Columbia University in New
York and in the Black studies department at
Portland State University and has taught a
wide range of courses on the Black experi-
ence and Whiteness at Portland State Uni-
versity and Portland Community College.
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