"(Lipsitz xiv) " .
Lipsitz's book summarizes that public policy, for a long time, have excluded communities of color from everything that Americans deem as desirable. These things include but are not limited to a good education, fair housing, power, good jobs, and social status. Lipsitz asserts that in order for equality for all to exist, everyone of all colors must take action to get rid of America's possessive investment in whiteness. Lipsitz writes, "I think I know why Bill Moore's murder affected me so deeply in 1963. His actions forced my first confrontations with the possessive investment in whiteness "a poisonous system of privilege that pits people against each other and prevents the creation of common ground. Exposing, analyzing, and eradicating this pathology is an obligation that we all share, white people most of all."(Lipsitz xix).
Lipsitz offers compelling, emotional, and historical facts and stories to support his claim that America has an investment in whiteness. His major story is about Bill Moore and the reasons as to why his murder affected Lipsitz and how it should affect others. Aside from Bill Moore, Lipsitz also gives historical evidence from colonial times and he also pulls a lot from the civil rights movements of the 1950's to 1990's. From colonial times, he states convincingly that "[w]hite settlers institutionalized a possessive investment in whiteness by making blackness synonymous with slavery and whiteness synonymous with freedom, but also by pitting people of color against one another (Lipsitz 3). "During colonial times, colonials gave rewards to the Native Americans for the capture of black runaway slaves. The reverse was also a consequence of the investment in whiteness, black slaves were recruited into militias in order to fight the Native Americans (Lipsitz 3). "The power of whiteness depended not only on white hegemony over separate race groups, but also on manipulating racial outsiders to compete with each other for white approval seek the rewards and privileges of whiteness.
