This paper is an analysis of the experience of being white in America and the significance this has for white individuals across a broad spectrum of class, education, gender, and employment. This study is based on Andrew Hacker's book, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. Hacker contends that, even at the lowest economic level, being white offers advantages not available to black members of American society. He suggests that, despite the wide range of cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds represented within the United States population, the historical relationship between the former owners of slaves and the people they forcibly brought to America remains an insurmountable obstacle. He contends that immigrants from other countries, as well as the native population forced to surrender its land, have been able to assimilate into an white, Western, Eurocentric culture. African Americans, however, were abducted and brought to the United States against their will. This, more than the color of their skin, continues to set them apart within society, preventing them, perhaps permanently, from participating in the American dream.
In Two Nations, Andrew Hacker (1995) states, "What white people seldom stop to ask is how they may benefit from belonging to their race . . . yet even for those who fall to the bottom, being white has worth" (p. 35). He begins his discussion with an attempt to define "white"; the term has undergone a gradual expansion from its original designation primarily for those of English extraction. Hacker observes, "[While] the nation's dominant antecedents are European, as is its reliance on Western literature and learning, this is seen as a cultural, not a racial heritage" (p. 10). Hacker contends that, throughout history, new immigrants from all corners of the globe have "become white" through their willingness to assimilate into the dominant culture, accepting "mistrust, not to mention v...