Title Synopsis: Deep Denial, part popular history and part personal memoir, documents the 400-year racialization of the United States and how people of European descent came to be called white. Author David Billings focuses primarily on the deeply embedded notion of white supremacy, and tells us why, despite the Civil Rights Movement and an African-American president, we remain, in the words of the author, a nation hard-wired by race. A master storyteller, Billings starts each chapter with a disarming and intimate vignette from his personal life, beginning with his white, working-class boyhood in Mississippi and Arkansas. He then situates these telling moments in a broader historical context that will be new and disturbing to many readers. Part I covers the origins and evolution of white supremacy from 17th century Virginia through World War II. Part II focuses on the Civil Rights Movement, how it emerged in the post-WWII era, and why it subsequently devolved from a vibrant community-led, issue-based movement into the bureaucratic, government-sponsored, needs-based, nonprofit industry of today. An epilogue discusses strategies for dismantling white supremacy and undoing racism in America.
About the Author: Rev. David Billings, a white anti-racist, Organizer, Educator, Minister, and a long-distance runner for social justice, pulls the covers off the intricacies of white supremacy in this nation. As a historian and author of Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy In United States History and Life, David has worked for half a century in the struggle for racial justice with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Billings focuses his research and teaching primarily on the deeply embedded notion of white supremacy and tells us why, despite the Civil Rights Movement and an African-American president, we remain, in the words of the author, a nation hard-wired by race.
David Billings was born in McComb, Mississippi, and grew up in Helena, Arkansas. He has a BA from the University of Mississippi, a Masters of Divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry (ABD) from the University of Creation Spirituality (now Wisdom University). He has been a core trainer and organizer with the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond, AntiRacist Alliance, and other educational and faith-based organizing groups across the country since 1983.
Author: David Billings
Narrator: David Billings, Margery Freeman
Publisher: Crandall, Dostie & Douglass Books, Incorporated
Copyright: 2016 David Billings
Audiobook Release Date:
Track Count: 33
Original Book Release Date: 2016-10-07
Running Time: 12:44:23
Audiobook ISBN: 9781965655900
