How White Women Got White

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque

James Baldwin told us how white men became white, but he left white women out of it. Of white men he said:

"White men-from Norway, for example, where they were Norwegians -became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women."

For whatever reason, Baldwin, in that instance, didn’t tell us how white women became…