Poet, author, critic and playwright David Mura takes on systemic racism in America with a brand new book called “The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives.”

The book is an investigation of historical texts, theory, literary sources, psychology and philosophy. It weaves together literary evaluation, history, storytelling and criticism with soaring prose. Examining movies, novels, historical records, writings and speeches, and more, Mura takes the reader on a journey into the narrative of whiteness in the US.

A 3rd generation Japanese American, Mura dives into Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow. He brings the reader along through the civil rights movement into our present moment where Black people being killed by the hands of police have grow to be an everyday a part of the news cycle. With clear, impeccably researched writing, Mura tracks the ways in which white fear of losing power continues to permeate our culture.

The impetus for the book got here after Philando Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria employee, was fatally shot by St. Anthony Police officer Jeronimo Yanez at a traffic stop. “I noticed that the roots of what happened on Larpenteur road (where Castile was shot) went all the way in which back in American history,” Mura says. “It needed to do with the way in which we tell that history, the way in which we understand that history, and the way we still fail to know how that history and its racism infects the current.”

I spoke with Mura concerning the book on this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Sheila Regan: This book is coming out in a moment when writers examining the legacy of slavery and white supremacy are under attack. Florida is the newest state to ban books that supposedly make white people feel bad. The College Board revised its Advanced Placement African American Studies curriculum after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he would ban it in Florida schools. A number of the scholars you write about in your book have been eliminated from that curriculum, like Michelle Alexander. In your book, you speak about backlash, and make the connection between the Reconstruction era and today’s backlash against critical race theory. Where will we go from here?

David Mura: What DeSantis has done is just an example of white epistemology. He’s not a scholar in African American history. I’m sure he hasn’t read widely in African American history or African American Studies theory, and yet he believes he could make a judgment that this material isn’t of educational value. He’s simply counting on the white supremacist assumption that white knowledge all the time trumps Black knowledge. Black Americans have been on the proper side of history, for each racial issue that we’ve faced. And the vast majority of white Americans have been on the mistaken side. People have a good time Martin Luther King, but 63% of white people disapproved of him when he was alive. White Americans never turned to Black America and said, you realize, we got it mistaken each time in our history, and also you got it right. Possibly we must always take heed to you in the current.

I’m a baby boomer. I grew up with Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson. I grew up identifying with Custer because Errol Flynn is Custer. I used to be taught that the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, the thirteenth 14th fifteenth Amendment was passed, and every thing was wonderful. That didn’t occur. They began working really hard to re-institute slavery. There was an enormous backlash, similar to there was an enormous backlash after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

After which you have got the election of Barack Obama, which tells white America in lots of conscious and unconscious ways, the demographics are changing. Sometime after 2040, white individuals are now not to be a majority. We’re all going to be racial minorities, and there are going to be more people of color than white people. And suddenly, white people just freak out. We’ve gone backwards within the last six years. So, for people who consider in social justice and equality, we’ve our work cut out for us.

SR: You write about James Baldwin extensively on this book, and call him perhaps the best American writer of the twentieth century. You wrote about Baldwin as a young author and taught a Baldwin course at The Loft. How have your views on Baldwin modified over time, and why is he so essential to your personal desirous about race?

DM: He was very fundamental. My parents raised me to assimilate right into a white middle-class identity because they were imprisoned by the federal government in World War II for his or her race and ethnicity. They raised me to be white. After which I finally realized I used to be never going to be white. I needed to work out who I used to be.

Authors like Baldwin and other Black authors gave me a language to speak about race. One among the primary books I read of his was “The Devil Finds Work,” which is an examination partly of American cinema through the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. A part of the theme of the book is that movies are all stories that white people tell themselves.

I’ve read Baldwin throughout the years, and at a certain point realized that race is a psychological and spiritual issue, and that’s where Baldwin was particularly good.

He didn’t grow up coping with many white people. After which as he became an writer, and as a gay man, he began to cope with white people, and he suddenly realized white people consider the lies they tell themselves. They’re actually much weaker and spiritually bereft than he realized. I tell BIPOC audiences: it is advisable to make whiteness smaller in your head.

I believe he provides instruction for people of color about easy methods to cope with the hurt and harm, the anger and bitterness we feel about these issues and easy methods to heal.

SR: You write about Alexs Pate’s novelization of Steven Spielberg’s film “Amistad” within the book and the ways Pate offers a deeper understanding of the Black perspective that the film ignores. Are you able to speak about your personal friendship with Pate and the way your conversations with him could have influenced that chapter?

DM: Alex and I became friends within the ‘90s. And we did a show together on the Rodney King video, and the violence in LA. Then we did a small film together. I’ve been his friend and his working colleague for years. I used to be teaching at Stonecoast and I persuaded him to get his MFA. Then he ended up teaching there. Once I delivered the lecture on Amistad, the novelization was something that I talked to him about.

I’m taking Alexs’ considering, but I’m also using my friend Frank Wilkerson, who also grew up in Minneapolis. His family was the primary Black family to integrate Kenwood. I wanted a part of the book to take Frank’s ideas and make them comprehensible to a non-academic reader. And likewise take different theories like Alexs’ examination of epistemology and innocence, Baldwin’s psychological and spiritual acumen, Saidiya Hartman’s study of slavery, and Henry Louis Gates’ signifying monkey, and really help the reader to see how all these are intertwined together, and the way complex racism actually is. The will to simplify racism is definitely a part of the way in which white America gaslights BIPOC America. It’s a way of stopping America from seeing how deeply white supremacy affects almost any aspect of our society.

SR: You’ve written about problems with racism that impact Asian Americans previously. This book mostly concerns itself with white supremacy in relationship to Black America. What was it like for you as someone who’s an Asian American to dive into this?

DM: The work first got here from the reading that I did for the book. It also comes from various activist work that I’ve done. It comes from friendships and relationships, and it comes from my teaching. I feel like there’s all forms of various life experiences that I’ve needed to which have informed the writing of the book, and my sense that I do know what I’m talking about, which I didn’t know after I was growing up.

SR: Are you doing much teaching now?

DM: I’m form of really fizzling out teaching. I read an Atlantic article which says if you reach a certain age, a part of what it is advisable to do is triage. You may leave off certain things. I only have a lot time left. I tell my wife: I can teach with half a brain, but I can’t write with half a brain. I’m really trying to pay attention. My next book goes to be on Asian American identity. After which after that, I would like to put in writing a book on sexuality.

SR: A number of the chapters address problems within the literary community— including the ways white writers either erase race altogether or present characters that reveal their very own racial bias. What has it been like spending your entire profession within the American literary world. What do you would like you would have told yourself as a young Asian American author first starting out?

DM: I don’t know if I might tell myself anything, because I’m completely satisfied where I ended up. Probably probably the most painful time was within the ’90s. I wrote this text when “Miss Saigon” got here out, and I had fights with all my white author friends about yellow face casting. I got letters saying, have you ever grow to be a racial separatist? Are you going to divorce Susan?

I lost almost each white artist friend on the time. But what I used to be saying that was pissing off my white author friends, after I’d say it in school campuses, not only Asian American students, but Black students, Latino students, Native students would come up and speak to me. I noticed I couldn’t speak to each audiences at the identical time. The reality that was alienating my white friends was affirming the experiences of other people of color. At that time, as painful because it was, I now not feared pissing off white people. I used to be similar to, I’m going to talk my truth. And if it ends our friendship, then it ends our friendship.

I even have so many wonderful relationships and friendships, and I’ve seen students who grow to be successful writers. My daughter is now the representative within the Minnesota State Legislature from her Minneapolis district. I assume the one thing I might say to my 22-year-old self: David, you’re lying to yourself, you’re not a white person. I look over the course of my life— and it just is what it’s. And I be ok with where it’s at.

Registration for the the Book Launch for “The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and our American Narratives” on Wednesday, Feb. 8 on the Minnesota Humanities Event Center have closed, but you’ll be able to catch Mura’s next reading on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. at Hamline Midway Library (free). It’s a hybrid event, register here. 

See additional reading events here.