> While race and racism have, in popular discourse, been understood to refer to non-white people, we start with whiteness since whiteness has been the primary ideology that dominated the formation of the United States, its laws, power structure, society, and culture.<p>Why does anyone take this assertion seriously? "Whiteness" is not an ideology. Liberalism is barely an ideology. Multiple, competing ideologies have lived and died in American history; whiteness was not and is not one of them. Deconstructing white people into a strawman in order to attack it is offensive.