The expanded edition of Myths America Lives By is timely and a great addition to (continuation of?) an already strong and beloved text. In this second edition Hughes adds "White Supremacy" to his catalog of the myths that America both lives by and is blinded by,

The American Dream is White Supremacy

This second, expanded edition of Myths America Lives By came about because author Richard Hughes was on a panel one day, and one of the panelists told him his book had missed the biggest American Myth of all – White Supremacy. The more the disbelieving Hughes looked into it, the more it became apparent. It put his first edition into a new, comprehensive and unified context. The result is a chilling reevaluation of America’s values. For some it will be terrifying, for others long overdue validation. It is a most worthwhile read.

Whites fight any sort of advancement by blacks, whether it is public schooling or a black president. Challenging white supremacy is a capital offense. Death threats to Obama were four times as high as for Bush. Congress vowed to block anything that came from Obama, regardless of merit. Even Lincoln was repulsed by the concept of equality, and publicly claimed whites were superior. Hughes came to the conclusion the White Supremacy Myth undergirds all the other myths and defines the United States. And of course it makes a mockery of the American Creed of equality and freedom, one nation under God, liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson, the documents’ author, was clear that black inferiority was self-evident, much like whites’ truths.

The first edition examined five foundational myths that have grown into the basis of America. They are not thought about, nor even assumed, because they don’t have to be. For white Americans, they are America and don’t have to be stated. They are:
-The Chosen Nation (chosen by God to pursue His/its values, excusing American exceptionalism.)
-The Christian Nation (despite the Founders’ purposeful exclusion of any specific religion in the founding documents and despite its most un-Christian policies and acts.)
-Nature’s Nation (God’s real work, as appreciated and participated in by white Americans, from a standing start, without prior influence, and the natural superiority of its white populace. And despite the raping of the environment.)
-The Millennial Nation (placed here to promote its glorious values to the world. The ultimate salvation of Man. Manifest Destiny gone wild.)
-The Innocent Nation (a new, pure country with no history/baggage, and therefore no agenda or bias. Nothing America does can have ulterior motives.)

Hughes says Americans have no history: “The American people typically live in the eternal present, with little or no sense of history, they have long since forgotten about laws that were made, doors that were opened, and economic structures that were put in place that allow some to thrive while others do not.” There is no looking back. There are no lessons to learn, no education that can be beneficial. When you’re down and out in America, you’re history. There is no worse fate in the USA.

What’s new in the second edition is white supremacy - everywhere. For every one of the myths, underlying assumptions of white supremacy power it. Hughes was able to pull quotes going back before independence to show the Church and government proudly boasting of white supremacy as powering America. And it has only gotten worse, as no one bothered to consider what they were actually saying. Hughes shows white supremacy as the enabler of each of the other myths, unifying them, giving them a bedrock basis, and framing American values completely at odds with its own estimation.

There are a number of points Hughes makes almost in passing, that are worth noting:
-The founders believed America was a natural tabula rasa set out for them, natives notwithstanding. Natives were not considered human, and if they didn’t get out of the way, it was legitimate to exterminate them.
-Jefferson wrote that blacks are by nature inferior to whites. Franklin concurred. Madison was right in there, too.
-“Racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature,” Hughes quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is baked into the fabric of America by its founders and their founding documents, giving black men a fraction of the value of white men (60%).
-John Adams, in a treaty with Tripoli, declared “The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” It was passed by a two-thirds majority and signed into law, without fuss. That was original intent. It quickly fell to religious takeover that is stronger than ever.
-The Church was conflicted. While it meant to spread itself everywhere, it feared equality for blacks would mean loss of control. How could a Christian nation tolerate slavery of Christians? Yet it also could not countenance blacks worshipping beside whites. So it invented things like the Colonizing Society, which freed slaves and sent them to Liberia to start over.
-Frederick Douglass didn’t mince words: “I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”

What whites fear most is colored “advancement”. Coloreds cannot get ahead or even be seen to be getting ahead without it being life-threatening to whites. Allowing blacks in schools or churches, giving them academic degrees, letting them become professionals, serving in the armed forces, playing pro sports, or living in white neighborhoods are all symptoms of eroding the core value of white supremacy. That, above all, powered Jim Crow, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings and voter suppression.

What Myths America Lives By provides like no other book I’ve read is perspective. Through Hughes’ agonizing over whether white supremacy really did rule America, he has been able to distance himself from the United States and see the country for what it really is. That he couldn’t immediately see or believe it showed him how ingrained it was. That’s a gigantic accomplishment, especially for a white religious scholar at a parochial college in central Pennsylvania. Hats off to Richard Hughes for making sense of it all in a clear and devastatingly thorough way.

David Wineberg

Interesting take on the stories that society tells itself about itself. Well-written, thought-provoking. If a reader has not thought much about these issues, this is a good introduction.

The author wrote an eye-opening book about the myths that influence and guide the American experience and race. I learned a lot about historical events that I had not heard of prior to reading this book. With all of the racial tensions in America right now, I think that it is important for everyone to read this to better understand it.

A major concern that I have with this book is that it is clearly written from a Christian perspective. Richard T. Hughes, a Professor of Religion, makes assumptions about the nature of human beings and their supposed relationship with God from a clearly Christian perspective. This perspective underpins this book in such a way that if I were filing it on the shelves in a bookstore I would file it under religious studies rather than in the history section. This perspective and those assumptions in what is presented as a history book led to me to mistrust the author and remain cynical about everything he had to say. I have nothing against Christianity or Christians- but keep your religion out of my history book, thank you very much.

If I was going to recommend a history book covering some of the same ground I would recommend “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. That book, if you have received the typical whitewashed history curriculum so many of us have in middle and high school- will knock your socks off.
I can’t recommend that book highly enough.

Professor Hughes has an annoying habit of quoting long sections from the works of other authors. If I want to know what those authors have to say I will go and read their books, not the appended Reader’s Digest version provided here. It would be enough to point toward these authors and their work without the extended quotes.
Additionally, besides having a decidedly biased Christian perspective and long quotes from other authors, virtually no new ground is covered in this book.

What really struck me reading this book is how much the way people and cultures have interpreted Christianity has cost us. So many people have died because of the way people have entwined their Christian faith with manifest destiny, social Darwinism and white supremacy. I think back to that passage in the Bible where God shows Moses Canaan and basically says- I’m giving it to your people- go ahead and displace and destroy the people who are currently living there. (I have never understood how the people who were already living in Canaan weren’t also God’s people, since every human being is a child of God- if one is spiritually inclined.) God treats Moses and his followers as chosen people and the rest is bible history.

This idea of being a “chosen people” certainly reverberated throughout the colonization of North America. In what became the United States, as Professor Hughes notes, many immigrants decided that they were the chosen people and that specifically the chosen people were white men. We are still paying for those mistaken assumptions hundreds of years later.

An interesting study of the lies we tell ourselves in order to ignore the truths of our society. A bit repetitive but well organized and well thought out.