Myths America Lives By

White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning

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Pub Date 05 Sep 2018 | Archive Date 13 Nov 2018

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Description

Six myths lie at the heart of the American experience. Taken as aspirational, four of those myths remind us of our noblest ideals, challenging us to realize our nation's promise while galvanizing the sense of hope and unity we need to reach our goals. Misused, these myths allow for illusions of innocence that fly in the face of white supremacy, the primal American myth that stands at the heart of all the others.

Six myths lie at the heart of the American experience. Taken as aspirational, four of those myths remind us of our noblest ideals, challenging us to realize our nation's promise while galvanizing the...


Advance Praise

"The American national story is a myth, built on a series of myths that Richard Hughes reveals in this critical book. Myths America Lives By is a book we all need in order to understand ourselves, to understand our nation, to understand white supremacy."--Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America 

"Richard Hughes' Myths America Lives By was already required reading when it was released back in the pre-Trump era. With this update of his lacerating critique of the sordidness of American civil religion and other destructive myths, Hughes now indicts white supremacy as the foundational myth providing the most accelerant to those other myths that have burned through our history. Richard Hughes thinks hard and listens even harder to the historians, the scholars and, most of all, the prophets who understood the malignancy of white supremacy long before he did. The result is Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Gives Us Meaning. Once again, Hughes' willingness to tell the truth about the myths we live by has put us all in his debt."--Tony Norman, columnist, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 

"I have been under the tutelage of Dr. Richard Hughes since I was mentored by him in graduate school. He never ceases to challenge my easy assumptions, invoke history I do not know, and lift my vision to more elevated realms. Agree with him on every matter or not, I am better for having contended with him. How much we need voices such as his today."--Stephen Mansfield, New York Times bestselling author of The Faith of Barack Obama 

"It takes a whole lot of courage for white theologians and scholars to speak the truth about race. If we had more white theologians and religion scholars [like Hughes] who would break their silence about white supremacy and face it for what it is, we--together--could make a better world."--James H. Cone, author of The Cross and the Lynching Tree 

"A fearless, well-researched, searing critique that shatters the underpinnings of white racial superiority in America and abroad."--Joseph Robinson Jr., president, Martin Luther King Leadership Development Institute 

"Myths America Lives By is prophetic--not merely in the predictive sense, so evident in the first edition, but in the far more consequential sense of prophecy as calling us to repentance and to our better selves. This is a very fine book, offering both a searing critique and a summons to embrace our common humanity."--Randall Balmer, author of Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter

"The American national story is a myth, built on a series of myths that Richard Hughes reveals in this critical book. Myths America Lives By is a book we all need in order to understand ourselves, to...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780252083754
PRICE $19.95 (USD)
PAGES 272

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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,

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