"The Making of White American Identity traces the development of whiteness as a distinctive collective identification, from the early colonial period through to the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The theory of Cultural Trauma provides the framework for mapping and analyzing this process. The central argument is that whiteness is a mobilizing ideology, articulated and communicated over generations by individuals and carrier groups that make use of various means of mass media, from traditional print and visual media to the internet. In analyzing this transmission, hot and cold forms and thick and thin identification are distinguished. Hot forms carry clear ideological messages, cool forms are more subtle, such as genres of country music and novels and films. Memorials, like those to the Confederacy, lie somewhere in between. The conflict over their removal, such as occurred in Charlottesville in 2017, is a key event in this analysis. The final chapter sums up the argument and discusses the future of whiteness in the U.S., when those who identify as white no longer constitute the majority of the population"--