Summary

Chapter 5 begins by reiterating a conclusion from Chapters 1-4: that race is a myth propagated by white people to dominate black people. By allowing some poor whites very limited status as plantation overseers or peasant landowners, wealthy white people were able to create two sub-classes they could then dominate. They could offer up black bodies as "straw men for white bodies to blow their ancient historical trauma through" (69). This pattern of domination was not new; it hearkened back to the white-on-white trauma of Europe in the previous centuries. It also prefigured the poor treatment of waves of poor white immigrants who would also be designated as non-white, at least for a generation.

The heart of Chapter 5 is a historical overview of history from the point of view of the body; Menakem calls it a somatic timeline. There are...