ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the experiences and stories of white people from a small farming community in northern Wisconsin. It examines how white people learn to be 'white' and reveals how white racial identity is dependent on people of color—even in situations where white people have little or no contact with racial others. The chapter focuses more on how experiences narrated by Erin, Libby, and Frank might suggest something hopeful, how they might open out into something better. It is in relation to stories of conflict and demands for separation—stories of internal struggles with embodied responses to race; stories of clashes with white co-workers; stories of white fathers who believed that their white daughters should be suspicious of black people and never attracted to the way they moved in the world—it is against the backdrop of such stories that we should interpret Libby's and Erin's memories of connection.
