An interview with Carmen P. Thompson, historian, and author of The Making of American Whiteness: The Formation of Race in Seventeenth-Century Virginia. She earned her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her Masters of Arts in African American Studies from Columbia University in New York. Dr. Thompson is a highly sought expert on
Race and Whiteness in America. Her scholarship was quoted in the December 2022 Oregon State Supreme Court decision, Watkins v. Ackley, in support of the Court’s conclusion of the disparate
racial impact of non-unanimous jury decisions. She wrote the introduction to the forthcoming (2023) book, Protest City: Portland’s Summer of Rage, a photo book that chronicles the yearlong
protests in Portland, Oregon after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020. And she co-edited and authored articles in the peer-reviewed journal, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2019
special issue on White supremacy in Oregon. She has held visiting scholar appointments at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York and in
the Black Studies Department at Portland State University and has taught a wide range of courses on the Black experience and Whiteness at Portland State University and Portland Community College.
- KBOO