As conservatives and liberals mirror one another, each claiming the mantle of truth and righteousness, this unreckoned-with history and present are a large part of whiteness's shadow world, the truth that is simultaneously known and repressed. In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates calls white people's denial of this shadow "the Dream," an abbreviation of the American Dream that de-emphasizes the American part in favor of the reverie part. Crucially, the Dream knows it's a dream, knows it's not real, knows that reality is pounding at the door, threatening an awakening from slumber. And so huge efforts must be made to keep the curtains drawn so that the light does not stream in.

XREF: Connects to Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and the 'Dream' concept, plus general literature on denial and cognitive dissonance. DEFINE: Introduces 'the Dream' as Coates's term for the willful American denial of racial reality.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 834