The lie about Black people produces the very idea of white people.

Evidence

Baldwin states the point like the artist that he is. One has to fill in the gaps: “the price of being American,” what he would later refer to as “The price of the ticket,” is the brutal process of becoming white. For if Americans are already in exile by the very nature of their estrangement from Europe, then the resolution of that exile requires the lie about who black people are, the lie that produces the very idea of white people. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 407

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the crux of ‘the lie’ the reader must explain and defend.
• XREF: Connects directly to ‘the lie’ concept and to Baldwin’s later ‘The Price of the Ticket’ essay; links to the reader’s core thesis about late Baldwin.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dense causal chain — exile from Europe → the lie about Black people → the invention of whiteness — is the load-bearing argument of the book.