The History of a Bad Idea
David Roediger - author of The Wages of Whiteness and Towards the Abolition of Whiteness - comes from Rush Limbaugh's neck of the woods in downstate Illinois river country, but looks at his skin color quite differently.
In his 2002 book Colored White, the 52-year-old historian from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, notes that he hails from "that part of the Mississippi River which divides Missouri from Illinois ... the lone portion of the Mississippi to divide slavery from freedom."
