Numerous racialized decisions have solidified America’s, and people of color’s, fate at different points in history. The first were race-based slavery and the removal of Indigenous peoples from their land. More have proliferated over time as America became a superpower post World Wars while still discriminating against people of color who served overseas and at home through internment camps and the inability to vote. Presidents and state politicians have enacted and enforced legislation with the aims of bettering a nation, but bettering it for whom? From Reconstruction to the New Deal to the unceasing fight for the Civil Rights Bill and Voting Rights Act to the nation’s unyielding sense of patriotism and belief in “the American Dream,” each decision solidified the full rights of white people time and time again.           In Chattel Slavery, journalist Ellis Cose dissects chapter-by-chapter how America’s overall narrative breeds racial resentment rooted in conjecture over fact. Through rigorous research and astute details, Cose uncovers how countless points in history upheld a narrative of “what makes America great” thereby allowing one of the most disastrous presidencies in history to occur at a time when the world was at its most vulnerable.