Tim Wise

3.25 stars. this wasn't quite what i was expecting or hoping for. there were parts that hit what i wanted, but there were a lot more peripheral stories and fewer examples of concrete actions or things we can say in the moment than i was looking for. still, this is important, and i'm thankful he's doing this work and giving us his example.

i particularly liked the idea of reframing conversations that are usually around victimhood and instead focusing on the fight. so instead of putting all of our attention on the bad white people who owned slaves and the black people who were slaves, give most of our attention to both the black and white people who fought the institution, so we know that it's possible, and elevate their names. this helps keep the oppressed class from feeling like the victim and like they're going to personally become the next victim, and shows the oppressed class that they can fight back. so we learn about the resisters and the people who refused to give in, rather than those who fought to keep oppressive institutions alive.

the book also ends well, and is inspiring in either continuing or beginning this fight.

"When I had sat down and begun to take inventory, it had become impossible to miss how race had been implicated year in and year out all throughout the course of my existence. Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived, to my education, to my employment history, to my friendships, had been free from the taint of racial inequity. From racism. From whiteness. My racial identity had shaped me from the womb forward. I had not been in control of my own narrative. It wasn't just race that was a social construct. So was I."

"Only by coming to realize how thoroughly racialized our white lives are, can we begin to see the problem as ours and begin to take action to help solve it. By remaining oblivious to our racialization, we remain oblivious to the injustice that stems from it, and we remain paralyzed when it comes to responding to it in a constructive manner."

"Although white Americans often think we've had few firsthand experiences with race, because most of us are so isolated from people of color in our day to day lives, the reality is that this isolation is our experience with race. We are all experiencing race, because from the beginning of our lives, we have been living in a racialized society, in which the color of our skin means something socially, even while it remains largely a matter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Race may be a scientific fiction, and given the almost complete genetic overlap between people of the various so-called races it appears to be just that, but it is a social fact that none of us can escape..."

"Whiteness is more about how you're likely to be viewed and treated in a white supremacist society than it is about what you are in any meaningful sense."

"What does it mean to be white in a nation created for the benefit of people like you? We don't often ask this question, mostly because we don't have to. Being a member of the majority, the dominant group, allows one to ignore how race shapes one's life. For those of us called "white," whiteness simply is. Whiteness becomes, for us, the unspoken, uninterrogated norm, taken for granted much as water can be taken for granted by a fish."

"Regardless of our own direct culpability for the system, or lack thereof, the simple and incontestable fact is that we all have to deal with the residue of past actions. We clean up the effects of past pollution. We remove asbestos from old buildings for the sake of public heath, even when we didn't put the material there ourselves. We pay off government debts, even though much of the spending that created them happened long ago. And of course we have no problem reaping the benefits of past actions for which we weren't responsible. Few people refuse to accept money or property from others who bequeath such things to them upon death, out of a concern that they wouldn't want to accept something they hadn't earned. We love to accept things we didn't earn, such as inheritance. But we have a problem taking responsibility for the things that have benefited us while harming others. Just as a house or farm left to you upon the death of a parent is an asset that you get to use, so to is racial privilege. And if you get to use an asset, you have to pay the debt accumulated, which allowed the asset to exist in the first place."

"...more whites receive benefits from the myriad of social programs than do Blacks."

"Racism, even if it's not your own, but merely circulates in the air, changes you. It allows you to think and feel things that allow you to be less than you were meant to be."

"Knowing the horrors of which we are capable is the only thing that might keep us mindful of what and who we prefer to be."

"...next to having a division one sports program, the most highly correlated factor with alcohol and substance abuse on campuses, is the percentage of students who are white. The whiter the school, the bigger the problem. Not because there's something wrong with whites, per say, but because privilege encourages self-indulgent and often destructive behaviors, and allows those with privilege to remain cavalier about our activities all the while."

"Tradition is, after all, what we make it. The definition of the term is simply this: a story, belief, custom, or proverb handed down from generation to generation. There is nothing about that word that suggests tradition must be oppressive or that it must necessarily serve to uphold the status quo. It is simply the narrative we tell ourselves, and as such, could just as easily involve resistance to oppression or injustice as the perpetuation of the same. But if we aren't clear in articulating the alternative tradition, we can hardly be surprised when persons don't choose the direction in which it points, having never been appraised of its existence. In the South, for instance, too many white folks cleave to the tradition of the Confederacy, and one of the battle flags most commonly associated with it. But that is not because the Confederacy is Southern history, or synonymous with the South. Rather, it is because of an ideological choice those white southerners make to align themselves with that tradition, as opposed to the other, equally southern traditions with which they could identify. White southerners who wave that flag are choosing to identify with a government whose leaders openly proclaimed that white supremacy was the cornerstone of their existence and who over and over again made clear that the maintenance and extension of slavery into newly stolen territories to the west was the reason for secession from the Union. But white southerners could choose to identify with, and praise, the 47,000 whites in Tennessee who voted against secession - almost one third of eligible voters. Or the whites in Georgia, whose opposition to leaving the Union was so strong, officials there had to commit election fraud in order to bring about secession at all. We could choose to remember and to celebrate abolitionists in the south, like Kentuckian John Phee, a Presbyterian minister who was removed from his position by the Presbyterian synod, for refusing to minister to slaveholders, so unforgivable did he consider their sins. Instead of venerating Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, we could praise the brave women who marched on Richmond in 1863 to protest his government and the war, shouting "Our children are starving while the rich roll in wealth" and who Davis then threatened to shoot in the streets if they didn't disperse. Instead of identifying with soldiers who perpetrated atrocities against Black Union forces like Nathan Bedford Forrest...we could proudly note the bravery of those 100,000 or more white southern troops who deserted the Confederate forces, many because they had come to see the battle as unjust. Or the 30,000 troops from Tennessee alone, who not only deserted the Confederacy, but went and joined the Union army, so changed did their beliefs become over time. White southerners could choose to venerate the tradition of the civil rights movement which rose from the south, and lasted far longer than the Confederacy. We could choose to valorize the tradition of historically black colleges and universities which grew throughout the south as a form of institutionalized self-help because of the denial of educational opportunity to persons of African descent. We could choose to identify with the tradition of resistance to racism and white supremacy by Black southerns to be sure: John Lewis, Ella Baker, Ed King, Amzie Moore, Unita Blackwell, Fanny Lou Hammer, or E.D. Nixon to name a few. But also by white southerners. Persons like Thomas Shreve Bailey, Robert Flanoy, Anne Braden, Bob Zellner, Mabs Segrest, and hundreds if not thousands of others throughout history. That we are familiar with few of these names, if any, leaves our ability to resist compromised, and limits us to playing the role of oppressor, or at least quiet collaborator with racism. It is always harder to stand up for what's right if you think you're the only one doing it. But if we understood that there is a movement in history of which we might be a part, as allies to people of color, how much easier might it be to begin and sustain that process of resistance? For me, I know that such knowledge as been indispensable, and what I know also is this: the withholding of that knowledge from the American people, and especially white folks, has been nothing if not deliberate."

"'You do not do the things you do because others will necessarily join you in the doing of them. Nor because they will ultimately prove successful. You do the things you do because the things you are doing, are right.'" -- desmond tutu, in a letter

"I have no idea when, or if, racism will be eradicated. I have no idea whether anything I say, do, or write will make the least bit of difference in the world. But I say, do, and write it anyway, because as uncertain as the outcome of our resistance may be, the outcome of our silence and inaction is anything but. We know exactly what will happen if we don't do the work - nothing. And given that choice, between certainty and promise, in which territory one which finds the measure of our resolve and humanity, I will opt for hope."… (more)

Off and on, I've been exposed to the concepts of white racism or white privilege. That is, people try to teach me about it, and I do try to learn, although I fear that I'm a dull and slow student. This all began many years ago when I met a man named Horace Seldon while jogging around Lake Quannapowitt in the next town over from us. Horace, an ordained UCC pastor, has dedicated his life to the cause of educating his fellow white people regarding the special privileges we have by dint of our skin color. More recently, we had a study group in town over the book written by a local author, two towns over in the other direction, Debby Irving. Her book, Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race. In between, I've been trying to understand racial issues by reading African American authors like Walter Mosley and Ta-Nehisi Coates. My friend, Michael, recommended this book, and I cued it up.

This book is ever so much better than Ms. Irving's. For one thing, it provides a much better introduction for beginners to read about and to begin to understand the subtle issues of racism. I think part of this is that Mr. Wise grew up in modest circumstances, so his white privilege wasn't augmented by an additional layer of country-club privilege. I'm not sure Ms. Irving understood that augmented privilege she had. So, some of her arguments fell flat because those of us not born to the country club could see that some of the advantages she was experiencing weren't about whiteness so much as being born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Of course, being able to be part of the country-club set is also very much about being white, unless you might be O.J. Simpson.

Anyway, much of the advantage our skin color (or perhaps lack of it) provides us has to do with expectations and opportunities. We white folks, don't have anyone look at us strangely like perhaps we're not qualified, before we even open our mouths. Rather, we're assumed qualified until we prove we're not. This is not the case with people of color, who must find ways to prove their worthiness before they are deemed qualified. We white folks never have to worry that politicians will structure voting rights so that we are disadvantaged with respect to people of color. Not so people of color. Within a week or so after the Roberts Supreme Court overturned the voting rights act, people in some states, like North Carolina and Texas were falling all over themselves to find insidious ways to deny voting rights to people of color. Yes, a few poor whites got caught in the cross fire, so to speak, but the bills were specifically designed primarily to deny the vote to people of color. Some of us white folks complain about affirmative action plans which guarantee a few seats for people of color in our universities, but don't even blink at the white affirmative action going on with "legacy admissions", which overwhelmingly accrue to white folks.

And so, the beat goes on. The first step to mitigating the problem of racism is to recognize it. This book is a good beginning. The solution to racism isn't just to pretend it's gone the way the Klu Klux Clan (which a recent Presidential candidate has helped regain traction in our society), but to recognize when we are obtaining privileges other people are not, and to get us to work to level the playing field for all.… (more)

Despite having rather sternly told myself I was not allowed to check out any books because I already had too many checked out at home, I saw this one in the new non-fiction section and could not resist. Reading it swayed me more to Bernie than any articles actually about the candidates did. The system of inequality is just too unjust for tinkering to fix. It needs a sledgehammer.

Reading this book was highly emotional for me. In many sections, especially early on in the book, the ideas Wise was selling I was already convinced of, but the details and examples were so maddening that I had to skim over them to avoid flying into a rage. At the same time, there were so many stories, studies, argument that we so strongly worded that I had to quote them on goodreads, on Facebook, read them to my family. One section in particular pushed me over the edge, and I had to put the book down so that I could go buy my own personal copy that I could mark up and underline for future debates, so that I could safely return my library copy.

If yu want to learn about systematic inequality, read this book. If you want to know how our (white) racism has damned us, causing us to shred our own safety nets just to erode the (rather more wobbly) nets for people of color, read this book NOW.… (more)