Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority (City Lights Open Media) - Softcover

Wise, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872865215 ISBN 13: 9780872865211

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2012

Synopsis

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call to "take our country back." By means of a racialized nostalgia for a mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its campaign for reactionary social and economic policies.

In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a finger at whites' race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an agenda will only do harm to the nation's people, including most whites. In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present and future.

"Sparing neither family nor self...he considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor...His candor is invigorating."—Publishers Weekly

"One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation."—Michael Eric Dyson

"Tim Wise has written another blockbuster! His new book, Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, is a cogent analysis of the problems of race and inequality as well as a plea for those who harbor views about race and racism to modify and indeed eliminate them. While the book's title addresses white people, this is really a book for anyone who is concerned about eliminating the issue of racial disparity in our society. This is must read and a good read."—Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He is the author of a number of books, including The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America

"Tim Wise is an American hero in the truest sense of the term—he tells the truth, no matter how inconvenient that truth might be. Dear White America is a desperately needed response to the insidious mythology that pretends whites are oppressed and people of color unduly privileged. In the process, it exposes how new forms of racism have been deliberately embedded into our supposedly 'color blind' culture. Read this book—but rest assured, it's not for the faint of heart."—David Sirota, syndicated columnist, radio host, author of Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now

"The foremost white analyst of racism in America never fails to provide fresh takes as he punctures myths and defenses."—World Wide Work

Tim Wise is one of the most prominent antiracist essayists, educators, and activists in the United States. He is regularly interviewed by A-list media, including CNN, C-SPAN, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Michael Eric Dyson's radio program, and many more. His most recent books include Colorblind and Between Barack and a Hard Place.

About this title

About the Author:

Constantly on tour, Tim Wise is one of the most prominent anti-racist essayists, educators and activists in the US. He is regularly interviewed by CNN, Tavis Smiley, Tom Joyner and Michael Eric Dyson. His essays are published on Alternet, Counterpunch, Z-net, Black Commentator, the Black Agenda Report and the Daily Kos. His blog is widely followed at www.timwise.org

Review:

"Wise, an educator and racial justice advocate, presents an analysis of race relations and ideology in the contemporary US, as a letter addressed to its 200 million white citizens. As demographic trends portend a more colorful United States, and as its first black president begins a second term, Wise confronts the white fear of losing cultural hegemony, on the one hand, and the politics of resentment that has been both a real and contrived source of right-wing power in national politics. The book is aimed at a reasonable audience who may describe themselves as 'not a racist,' but whose assumptions about race and social power make them underestimate or misrecognize racism's persistence in the US. There are notes and citations in the end, but no index." Book News

"The leading white anti-racist commentator in the United States, Wise has long been renowned in academic and activist circles for his nuanced yet pointed indictments of white supremacy's grip on our nation. In this pithy, almost-pocket-sized book, the popular notion that Barack Obama’s election as president is evidence of a 'post-racial' United States is dissected and disrupted. In fact as Wise points out many months in advance of the November election an increasingly multiracial country that may have led many whites to have 'discovered our inner libertarian, and decided that government intervention was bad' was evidence of both a diversifying electorate and one in which race is still a critical indicator." Fellowship Magazine

"In his latest, he cuts to the core of white fears, using his white authority and white privilege to tell other whites that yes, it's time for you to deal with yourselves and the new American reality you now inhabit." Drums in the Global Village

About this edition

• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0872865215
• ISBN 13: 9780872865211
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 190