White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

From his experiences as a white anti-racist activist and white American, Tim Wise has crafted the first history of what it means to be part of the "majority" in America. Combining the emotion of personal stories with insights gleaned from fifteen years as an educator, White Like Me examines the ways in which whites reap the benefits of "racial preferences" - whether or not they actively engage in racism. By critically assessing the magnitude of racial privilege and its costs - to people of color and whites as well - Wise provides a provocative memoir relevant to activists, educators, and average everyday folks seeking to understand why race continues to shape life in the United States.

Activist, lecturer and director of the new Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE), Wise works from anecdote rather than academic argument to recount his path to greater cultural awareness in a colloquial, matter-of-fact quasi-memoir that urges white people to fight racism "for our own sake." Sparing neither family nor self, Wise recalls a racist rant his antiracist mother once delivered, racial epithets uttered by his Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother and the "conditioning" that leads him to wonder, for a split-second, if people of color are truly qualified for their jobs. He considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor: his grandmother's house, which served as collateral for a loan he needed for college, for instance, was in a neighborhood that had formerly barred blacks. Resistance to racism, Wise declares, requires support (it's better for a group to speak out against racial tracking than for one "crazy radical" to do it), and that's presumably part of what this volume means to provide. And while Wise sometimes falls victim to sweeping judgments—the act of debating racial profiling, he declares, is "white-identified," because only whites have the luxury to look at life or death issues as a battle of wits—his candor is invigorating.
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