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    White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
    Unavailable
    White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
    Unavailable
    White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
    Ebook383 pages7 hours

    White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

    By Tim Wise

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From “one of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation” (Michael Eric Dyson), this now-classic is “a brilliant and personal deconstruction of institutionalized white supremacy in the United States . . . a beautifully written, heartfelt memoir” (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz).

    The inspiration for the acclaimed documentary film, this deeply personal polemic reveals how racial privilege shapes the daily lives of white Americans in every realm: employment, education, housing, criminal justice, and elsewhere.

    Using stories from his own life, Tim Wise examines what it really means to be white in a nation created to benefit people who are “white like him.” This inherent racism is not only real, but disproportionately burdens people of color and makes progressive social change less likely to occur. Explaining in clear and convincing language why it is in everyone’s best interest to fight racial inequality, Wise offers ways in which white people can challenge these unjust privileges, resist white supremacy and racism, and ultimately help to ensure the country’s personal and collective well-being.

    Editor's Note

    A great primer…

    More than a decade after its initial publication, Wise’s words still resonant and reveal just how silly it is to claim that we’re living in a “post-racial” America. A great primer on the complications of being a good ally.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSoft Skull Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9781593764708
    Unavailable
    White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
    Author

    Tim Wise

    Tim Wise, whom scholar and philosopher Cornel West calls, "A vanilla brother in the tradition of (abolitionist) John Brown," is among the nation's most prominent antiracist essayists and educators. He has spent the past 25 years speaking to audiences throughout North America, on over 1000 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of conferences, and to community groups across the nation about methods for dismantling racism. Wise's antiracism work traces back to his days as a college activist in the 1980s, fighting for divestment from (and economic sanctions against) apartheid South Africa. After graduation, he threw himself into social justice efforts full-time, as a Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized in the early 1990s to defeat the political candidacies of white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. From there, he became a community organizer in New Orleans' public housing, and a policy analyst for a children's advocacy group focused on combatting poverty and economic inequity. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Smith College School of Social Work, in Northampton, MA., and from 1999-2003 was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville, TN.  Wise is the author of seven previous books, including Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America and has been featured in several documentaries, including "The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump and the Politics of Race and Class in America," and "White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America." Wise is one of five persons—including President Barack Obama—interviewed for a video exhibition on race relations in America, featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. His media presence includes dozens of appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR, feature interviews on ABC’s 20/20 and CBS’s 48 Hours, as well as videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms that have received over 20 million views. His podcast, "Speak Out with Tim Wise," features bi-weekly interviews with activists, scholars and artists about movement building and strategies for social change.

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    Reviews for White Like Me

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    • 5/5
      I don't agree with everything Tim Wise says, but he's a great writer (and amazing speaker -- I heard him on January 17 of this year) and thinker. He is incredibly effective at identifying and raising awareness of white privilege and systemic racism. This is a book I should reread regularly, and his short chapter titled "Parenthood" is one that I'm thinking about copying and distributing to some of my friends who are the parents of young children.
    • 5/5
      Eye opening explanation of the role of white privilege in society. You think you are poor and powerless? Wise details how his white privilege has created the opportunities others he grew up with would never have. From the house he lived in, the high school debate team, the liberal arts college, the career, Wise's ability to probe his life gives us all a chance see the insidiousness and depth of racism in our society.
    • 4/5
      I believe white privilege is detrimental for whites as well as obviously for folks of color. Tim Wise does a good job tuning into memorable details that can help us counteract white privilege in our daily lives and slowly disassemble it.
    • 5/5
      It's all thanks to Matt Peters that I discovered this engaging and informative book. Matt has frequently linked to Wise's anti-racist writings, so I added a few of his books to my wishlist and finally scored this off of paperbackswap.

      This book is what it sounds like it should be, a memoir about race and white privilege. Wise does a remarkable job not just of identifying his own privilege and chronicling his anti-racism activism, but also owning up to times when he dropped the ball -- when his privilege blinded him to the effects of race in his own community.

      I loved this book, from beginning to end. This should be no surprise, given how much I love Wise's essays online. I intend to read some of his other books, though I'd really love it if he wrote a more practical primer on anti-racism. He does include a section on action in this book, but the most impressive examples of how to effectively talk to people about privilege seem to require a much deeper understanding of issues like welfare, unemployment, the economy, that I just don't have. And are certainly not the dominant narrative in society -- it's the stuff that those who make money off of the disparity between the rich and the poor don't want you to know! So how does the average person, for whom anti-racism is one of a number of issues they are committed to, go about educating themselves? Where to start?