Unlock Now White Like Me: Reflections On Race From A Privileged Son Envisioned By Tim Wise Published As Digital Copy

Like Me takes no prisoners in exposing this country's sordid racial history and its presentday vestiges, which every thinking person should realize are alive and wellthriving, in fact, under this current administration.
He takes an admittedly squirmworthy subject matter and makes it superbly understandable through his userfriendly, almost "folksy" chronicle of his personal life experiences of white privilege.
I couldn't put this book down, which is usually not the case for me with nonfiction writers.
Indeed, this racial exposé that is equal parts memoir truly makes the political personal, which is exactly what this nation needs if we are ever to have a "white awakening.
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That being said, this book is not perfect, While overall it's a fivestar read, it contains a halfdozen or so annoying typos "your" for "you're" "effect" for "affect" and others I noticed but didn't initially mark because I wasn't expecting so many.
I see White Like Me was published by a small press in Berkeley, California, so I can somewhat forgive this.
But for as important as the subject matter is especially with a "racistinchief" occupying the Oval Office, the otherwise excellent job Mr.
Wise does shedding sunshine on darkness could stand a finetoothed editing so that its presentation is equally excellent.
Also, Mr. Wise, like many storytellers allowed to expound on important political/social issues through uncensored personal vignettes, sometimes veers afield or draws questionable conclusions from his personal experiences.
But this is nothing that said "edit" couldn't fix,

For example, while I generally agree with the author's argument that "political power," when held by people of color, does not necessarily translate to "economic power," his example of the Prime Minister of Bermuda does not hold up to intellectual scrutiny.
Alex Scott the Black Bermudian PM was made to apologize to a white political opponent for an antiwhite comment he made via email.
I daresay that before Januaryat least had a white U, S. politician made a similar comment about being "sickandtired" of receiving criticism from people who "look like" thusandsuch Black person, he or she would have been chastised and forced to apologize.
Mitt Romney's "those people" don't even pay taxes" remark probably cost him theelection, So while I do not disagree that Black elected officials too often have to kowtow to the sensibilities of white opponents and constituents one need look no further than Barack Obama to see this phenomenon in play, I think the above Bahamian example falls flat.


Other than these minor weaknesses, White Like Me is a powerful read, made all the more compelling because it is written by a privileged white maleone who recognizes that being Jewish like being gay does not automatically obliterate one's white advantage, and who has truly put his money where his mouth by dedicating his life to exposing and combating racism.
His oftrepeated example about how his grandparents' home in a raciallyredlined district helped finance his college education, while tiring in its repetitiveness, hit home for me.
My father, lacking even a highschool diploma, was able to buy a tenroom home in a solid, allwhite neighborhood with good schools and virtually no crime.
It abutted a tonier town across the city line, All throughout my life, I, a veritable "nobody" with no connections, saw doors magically open as I got my education and sought higherpaying jobs and better opportunities.
First, by virtue of my actual Jewish last name, I was nod, nod wink, wink invited with open arms into probably a dozen predominantly Jewish law firms in various roles over the course of my career.
Second, when I told interviewers, in all types of jobs, where I had grown up, the knowing nods affirmed me as being "one of them" despite my sketchyupbringing, despite being halfJewish and halfItalian, despite being female, and despite being solidly lower middleclass/borderline "white trash.
" That childhood address branded me a wellraised, solidly middleclass white girl who had come up on the "right side of the tracks.
" I moved seamlessly from cashier in high school, to secretary and paralegal in college and law school, and ultimately to attorney at large and "exclusive" law firms on both coasts.
Had I been a Black woman from the Bronx sitting for those same job interviews, I seriously doubt those doors would have flung open so easily.


I think it is extremely important for every white person, regardless of background or economic station, to take stock of how their skin color has advantaged themto whatever degree.
That task honestly and humbly completed, we have an obligation to speak out whenever and however we can to acknowledge the disparities in treatment that have so benefited us compared to our brothers and sisters of color.
We must recognize "white backlash" and socalled "reverse discrimination" for precisely what they are: white angst and resentment not about unfair treatment, but simply about being asked to cede a tiny bit of our privilege so that others might have a shot at the things all of us want: a decent, safe place to live a job with a living wage a good education for our children.
Even that small bit of recognition and "sharing" is apparently too much for white people to abide and get behind.
How shameful.

White apathy to racial injustice is pervasive, because that injustice benefits white people and is largely invisible to us.
It is so embedded into our legal system and social fabric that we view racial injusticeif we acknowledge it at allas something happening "out there" someplace else to someone elseto "those people" about whom we might not especially care because we're essentially doing okay.
And even if we do care, what are we supposed to do about it anyway Shouldn't "they" just "get over it" and "move on" And how can anything we say or do possibly help move the needle

I loved Wise's allegory of a new CEO who had just taken over a multibillion dollar corporation.
He blithely tells his CFO that he plans to ignore the liabilities column of the balance sheet because "he wasn't there" when those liabilities were incurred.
Too many white people argue that "my family never owned slaves" if that happens to be truemany white families can trace their rootsand their privilegeback to slaveowning families or "I never personally oppressed Black people," ignoring the fact that each and every one of us has been born into a system with unpaid liabilities on its balance sheet, those being the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement and continued separation of Black and brown people.
To quote Mr. Wise: "The notion of utilizing assets but not paying debts is irresponsible, to say nothing of unethical.
Those who reap the benefits of past actions and the privileges that have come from whiteness are certainly among those who have an obligation to take responsibility for our use of those benefits.
" How true, typo notwithstanding.

As for what difference anything I do can make, Mr, Wise argues compellingly that ultimately "winning" the battle is beside the point, There is a long and largely ignored history of white resistance to racism and injustice in this country, and it behooves decent white people to identify with that version of our white heritage and to join in.
Resisting racism, standing on the right side of these issues, and taking the moral highground rather than standing idly on the sidelines while this ugly battle ragesthat is the point.
It boils down to what sort of person you want to be, and what sort of life you want to live.
For every one of us white folkand especially those who call themselves Christian or "people of faith"there is no more important question to answer in this lifetime.


I was also persuaded by the author's arguments as to why racism and unequal treatment harm not only people of color, but white people, too.
Systematic unfair advantage presumes that white people aren't good enough to "make it" without the head start and "legup" we implicitly and undeservedly expect as our birthright.
This allows too many mediocre white people to excel while only the most spectacular people of color are allowed similar gains.
It lumps all white people into the same selfish, ignorant, clueless "basket of deplorables" in the eyes of our darkerskinned brothers and sisters, when many most of us can, should, and in fact want to "do better" by them.


Just as our current prsident has given license to white supremacists to "come out of the woodwork" with their tiki torches and vile rhetoric, Mr.
Wise gives moral imperative to decent, rightthinking white people to "show up" and SPEAK UP, For that message alone, for that permission, Mr, Wise's book deserves five, This book stunk! I was forced to read and write about it in my CES class:P Every white person needs to read this book.
Although I'm not white, I picked it up for a variety of reasons, The immediate impetus was a discussion I had with my senior students a few weeks ago focused on race.
It was one of those moments where the teacher totally scraps the day's lesson because we began an impromptu important conversation that was both necessary and difficult.
I teach in a mostly white suburban school, and as a nonwhite teacher, my perspective and logic doesn't always speak to the majority of my students in the way that I want it to.
I had been meaning to read sitelinkWise's book for a while, and after that discussion with my students, I decided it was time to do so in the hopes that it would give me some insight on the white perspective, as well as some specific responses that might be heard more readily by a white audience of teenagers.


Over the past few years since adopting an African American daughter, I've done a fair amount of reading about race and privilege in this country.
My family is marginalized in a lot of waysgay parents my husband is white, but I am Dutch Indonesian two adopted kids, one black and one Hispanicso I've been trying to educate myself recently on ways in which I can help my kids navigate the difficult waters of twentyfirst century America.
Because of this though, I did find the White Like Me's beginning a bit slow, since I had already been a convert for several years to the existence of white privilege these early chapters are important for sitelinkWise's later discussions, but I do wish he had included additional statistics and research, something he does a lot of later on in the book.
He does initially though make his position very clear while at the same time addressing inevitable criticisms and counterarguments.
He makes it a point to note that he is "not claiming, . . that all white are wealthy and powerful, We live not only in a racialized society, but also in a class system, a patriarchal system, and one of straight supremacy/heterosexism, ablebodied supremacy, and Christian hegemony.
These other forms of privilege, and the oppression experienced by those who can't manage to access them, mediate, but never fully eradicate, something like white privilege.
" The specific focus of the book though is on whiteness and how being "white is to rarely find oneself feeling 'out of place' the way a person of color would likely" feel being lost on the back roads of Idaho in the middle of a storm, and he is quick to point out that "being white in an urban, mostly black and brown community is hardly equivalent" because whites rarely "find themselves in such places except by choice" while "people of color can't really avoid white spaces, and if they do it's probably because they live in the poorest areas and are the most destitute persons of color around.
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After establishing a strong foundation for the existence of white privilege, he moves on to discuss specific ways in which it and the pernicious effects of systemic and institutionalized racism can be countered.
As I have often heard people say that homophobia is really the problem of heterosexuals, sitelinkWise claims that "only when whites start challenging other whites, and begin to break the wall of silence that so often enables racist behavior, is anything likely to change" however he offers

such advice with a keen sense of pragmatism.
He notes that confronting those who tell racist jokes for example is better than nothing, but just telling them that the joke offends you simply forces the racism undergroundit doesn't really do anything to change the racist thinking that prompted it.
He talks about ways in which we can engage people ignorant of white privilege and institutionalized racism in rhetorical discussions, something to which I paid great attention as a teacher.
After all, as sitelinkWise consistently says, there is much more to eliminating racism than simply being an individually good person and that racism exists even where we would like to ignore it: "white folks all around the nation sometimes mistake being civil and kind and 'nice' with actually doing something to end injustice.
But just because you're nice to people, just because you chat around the water cooler, or whatever, doesn't mean that racism and inequity aren't present in the place where you work or go to school.
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While much of the text is depressing in its accounting of the realities of our country, there are moments of optimism and hope.
sitelinkWise suggests that "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" He advocates for reshaping the way we educate and socially condition our children there is a fantastic section about the media we expose our kids too, especially Disney films, and proposes that we must be more than explicit with them about our words and actions in relation to race, quoting James Baldwin saying, "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
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The entire book is incredibly convincing, although I'm sure I'm overly impressionable in this regard he extends his thought process to many aspects of our culture, from the myth of the American Dream to fallacy of liberalism in the media.
He theorizes on school shootings and Welfare reform, and this edition of the text even includes his open letter to whites following Hurricane Katrina.
Persuasively expansive, this is an important book that should be required for the dominant members of our society.
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