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White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

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Author: Tim Wise
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$14.95~~
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Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7

ISBN: 1933368993
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.800973
EAN: 9781933368993
ASIN: 1933368993

Publication Date: December 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

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•	ISBN13: 9781933368993
•	Condition: NEW
•	Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

Racial privilege shapes the lives of white Americans in every facet of life, from employment and education to housing and criminal justice. Using stories from his own life, Tim Wise shows that racism not only burdens people of color, but also benefits those who are "white like him" — whether or not they’re actively racist. Using stories instead of stale statistics, Wise weaves a compelling narrative that assesses the magnitude of racial privilege and is at once readable and scholarly, analytical yet accessible.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 53

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Not the anti-racist he thinks he is August 30, 2009
Dubarnik (Converse, TX USA)
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

I recently came across two of Tim Wise's books in a local book store - White Like Me and Speaking Treason Fluently. I gave them a quick scan and decided that I wanted to read them both. I work in education and have seen white privilege at work; it's a topic I care about.

As I began this book, White Like Me, I found the reading enjoyable. Even better, I felt my own beliefs about racism and white privilege were being affirmed.

However, I won't be finishing the book or reading anything else by Tim Wise. On two consecutive pages, Wise makes commenst that are racist to the point that he's lost credibility with me. Let me explain.

When explaining why high school debate team is "so white", Wise states (p. 33) "The substance of the arguments made and the way in which the arguments are delivered also tend to appeal to whites far more readily than people of color, for whom the style and substance are often too abstract to be of much practical value." That is a disgusting comment. To generalize that people of color would not be interested in abstract argument because it lacks practical value is incredibly arrogant, demeaning, and racist.

Amazed as I was by that statement, I was willing to overlook it until I read the next page (p.34). Here Wise explains that the entire process of debate is "a white one." He writes, "...whites (and especially affluent ones), much more than folks of color, have the luxury of looking at life or death issues of war, peace, famine, unemployment, or criminal justice as a game, as a mere exercise in intellecutual and rhetorical banter." He then claims that being able to debate a position such as "whether or not full employment is a good idea, presupposes that my folks are not likely out of work as I go about the task." He adds, "To debate whether racial profiling is legitimate likewise presupposes that I, the debater, am not likely to be someone who was confronted..." with racial profiling.

Wise seems to be saying that because of their position in society, people of color are unable to engage in intellectual and rhetorical banter, to take equally either side of a position. He's saying that because they have experienced discrimination, they can not step outside of their own experience to discuss the discrimination from all sides. Again, Wise's arrogance is palpable.

The perfect counterpoint to Wise's claims is the current debate about healt care reform. People of color, some with health insurance and some without, are debating the pros and cons of a government-run health insurance option. They are able to discuss it intellecutally and rhetorically. They are able to look at both sides of the issue. They are able to overcome the multitude of ways in which the health care industry discriminates against them.

Tim Wise is clearly aware of "white privilege" and it's role in the continuing oppression of minorities. But his opinions and perspectives contain the covert and subtle racism that now characterizes much of American thought towards "people of color".

5 out of 5 stars

Honesty Is The Best Policy June 8, 2009
mama truth
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

three quarters through the book i have been nothing but satisfied. for the first time in "my life" i have heard the truth spoken eloquently and honestly about what has and is going on with our people. and until many more think as this man does, we are in for an incredible ride in a frightening direction. thank you mr wise and all others who are willing to look down in them selves and see the horror that is.

2 out of 5 stars

The Leader of the Anti-Whites June 7, 2009
Richard Hoste
10 out of 20 found this review helpful

While reading Tim Wise's White Like Me, I was reminded of political historian Paul Gottfried's theory of political correctness. PC is Protestantism without the supernatural myths: the individual soul poisoned with impure racist or sexist thought, redemption through becoming sufficiently politically correct while remembering that one is always a sinner, and "transposition takes place as well--for example, the substitution of designated victims for the older adoration of religious martyrs. . . . The notion of the 'suffering just' has been `brought up to date' and signifies Third World, gender, and lifestyle victims."

While the source of political correctness is not the issue here it's the comparisons to a religion that concern us. White Like Me is a screed against the sins of the author's society, family and as we'll see, self. If you want to see most explicitly that political corectness is a religion, it's best to start with the most politically correct school of thought that there is.

Just how important is Tim Wise? According to his website, he has spoken at "over 400 college campuses including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale, Columbia, and Vanderbilt. He has trained teachers as well as corporate, government, media, entertainment, military and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiff's attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State." He's been on national TV and whiteness studies departments are popping up at American universities. The value of this whiteness business is that the gloves come off and PC can be seen for what it is. As Michael Levin points out in a 2000 article in American Renaissance, the idea that the white race shouldn't exist as a concept while every other race should is accepted by mainstream conservatives and liberals alike. Wise follows the theory of white original sin to its logical conclusions.

Talking about a diversity seminar he attended, John Derbyshire said that women were the most enthusiastic participants and that the whole thing "was running on estrogen." Here you find the same privileging emotion over analysis, sympathy for complainers and reliance on feelings to guide judgement. We get Wise's entire life story and those of his ancestors going back as far as he can trace them. His mom's family are the McLeans, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1759 and have been owning slaves and killing Indians ever since. His paternal great-grand father was a Russian Jew who arrived to America in the early 19th century. Although not as culpable as his mom's side of the family, Wise's paternal grandfather did own a liquor store in a black neighborhood.

White people are guilty, not only of their deeds, but thoughts. "Whosoever looketh on a black to doubt his abilities hath committed racism already in his heart." Even Tim Wise himself is not immune. He once got on a plane and noticed that the two pilots were black and doubted the ability of the guys to fly the plane. He had doubts about the competence of the blacks!

My God, if Tim Wise can't overcome his own racism, what chance do the rest of us have?

We get stories from his anti-racist workshops and about white people who are masochistic and disturbing. We're told about the young white woman named Jen who tries to make sure her daughter has Latino, black and Asian friends. Someone told her that this wasn't enough and she breaks down crying. Tim Wise comforts her and tells her that as a kid he had black friends too. He even knew his hip hop and could speak ebonics. The woman is shocked and horrified to find out that he has not maintained contact with a single one of his colored chums. He tells her this not to needlessly scare her but so that the woman knows what she's up against in her challenge to make sure her daughter has non-white friends.

Whites in the anti-white movement unsurprisingly find themselves walked on and even detested by their nonwhite allies. A white girl in a class he's speaking to raises her hand to ask what kind of thanks she can expect from black people for doing antiracist work. A black girl raises her hand to say that "we do hate you and we don't trust you." Instead of seeing this asevidence of typical black buffoonery and incivility Wise considers this response justified. He says that he fights racism for his own redemption, not to relieve the suffering of others. "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone." His reaction is similar when a black friend tells him that he no longer talks to white people. He starts his antiracist activies at Tulane University with a group that is racially mixed but ends up all white. Instead of concluding that blacks obviously care less about the struggle of their own people than white liberals do, he finds a way to blame the white liberals' "self-righteous, sandal-wearing, tofu and tempeh-eating, no-car-driving, Nike-boycotting, coffee-ground-composting, macrobiotic-consuming, low-on-the-food-chain asses."

The validity of stereotypes about blacks as criminals depend on whether blacks commit more crimes. Wise doesn't look up crime statistics but tells us he never felt unsafe in black neighborhoods. He ignores the evidence on race and IQ but tells us that "everyone I met at Tulane who was truly stupid...was white and rich." He tells us that he got into college with subpar grades and test scores and this is part of white privilege but ignores that NAMs in every entering class at every college in the country have lower GPAs and test scores than their white counterparts.

This book isn't going to teach you anything new but is a sad reminder of the self-loathing of a good percentage of white people, especially the young. Read it out of anthropological curiosity and try not to despair about what happened to a once proud race.

1 out of 5 stars

kind of a joke, useful to the powers that be... May 28, 2009
jenna randolph (USA)
9 out of 23 found this review helpful

To me, this is totally non-innovative. This is what we grew up with, the attitude (pc) we were supposed to have. I was white in an all-black school, often in minority-majority. This book (and the actually billion like it) are actually published to train the gaze away from the bizarre socializations of "white privilege." I wanted to be a college teacher (and put myself through school, from an under-priveleged white background. I went to college 10 years, but was given (lol) books to teach, just like this, which all could have been titled "Why this next group hates whites." From Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman's Warrior, Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, etc. We had to write things like this. All my teachers were (pseudo) "Marxists" (Marxist fronts for bankers), and we were told to use these positions to "infiltrate the system and destroy from within" by creating people like the author of this book. I taught college for a couple years, then left. It was too horrible! Teaching really poor Appalachians that they were "white privileged." This "author" (useful tool) ought to spend some time in Michigan and outside Pittsburgh in failed steel towns, where people eat cat food. The comments here just strike me, frankly, as typical racism. Maybe some of you really are some weird white-bred things out there, but in reality, you are cut off---and especially from where things like this are think-tanked---by whom, how, why. You are pathetic in your inability to think outside the box and to buy into ethno-politics. Did you know Trotsky coined "racism" as a term, and was bound up with the Bolsheviks, who using this thinking heralded in the first mass state-sanctioned slaughters of people based on "group identity" and "identity politics." You need to wake up, kid. And they will never publish this at Amazon. I read it, but there are far more important books to read. Even Shelby Steele's "White Guilt," from a thinking black man.

3 out of 5 stars

Better than his new book "Barack and a Hard Place," but still flimsy arguments May 6, 2009
Paradigm (Springfield, MO)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful

I fully agree that there is racism and white privilege in the United States. I don't agree that it exists at the level that Wise posits in this book, though. And, I certainly don't believe that his rants help anyone attain their goals.

The messages of self-described radicals end up eating themselves in the end. Extreme positions never work, right nor left. And, Wise's language is getting angrier and angrier with each passing day.

When will people learn that the time for widespread protest is long gone? Nothing will change until they do.

-Paradigm
[...]

Showing reviews 1-5 of 53

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