National Book Critics Circle Award WinnerNew York Times BestsellerUSA Today BestsellerA New York Times Notable Book of the YearA Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the YearA Boston Globe Best Book of 2016A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016From the Civil War to our combustible present, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our continuing conversation about race, … present, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in The Washington Post suggesting that this was, instead, “white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,” she argued, “everyone had ignored the kindling.” Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America’s first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal. Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.
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This is a very serious and well-researched book about racism. I feel it should be a must-read for everyone in the U.S. It is very sad to me that our government has passed so many laws for so many years, even after slavery supposedly ended, to disempower black Americans. This is not good for our country. We can never be at peace with one another if we persist in such unfair practices.
5 stars – I loved it!
“White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly, almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular—to what it can see. It’s not the Klan. White rage doesn’t have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.”
White Rage chronicles the oppressed history of black progress in America from the Civil War to the present. Focusing on the institutional and systemic racism in America’s history, this book holds nothing back about how white rage has repeatedly done everything it can to subjugate black Americans.
This book is a hard hitting and informative read. While I have read other books about racism in this county, this book really dug deeper into the laws that were put into place to control Black Americanns. I really learned a lot about legislation and voting laws that was used, and is still being used today, against Black Americans. If you don’t understand why there is so much uproar over the current voting issues in the South, I highly suggest you read this book because it will explain it perfectly.
“The truth is, white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened the nation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions of dollars on baseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick, poor, and woefully undereducated, and left cities nothing less than decimated. All this havoc has been wrecked simply because African Americans wanted to work, get an education, live in decent communities, raise their families, and vote. Because they were unwilling to take no for an answer.”
Overall, this is a very educational and eye opening read. It wasn’t an easy one but education isn’t always easy. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand racism, especially when it comes to institutional and systemic racism.
In these times of great social unrest and inequality, all thinking persons need to educate themselves as to why the US has racism. We all need to address the problem or we will never resolve the issues.
From the Civil War to the present we get a look at the racial divide in America. This book was loaded with facts and some interesting points that I never knew about. A quick read that gave a powerful voice to the racial divide that exists today. A very important book to read to get insight into this hard topic.
WOW. This book is a huge eye-opener. It’s not that it covers things we haven’t learned about or heard before – the Civil War and Reconstruction; Jim Crow and segregation; the Civil Rights movement; the war on drugs and unbalanced arrest and incarceration rates; the unprecedented obstruction and vitriol leveled at the first black president – it’s that Dr. Anderson takes all of these things and condenses them into an infuriating, heart-wrenching, shame-inducing 164 pages.
Forget “Hillbilly Elegy” and “White Trash” and all of the other recent stories trying to get everyone to pity and excuse the “white rural” people who “feel left behind.” THIS BOOK RIGHT HERE completely explains and underscores the rise of Trump and those like him in this nation. Read it and weep. And then RESIST.