White Rage by Carol Anderson
Well, if this book set out to make me angry, it certainly did that! I have spent much of my life in ignorance of systemic racism. Partly from my white privilege and growing up in small-town white Ohio suburb and partly from being disinterested in politics and detailed history. This journey I am undertaking to become anti-racist is opening my eyes and the truths I'm learning are shocking and heartbreaking. I am sorry I did not embark on this sooner.
Some of the history I learned by reading Ms. Anderson's book was a repeat from what I discovered in The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (see review from August 29, 2020). Yet there was so much more.
From President Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson whose presidency almost took the country back to pre-Civil War times; to the Supreme Court's decisions over the decades that stripped Black Americans of hard won Civil Rights by rulings that made landmark decisions (Brown v. Board of Education), longstanding Constitutional Amendments and legislation (1965 Voting Rights Act) practically moot; to Nixon and Reagan who pushed racist propaganda portraying black men as dangerous criminals; the Reagan Administration which brought drugs to black communities in the Iran-Contra affair while declaring a "War on Drugs" and punishing the very people they were supplying the drugs to; to the intense racism and hatred President Obama endured during his presidency even as he promoted programs that continued the system of racism in our country.
Now that I have finally taken off my rose-colored, white privilege glasses, I will continue to read books like this so that I can truly be anti-racist and be an ally. This is the only way that we can bring about real change and the United States can become a country that we are all proud of.
Quotes: "Bradley saw equal treatment for black people as favoritism."
"Black prosperity and success - indeed, black intelligence - were unimaginable and, thus justified the disparate funding in education that had led to abysmal schools and made the brutality of the criminal justice system necessary."
"...peace was based on black people quietly and gracefully accepting the fact that they had no right to their rights."
"'Whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, and against its own laws and customs.'"
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