White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they
are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white
people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly
multicultural nation.
Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the
nation's diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer
constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in
the White House, whites are growing anxious.
This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call
to "take our country back." By means of a racialized nostalgia for a
mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its
campaign for reactionary social and economic policies.
In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative
work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a
finger at whites' race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an
agenda will only do harm to the nation's people, including most whites.
In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American
democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present and
future.
"Sparing neither family nor self...he considers how the deck has always
been stacked in his and other white people's favor...His candor is
invigorating."--Publishers Weekly
"One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white
privilege in the nation."--Michael Eric Dyson
"Tim Wise has written another blockbuster! His new book, Dear White
America: Letter to a New Minority, is a cogent analysis of the problems
of race and inequality as well as a plea for those who harbor views
about race and racism to modify and indeed eliminate them. While the
book's title addresses white people, this is really a book for anyone
who is concerned about eliminating the issue of racial disparity in our
society. This is must read and a good read."--Charles J. Ogletree,
Jr., the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the
Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race
and Justice.
"Tim Wise is an American hero in the truest sense of the term--he tells
the truth, no matter how inconvenient that truth might be. Dear White
America is a desperately needed response to the insidious mythology
that pretends whites are oppressed and people of color unduly
privileged."--David Sirota, syndicated columnist, radio host, author
of Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now
