White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

from amazon.com

From the Civil War to our combustible 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.

Carol Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Anderson’s research and teaching focus on public policy; particularly the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through the issues of race, justice and equality in the United States.

Professor Anderson is the author of Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955, which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards.  In her second monograph, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, also published by Cambridge, Professor Anderson uncovered the long-hidden and important role of the nation’s most powerful civil rights organization in the fight for the liberation of peoples of color in Africa and Asia. Professor Anderson's most recent work, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide, published by Bloomsbury, is a New York Times Bestseller, Race and Civil Rights of August 2016, and was a New York Times Editor's Pick for July 2016. In March 2017, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. 

Her research has garnered substantial fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, National Humanities Center, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (The Big Ten and the University of Chicago), and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

She has also served on working groups dealing with race, minority rights, and criminal justice at Stanford’s Center for Applied Science and Behavioral Studies, the Aspen Institute, and the United Nations.  Her op-ed in the Washington Post was the most shared for the newspaper in 2014.

Professor Anderson has received numerous teaching awards, including the Crystal Apple Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, the Mizzou Class of '39 Outstanding Faculty Award, the Most Inspiring Professor Award from the Athletic Department, the Gold Chalk Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching, and the Provost's Teaching Award for Outstanding Junior Faculty.

Professor Anderson was a member of the U.S. State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee and is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative.

She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Political Science, International Relations, and History. She earned her Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University.

White Rage is a searing piece of investigative scholarship with pages and pages of end notes and an extensive index, a textbook, really, that ought to be mandatory reading in all social science classes in US schools and colleges.

Anderson starts her book with the story of Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, who, stepping out of his apartment building in New York, was mowed down in a hail of NYPD bullets on February 4, 1999. Ex-mayor Rudi Giuliani ignored the facts and glibly explained on a news show that the NYPD was the “most restrained and best-behaved police… you could imagine.”

But Anderson did not buy it: forty-one bullets fired, with nineteen hitting their target was not the modus operandi of a “restrained” police force.

“There obviously was so much more going on here with Amadou Diallo’s death than was actually discussed throughout the media… and more than even the outraged discussions in the beauty… and barber shops managed to pinpoint. Only I didn’t know what to call it…”   

15 years later, in August 2014, after Ferguson, Missouri went up in flames, it came to her. The discussion overwhelmingly focussed on “black” rage, but then it occurred to her in an epiphany: “What was really at work here was white rage.”

In the remaining chapters of her book, Anderson lays bare the myths and mantra about “a culture of black poverty that devalues education, hard work, family and ambition… All [of which] have been disproved but remain foundational in American folklore”. Furthermore, she exposes “a slew of Supreme Court decisions [that have eviscerated] the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifth Amendments” of the US constitution.

“White rage is not about visible violence, but rather works its way through the courts, the legislature, and government bureaucracies…. White rage doesn’t have to wear white sheets, burn crosses… Working the halls of powers, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively… The trigger for white rage… is black advancement.”

“… white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened the nation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions… on baseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick and poor and woefully undereducated, and left cities nothing less than decimated.”

“… that is the unspoken truth of our racial divide.”

The lynching may have stopped, with the last one recorded in Monroe, Ga., where, in 1946, a white mob lynched two African American couples, one of the women being pregnant, later described as “the most vicious lynching to stain our national record”, which to this day remains unresolved.

But the “social terrorism,” as Anderson correctly calls it, has not, what with police being called on two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks for loitering while waiting for a friend, or the CNN report of three black women being swarmed by police officers as they were leaving an Airbnb they had rented in Rialto, California, after someone called the police on them thinking they were burglars. Or a black activist being jailed for a comment on Facebook. And, of course, the routine shootings of unarmed black men by trigger-happy police.

Most pernicious were and continue to be the slight-of-hand, subtle maneuvers of voter suppression by state governments, sanctioned or “willfully ignored” by the courts: such as mercilessly applying voter ID legislation (Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin), making one million student IDs ineligible – while concealed weapons permits were valid (Texas), requiring birth certificates or passports, social security numbers, proof of residence, bank statements or utility bills (Georgia), requiring government-issued photo IDs but then proceeding to close the Department of Motor Vehicles in Democratic voter areas, while extending the hours in Republican strongholds (Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin), and on and on it goes… all in the name of preventing “rampant voter fraud”, which, between 2002 and 2005 in the Bush campaign, for instance, amounted to roughly .00000013 percent of the tallied ballots.  

James Madison, fourth U.S. President (1809 - 1871), the “Father of the Constitution”, called chattel slavery America’s “original sin,” and his predecessor (1801-1809) and slave owner Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.” His solution was to send thousand of blacks back Africa, to Liberia (with its capital ironically called “Freetown”).

And Mr. Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator”, said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” His solution? Expulsion of blacks to Chiriqui, “a resource-poor area of what is now Panama”.  In fact, In August 1862, “he lectured five black leaders whom he had summoned to the White House, that it was their duty, given what their people had done to the United States, to accept the exodus… telling them, “But for your race among us there could be no war.”

Anderson has the correct rebuttal to such an asinine comment: “As to just how and why ‘your race’ came to be ‘among us,’ Lincoln conveniently ignored.”

That was then, but in her chapter, How to Unelect a Black President, the author takes us to the modern-day United States. Is it any better? No. Not if the goal, as one Mitt Romney supporter expressed in 2012, was to “put the white back in the White House.”

In her YouTube video interview with Democracynow.org, entitled “Emory Professor Carol Anderson on _White Rage_ The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide_”, Professor Anderson leaves no doubt that "white rage", rather than “economic anxiety”, as promulgated by political pundits, was the reason for the election of Donald Trump.

“Barack Obama’s election was a catalyst for a level of voter suppression activities that had not been seen so clearly or disturbingly in decades.” Again, sanctioned by the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Chief Justice John Roberts and four other justices, including the lone black justice on the court, Clarence Thomas, “treated the rationale for the Voting Rights Act as now obsolete.” As a result, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia “all passed a compendium of voter suppression laws.”

In addition, “the vitriol heaped on Obama was simply unprecedented.” To quote Rudy Giuliani: “I do not believe that the president loves America”. Or, John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor wished that “this president would learn to be American.” One New Hampshire police commissioner was observed sitting in a local diner glaring at the TV and calling Obama a “fucking nigger.” And then there is Ferguson, Missouri, where the second in command of the police exchanged an e-mail with his lieutenant and a court official, which depicted Barack Obama as “a chimpanzee.”

Furthermore, “racially motivated threats” to Obama’s life, went up 400 percent in his first year in office alone, “as compared to one of the least popular presidents”, George W. Bush.  

Carol Anderson ends her courageous book on a positive note with imaginary scenarios, but for now, white tribalism is on the rise around the world. Perhaps, what’s really behind the “white rage” is fear, the fear of losing their dominance to the “browning” of people, which predicts that whites will lose their majority in a few short years, or a couple of decades at most.

“We shouldn’t have to image”, she writes. “This is the moment now when all of us – black, white, Latino, Native and Asian American – must step out of the shadow of white rage, deny its power, understand [and acknowledge] its unseemly goals, and refuse to be seduced by its buzzwords, dog whistles, and sophistry. This is when we choose a different future.”  

Reviewed by Karl Homann, May 15, 2018 

The book selection of the Ajijic Book Club for June 2018 is White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson. I will begin my book report with introspection. I am a white male and this is my opportunity to think about my attitude toward Black people.

I grew up in Nova Scotia and its history of race relations is very different than that of the United States. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. During the American Revolution the British evacuated thousands of Blacks from its American colonies, some of whom settled in Nova Scotia. But the number of Blacks was relatively small and I grew up in a predominately white culture. I think there were no Black students in the rural high school I attended although I remember one student who was probably of mixed race.

As a teenager one of my heros was Cassius Clay and I remember his name change to Muhammad Ali in 1964. I sensed that my mother did not like him and I asked her why. “He has a big mouth” was her reply. Perhaps this reveals some small degree of prejudice but I generally grew up in a family and a culture without hatred toward Blacks and for that I am grateful.

To this day I remember reading, as a teenager, the book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin which was published in 1961. It was a nonfiction book, the story of the author, a white journalist, who darkened his skin sufficiently to pass as an African-American living in the deep south of the United States. At a young age I had considerable awareness of the great injustice inflicted on Negroes.

I also have vague memories of the destruction of Africville in the 1960s, a small community of Blacks near Halifax. A quick look at history informs me that in 2010 the mayor of Halifax apologized for the shameful events fifty years earlier. Clearly, Nova Scotia was not free of racism.

As I read White Rage I experienced a range of emotions. Mostly I felt a sadness over the treatment of African-Americans and the long, slow, unfinished journey toward justice. James Madison called it (slavery) America’s “original sin.” writes Anderson, a sin for which there has not yet been atonement.

White Rage, with the support of hundreds of footnotes, documents in great detail an attitude of hatred by too many white Americans towards Blacks. It is a story of resistance by whites to any form of progress for Blacks. It is an ugly story, but undeniably true.

But it is also an incomplete story. Fresh on my mind is the wonderful discussion at the Ajijic Book Club last month about the tireless effort of Eleanor Roosevelt to reverse the injustice towards African-Americans. White Rage portrays mostly the shortcomings of White America and this paints an unbalanced picture, perhaps intentionally so.

The book is also silent about Black Rage. As a teenage I was well aware of the race riots of the 1960s and they were frightening even from a great distance. At some point violent reaction to unjustified oppression becomes understandable but it seldom solves problems.

White Rage is a description of a problem, a big problem, one of America’s biggest problems. The book captures how deeply the problem is embedded in history and culture. History cannot be changed and how to change a culture is one of society’s great challenges.

White Rage is not a book about solutions. Indeed, one book cannot even adequately describe the problem, a necessary first step. But the book is correct to point to the attitudes which drive behavior as the root cause of many other problems.

I am convinced that the wisdom necessary to solve hard problems will not come from those caught in divisions. White Rage is about the divisions between Whites and Blacks and Republicans and Democrats. Solutions will come from those who somehow transcend these divisions and few such people are currently visible.

I would also like to take a long view of the racial problem. Yes, looking at history over a span of hundreds of years is important. But it is also important to look at spans of time over hundreds of thousands of years.

Homo Sapiens emerged about 300,000 years ago. The slow march to civilization only began about 10,000 years ago. We are all animals and none of us are far removed from our hunter-gatherer ancestors driven by a need to survive and reproduce.

The words of Michael V. Hayden, a former CIA Director, in a recent NYT essay are instructive:

The veneer of civilization, I concluded, was quite thin… Over the years I had learned that the traditions and institutions that protect us from living Hobbesian “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” lives are inherently fragile and demand careful tending. In America today, they are under serious stress.

As I was reading White Rage, published in 2016, I wondered about responses to the book. Would they be angry? Or would they spark a determination to address, finally, systemic wrongdoing? Unfortunately, the book seems to have had little impact. Race relations in the United States have deteriorated further in the last couple of years. One positive trend continues, however, the increase in the rate of interracial marriage. Anecdotal evidence also supports better attitudes amongst youth which gives hope for future improvement.

I scanned the reviews of the book on amazon.com, 443 in total, 380 positive, 63 critical. Below are some of the lines from these reviews worth pondering:

Only someone able to suppress rational thought could not be persuaded, and moved, by this powerful book.

The title is something of a misnomer “White Fear” fits better...

Malcom X was right when he said, "The Mason-Dixon line begins at the Canadian border."

The end of the book is lacking a clear vision of steps that need to be taken to improve problems.

A political polemic much more than a history.

Finally, I am proud of the Ajijic Book Club membership for its willingness to select and discuss nonfiction books with challenging content.