yoteach87's review against another edition
4.0
Anderson's "White Rage" has a well-intentioned premise: point to the historical reasons for the disenfranchisement of American blacks. And for the most part the book delivers on that promise. The chapter on the blunders of the Reconstruction was incredibly interesting and should be required reading for American history courses. Anderson meticulously detailed information about President Andrew Johnson as well as the missteps America took with Brown v. Board of Education. So thorough is Anderson that nearly ninety pages of the book include notes and sources to back up her claims.
However, this also serves as her downfall in the later chapters. Many of the statements she makes in the lats chapter are a leap of faith to draw the same conclusion Anderson did from a particular source. Whereas earlier chapters contained fairly damming evidence to make a point (i.e. "President Johnson called any civil rights 'a terrible thing' that he would not stand for"), later chapters would male far more suppositions (i.e. A certain bill was passed because the bill's sponsor once donated to an organization that at one point in history could be seen as racist, so therefore the bill and the sponsor must be rasict and have the worst intentions in mind. Clearly telling, the fourth chapter has 168 cited sources while the fifth chapter (largely composed of assumptions) has fewer than 100.
That is not to say "White Rage" should not be read, it should. It definitely should. If only to bring light on oft-covered areas of American history that rarely have shed light on the disenfranchised blacks in the 19th and 20th centuries.
However, this also serves as her downfall in the later chapters. Many of the statements she makes in the lats chapter are a leap of faith to draw the same conclusion Anderson did from a particular source. Whereas earlier chapters contained fairly damming evidence to make a point (i.e. "President Johnson called any civil rights 'a terrible thing' that he would not stand for"), later chapters would male far more suppositions (i.e. A certain bill was passed because the bill's sponsor once donated to an organization that at one point in history could be seen as racist, so therefore the bill and the sponsor must be rasict and have the worst intentions in mind. Clearly telling, the fourth chapter has 168 cited sources while the fifth chapter (largely composed of assumptions) has fewer than 100.
That is not to say "White Rage" should not be read, it should. It definitely should. If only to bring light on oft-covered areas of American history that rarely have shed light on the disenfranchised blacks in the 19th and 20th centuries.
readingwithhippos's review against another edition
5.0
Holy cow is this an important book that I think everyone should read.
First of all, the amount of research Anderson has done, even in a relatively short book, is staggering. Almost half the pages in my Kindle version were taken up by endnotes—there are multiple sources cited on every page. I’ve read books by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Mychal Denzel Smith that are more subjective, narrative-style reflections on life as a black person in America, and they taught me a lot—in fact, if I compiled a list of books I’d most like fellow white people to read, they’d be in the top five. But Anderson’s project here is more academic, and thus convincing in a different way. She builds her case almost entirely through historical data, which is hard to argue with even in this Orwellian age of “alternate facts.”
What was most useful about White Rage to me is how it traces the systematic oppression of black people throughout our American history. It exposes the patterns that have repeated over and over since before our country was a country. The day-to-day news stories don’t give us the big picture; they can’t contextualize the forces behind the headlines. Without context, a police officer murdering an unarmed black man (or child) can seem like an isolated incident, when it is anything but. This book helped me see the collective resentment many white people have towards black people, and how it has been passed down like a legacy to each new generation. I have seen evidence of this resentment in my life, but as it’s often veiled in neutral-sounding language, I didn’t know what to call it and couldn’t necessarily articulate why it made me feel squicky when I encountered it.
A recurring thought I had as I read: “How did I not know about this?!” Anderson repeatedly drives the point home that my history education was totally inadequate. It seems that American history classes always take a chronological tack, so that students end up inundated with stories of the American Revolution while anything past World War II gets shoved to the wayside. Thus it is possible for a well-meaning suburban white girl like myself to grow up thinking that sure, slavery was bad, but it’s over now and everyone gets along, right? “I don’t even see skin color!”
Because yeah, those white men in power we’ve collectively put on a pedestal as super-principled, good-hearted allies to the people our country enslaved for generations? They weren’t as saintly as I thought they were. Abraham Lincoln was not out banging the drum for integrating former slaves into society and granting them full rights of citizenship and a voice in government.
And the stuff about Reagan? I still don’t know what to say about it or where to start. I knew Reagan was a bad president whose heartless policies hurt a lot of people, but OH MY GOSH the depth of depravity and the utter brazenness of the Contra situation…I’m staggered. It weighs on me that I had never bothered to read and learn about this part of our relatively recent history. How discouraging to realize the power and reach a bad president has, and how the effects of his time in office stretch on long past his tenure. The Supreme Court justices appointed by Reagan and the subsequent decisions outlined in the book…the impact on people’s lives is unconscionable. It makes me tremble for our future, now that we have an even looser cannon in the White House and an attorney general who wants to bring back Reagan’s hypocritical, self-created War on Drugs.
Speaking of elected leaders, my mind was totally boggled by the creativity of white men in power to find ways to keep black people down. When one method was thwarted, they’d come up with another, and in recent years have learned to disguise their tactics with innocuous language. No more slavery? Fine, we’ll make sure black citizens can’t own property or vote. Blacks leaving the South in droves for better-paying jobs up North? Fine, we’ll stop the trains or jail them for vagrancy. Unprecedented numbers of minority and low-income voters showing up to the polls to elect Barack Obama? No problem, we’ll require government-issued ID to vote and then make sure the offices issuing those IDs are only open one day a month (and we’ll call it “preventing voter fraud” to hide our racist objective). Dear Lord. Imagine if all that energy were spent on creating good policy that helps citizens!
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
First of all, the amount of research Anderson has done, even in a relatively short book, is staggering. Almost half the pages in my Kindle version were taken up by endnotes—there are multiple sources cited on every page. I’ve read books by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Mychal Denzel Smith that are more subjective, narrative-style reflections on life as a black person in America, and they taught me a lot—in fact, if I compiled a list of books I’d most like fellow white people to read, they’d be in the top five. But Anderson’s project here is more academic, and thus convincing in a different way. She builds her case almost entirely through historical data, which is hard to argue with even in this Orwellian age of “alternate facts.”
What was most useful about White Rage to me is how it traces the systematic oppression of black people throughout our American history. It exposes the patterns that have repeated over and over since before our country was a country. The day-to-day news stories don’t give us the big picture; they can’t contextualize the forces behind the headlines. Without context, a police officer murdering an unarmed black man (or child) can seem like an isolated incident, when it is anything but. This book helped me see the collective resentment many white people have towards black people, and how it has been passed down like a legacy to each new generation. I have seen evidence of this resentment in my life, but as it’s often veiled in neutral-sounding language, I didn’t know what to call it and couldn’t necessarily articulate why it made me feel squicky when I encountered it.
A recurring thought I had as I read: “How did I not know about this?!” Anderson repeatedly drives the point home that my history education was totally inadequate. It seems that American history classes always take a chronological tack, so that students end up inundated with stories of the American Revolution while anything past World War II gets shoved to the wayside. Thus it is possible for a well-meaning suburban white girl like myself to grow up thinking that sure, slavery was bad, but it’s over now and everyone gets along, right? “I don’t even see skin color!”
Because yeah, those white men in power we’ve collectively put on a pedestal as super-principled, good-hearted allies to the people our country enslaved for generations? They weren’t as saintly as I thought they were. Abraham Lincoln was not out banging the drum for integrating former slaves into society and granting them full rights of citizenship and a voice in government.
And the stuff about Reagan? I still don’t know what to say about it or where to start. I knew Reagan was a bad president whose heartless policies hurt a lot of people, but OH MY GOSH the depth of depravity and the utter brazenness of the Contra situation…I’m staggered. It weighs on me that I had never bothered to read and learn about this part of our relatively recent history. How discouraging to realize the power and reach a bad president has, and how the effects of his time in office stretch on long past his tenure. The Supreme Court justices appointed by Reagan and the subsequent decisions outlined in the book…the impact on people’s lives is unconscionable. It makes me tremble for our future, now that we have an even looser cannon in the White House and an attorney general who wants to bring back Reagan’s hypocritical, self-created War on Drugs.
Speaking of elected leaders, my mind was totally boggled by the creativity of white men in power to find ways to keep black people down. When one method was thwarted, they’d come up with another, and in recent years have learned to disguise their tactics with innocuous language. No more slavery? Fine, we’ll make sure black citizens can’t own property or vote. Blacks leaving the South in droves for better-paying jobs up North? Fine, we’ll stop the trains or jail them for vagrancy. Unprecedented numbers of minority and low-income voters showing up to the polls to elect Barack Obama? No problem, we’ll require government-issued ID to vote and then make sure the offices issuing those IDs are only open one day a month (and we’ll call it “preventing voter fraud” to hide our racist objective). Dear Lord. Imagine if all that energy were spent on creating good policy that helps citizens!
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
leasummer's review against another edition
4.0
*Please seek out own voices reviews*
If you aren’t full of rage, you will be after reading this. It’s a condensed view of how white people have fought to oppress Black folks throughout US history. The book starts shortly after chattel slavery ends and continues to near present day.
It’s a brief look at the white rage that continues to prevent Black people from equality.
If you aren’t full of rage, you will be after reading this. It’s a condensed view of how white people have fought to oppress Black folks throughout US history. The book starts shortly after chattel slavery ends and continues to near present day.
It’s a brief look at the white rage that continues to prevent Black people from equality.
hcaliri's review against another edition
3.0
A gut-punch of a tour through American history, highlighting the one-step-forward, two-steps-back dance of White America with Black wellbeing. As I read, I felt the weight of our history bearing down on my shoulders reading about the indifference towards Black suffering, the stunning blindness and hard-heartedness of not only Southern racists but by notable Americans like Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Truman when it come to legislative redress of centuries of abuse.
I found the final chapter, which mostly focused on the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration, troubling in a different way, though. Dr. Anderson cites with authority a telling of the Iran-Contra scandal that indicts Reagan's Administration for sowing the seeds of the crack epidemic nationwide. I felt surprised to read this, since I'd seen at least hints of most of the other shocking information she cited elsewhere. I'd heard that Black communities blame the CIA for the crack epidemic; this was clearly the source of that anger. I tried to research it (without the gravitas of Anderson, who clearly has the historical/sociological chops that I do not) and found that it's based on a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News that are not regarded in the highest journalistic light (later investigations by the LA Times and the NY Times revealed real problems and oversimplifications with the original series). This disappointed me, since Anderson didn't mention any of the controversy over the original reporting; I found the whole work less authoritative as a result. It seemed like a real loss, since so many of the revelations in her book -are- better documented, and are just as damning. I'd hate to have her case undermined by less-than-stellar footnotes. (It's worth noting I can understand the belief of the Black community in this particular take on the Iran Contra; it's not a far stretch given the treatment of African-Americans in the US by pretty much every Administration.)
I plan on reading more on that part of history and seeing if I can find more context for that particular part of the book; I'd be happy to read any sources that others have come up with that shed more light on this particular point or erase my objection to the last chapter.
All in all, a worthy read for anyone desiring to know the sheer brutal weight of racism we face, and the entrenched systemic problems that prevent a truly equal society to flourish on US soil.
I found the final chapter, which mostly focused on the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration, troubling in a different way, though. Dr. Anderson cites with authority a telling of the Iran-Contra scandal that indicts Reagan's Administration for sowing the seeds of the crack epidemic nationwide. I felt surprised to read this, since I'd seen at least hints of most of the other shocking information she cited elsewhere. I'd heard that Black communities blame the CIA for the crack epidemic; this was clearly the source of that anger. I tried to research it (without the gravitas of Anderson, who clearly has the historical/sociological chops that I do not) and found that it's based on a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News that are not regarded in the highest journalistic light (later investigations by the LA Times and the NY Times revealed real problems and oversimplifications with the original series). This disappointed me, since Anderson didn't mention any of the controversy over the original reporting; I found the whole work less authoritative as a result. It seemed like a real loss, since so many of the revelations in her book -are- better documented, and are just as damning. I'd hate to have her case undermined by less-than-stellar footnotes. (It's worth noting I can understand the belief of the Black community in this particular take on the Iran Contra; it's not a far stretch given the treatment of African-Americans in the US by pretty much every Administration.)
I plan on reading more on that part of history and seeing if I can find more context for that particular part of the book; I'd be happy to read any sources that others have come up with that shed more light on this particular point or erase my objection to the last chapter.
All in all, a worthy read for anyone desiring to know the sheer brutal weight of racism we face, and the entrenched systemic problems that prevent a truly equal society to flourish on US soil.
francespace's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
camilacadibe's review against another edition
4.0
3.5
This book was very informative and necessary, I'm glad I read it.
But it was very focused on the political history of racism and, even though I'm happy... Well, not happy, but you get it - that I now know all this, it did feel a bit... Textbookish.
This book was very informative and necessary, I'm glad I read it.
But it was very focused on the political history of racism and, even though I'm happy... Well, not happy, but you get it - that I now know all this, it did feel a bit... Textbookish.
taylorcali's review against another edition
3.0
Yikes. I need to decompress after reading this. It surely lives up to its title. “Rage” is the correct word here.
I am mainly FLOORED that until reading this book I had no idea of the detail behind the, well, rage whites had for blacks after the abolition of slavery. I was never taught that in school, only that blacks were slaves and now they’re not. But this…
I am mainly FLOORED that until reading this book I had no idea of the detail behind the, well, rage whites had for blacks after the abolition of slavery. I was never taught that in school, only that blacks were slaves and now they’re not. But this…
dibiz116's review against another edition
5.0
A highly accessibly written chronicle of racism in American history since the "end" of slavery (which, as Carol Anderson lays out, did not end with the thirteenth amendment). Anderson succinctly chronicles how black progress has been continuously thwarted by systemic (and overt) racism and continues to be today. Inspiring and heartbreaking, this book is a powerful call to action to challenge the pervasive racism that has been ingrained in American society since the country's founding.