 | |
| Author | Carol Anderson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | White backlash,white identity politics |
| Published | 2016 |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing[1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print,e-book |
| Pages | 246 pp[1] |
| Awards | National Book Critics Circle Award |
| ISBN | 978-1-63286-412-3 (Hardcover) |
| OCLC | 959941616 |
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide is a 2016 nonfiction book byEmory University ProfessorCarol Anderson, who was contracted to write the book after reactions to an op-ed that she had written forThe Washington Post in 2014.[2]
Anderson details her thesis ofwhite backlash in theUnited States[1] and states thatstructural racism has brought about white anger and resentment. Her analysis of American history is that wheneverAfrican Americans gained social power, there was considerable backlash.[3] She describes theJim Crow era as a reaction to the end of theAmerican Civil War and to theReconstruction era. She further describes the shutdown of schools in response to theBrown v. Board of Education, ruling of theUS Supreme Court and the opposition to theVoting Rights Act of 1965 as causes of theSouthern Strategy and theWar on Drugs, which she says were both attempts to disenfranchise black voters.[4]
White Rage became aNew York Times Best Seller,[5] and was listed as a notable book of 2016 byThe New York Times,[6]The Washington Post,[7]The Boston Globe,[8] and theChicago Review of Books.[9]White Rage was also listed byThe New York Times as an Editors' Choice,[10] and won the 2016National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.[11]
At the January 2017confirmation hearing for Republican SenatorJeff Sessions, candidate forU.S. Attorney General, Democratic SenatorDick Durbin offered Sessions a copy ofWhite Rage, saying "I'm hoping he'll take a look at it".[12]
Anderson, a professor of African-American studies at Emory University, wrote a dissenting op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that the events were better understood as white backlash at a moment of black progress, a social and political pattern that she reminded readers was as old as the nation itself. Her essay became the kernel for this book, which expands and illustrates her thesis.