For coursework, 2018… in a sentence: Anderson’s main argument is that paying attention only to the more overt and popularized forms of racism is troublesome; making sure we look at more subtle forms is key.
Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Divide (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2017).
Anderson’s book developed from an op-ed piece she wrote after Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown in a hail of bullets in Ferguson, Missouri. Rather than follow the standard line that “African Americans, angered by the police killing of an unarmed black teen, were taking out their frustration in unproductive and predictable ways—rampaging, burning, and looting,” she instead developed an argument that identifies white rage as a focal point for inquiry.[1] White Rage develops a pragmatic, yet hopeful look at specific efforts by white supremacists to roll back, mitigate, or otherwise nullify gains made during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, with a postscript on voting rights.
Anderson begins with a dressing down of Reconstruction: Lincoln’s lukewarm attitude toward African Americans, Johnson’s repeal of land grants and welcoming policy toward confederates are just some of the gems she includes. If anyone were to doubt the slow progress in the South, Mississippi did not ratify the 13th Amendment until 2013![2] Where the antebellum South made black synonymous with slave, the post-Reconstruction era rebranded African Americans with “idleness,” “pauperism,” and other words that have endured to make black and criminal synonymous.
For readers uninterested in the unconscionable damage meted out in physical and psychological punishment to people of color generally and African Americans specifically, a consistent strand in her work is to expound on the financial and competitive loss to the U.S. as a whole through its refusal take responsibility for educating its citizens. As an example, she points to Prince Edward County, Virginia, as one of the many places that shut down schools rather than comply with Brown, resulting in a six-year loss of education during a critical period for 2,700 African American children.[3] If one were to expand on this to measure the tangible effects of institutional racism on the U.S. economy, it would boggle the mind.
After a harrowing tour through the Nixon and Reagan years whose strategies not only paved the way for the modern carceral state, but also perfected race-neutral language that concealed racist appeals, Anderson alights on another strand that takes us to the end of her book: voting rights. Voting is basic measure of citizenship by most standards, heroically fought during the Civil Rights years and just as quickly stymied by various tricks. The most recent (2008) Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act is only the pinnacle of formal and informal challenges to the African American vote, most recently voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, and voting challenges, but historically, “rigging precinct boundaries” and reducing enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.[4]
Seldom do books written for a mass audience receive reviews in academic journals, and when they do, it is more uncommon for them to withstand the (perhaps envious) scorn delivered by their academic peers. Similarly, White Rage has received scant attention from academia; yet, it was curiously addressed by Walter Mead of Foreign Affairs. He lauded Anderson’s achievements and briefly summarized the book, but his main purpose was to discount her work based on her linking of the Reagan administration to the crack epidemic.[5] One wonders if he read past the introduction. Another review by Brain Odom is also short, but perhaps more helpful in highlighting her main argument, which is to show how white resistance to African American progress has concealed itself in a suit and tie, embedded in state legislatures and judicial systems.[6] While her framework is primarily legalistic, she also tracks all manner of formal and informal physical violence.
Unlike many books produced for a general readership, White Rage is heavily footnoted; however, it relies heavily on journalistic pieces to support its more controversial claims. This can be viewed in more than one way: the more traditional is to discount it for lack of references to peer-reviewed journal articles and books. Another way to look at it would be from a democratic perspective; Internet links to newspapers are more widely available to a mass audience. First, they are typically readable for all audiences; second, they are available with access to a computer and the Internet in most libraries. Journal articles with stronger empirical weight are available only with privileged access and are more arduous to read. While specialists in the field may be left wanting, her book is meant for the general public.[7] What emerges is an excellent and well-developed argument on the ways in which institutional white supremacy has been a regular feature of American life and a true impediment to racial equity and the overall health of the nation since the end of Reconstruction. White Rage could complement an undergraduate course on civil rights or even form a basic outline from which to refer.
[1] 2.
[2] 22. For bound categories, see: Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
[3] 84.
[4] 31.
[5] Mead, Walter. "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide." Foreign Affairs 95, no. 6 (2016): 179.
[6] Odom, Brian. "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide." The Booklist 112, no. 18 (2016): 6.
[7] It is clear by the discussion questions in the back of the book that she and the publishers mean this to be a book that could be used in a secondary or higher education setting.