Dispatches from the Race War

October 5, 2020
Educator and public speaker Wise (White Lies Matter) examines white privilege and systemic racial inequality in this collection of previously published essays dating back to 2008. Even the older pieces—such as “Imagine for a Moment,” in which Wise describes “white gun enthusiasts” armed with semiautomatic weapons rallying in Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia, and asks readers to imagine how different the authorities’ response would have been if the protesters were Black—have a deep relevance for today. More recent essays reveal that America is in the midst of a “soft civil war... between those who believe in freedom and those who do not,” by looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated racial disparities, and by examining how President Trump’s “perpetually overheated rhetoric” has fanned the flames of “anti-immigrant hysteria.” In some pieces, Wise is more provoking than persuasive, such as when he declares modern conservatism “a cabal of hateful, ignorant, antisocial eugenicists intent on removing those they deem inferior from society.” Still, he offers sound advice on how to promote antiracism and “solidarity and empathy across lines of identity.” The result is a bracing call to action in a moment of social unrest.

October 15, 2020
A White social justice advocate clearly shows how racism is America's core crisis. Educator and activist Wise collects more than 50 of his hard-hitting essays from 2008 to the present, most previously published online, that address racism, inequality, and injustice. "In a nation founded on the dichotomous values of liberty and enslavement, freedom and white supremacy," he writes, "hypocrisy was baked in from the beginning. And white folks have been trying to smooth over the contradiction ever since." Asserting, with ample evidence, that "post-raciality is a fantasy," Wise comments on a host of events that bear witness to pervasive racism, including reactions to Barack Obama's election, Henry Louis Gates' arrest after being mistaken as a burglar, the rise of the militant tea party, the killing of Black men by police, and the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. "The biases that ended George Floyd's life were explicit," Wise writes. "Even more, they were part of an institutional and systemic process, whereby unequal treatment of black and brown bodies and communities is normative." Trump, not surprisingly, comes in for vigorous criticism as a racist and narcissist. "It hurts," Wise writes, "to see a nation elevate someone to the presidency so lacking in knowledge, so incurious about the world, so marinated in the politics of revenge, and hostile to a large part of humanity." Debunking White denial, amnesia, and rationalizations, the author aims to "shore up the knowledge base of progressives who already have a commitment to racial justice and equity but perhaps find themselves less confident than they should be about the positions they hold" and, he hopes, "to inoculate uncommitted persons" against right-wing, uninformed arguments. He wishes schools would teach MESH subjects--Media Literacy, Ethics, Sociology, and History--"because if these are not given equal attention, we could end up being a nation filled with incredibly bright and technically proficient people who lack all capacity for democratic citizenship." A trenchant assessment of our nation's ills.

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