Tom MacWright

tom@macwright.com

I read White Rage by Carol Anderson on

Review

This book was sitting next to Settlers at the Howard Zinn book fair, and it has reappeared time and time again - after all, it was critically lauded at its release in 2016, and extremely timely.

White Rage is a whirlwind tour through the history of racism in the United States. It covers the Civil War, reconstruction, the civil rights struggle, modern-day voter disenfranchisement, and a number of other stories.

I enjoyed Settlers more. Where Settlers laid out a framework for a functional perspective of racism, White Rage is generally just descriptive, and its critique is basic. It certainly has an opinion on the issues - that racism is wrong, essentially - but if you already know the history it covers, it doesn’t really bring a new perspective.

Is this book is generally worthwhile? Definitely, but I’d mostly recommend it as an introduction to the facts, rather than a deep-dive or a new viewpoint.

Details