Dispatches from the Race War (eBook, EPUB)

Essays on racial flashpoints, white denial, violence, and the manipulation of fear in America today.

"Drawing on events from the killing of Trayvon Martin to the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, Wise calls to account his fellow white citizens and exhorts them to combat racist power structures."—The New York Times

“What Tim Wise has brilliantly done is to challenge white folks' truth to see that they have a responsibility to do more than sit back and watch, but to recognize their own role in co-creating a fair, inclusive, truly democratic society.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

"Tim Wise's new book gives us the tools we need to reach people whose understanding of our country is white instead of right. And without pissing them off!"—James W. Loewen, author, Lies My Teacher Told Me

"Tim Wise's latest is more urgent than ever. "—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy

"A white social justice advocate clearly shows how racism is America's core crisis. A trenchant assessment of our nation’s ills."—*Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

" [Dispatches from the Race War] is a bracing call to action in a moment of social unrest."—Publishers Weekly

"Dispatches from the Race War exhorts white Americans to join the struggle for a fairer society."—Chapter 16

In this collection of essays, renowned social-justice advocate Tim Wise confronts racism in contemporary America. Seen through the lens of major flashpoints during the Obama and Trump years, Dispatches from the Race War faces the consequences of white supremacy in all its forms. This includes a discussion of the bigoted undertones of the Tea Party’s backlash, the killing of Trayvon Martin, current day anti-immigrant hysteria, the rise of openly avowed white nationalism, the violent policing of African Americans, and more.

Wise devotes a substantial portion of the book to explore the racial ramifications of COVID-19, and the widespread protests which followed the police murder of George Floyd.

Concise, accessible chapters, most written in first-person, offer an excellent source for those engaged in the anti-racism struggle. Tim Wise’s proactive approach asks white allies to contend with—and take responsibility for—their own role in perpetuating racism against Blacks and people of color.

Dispatches from the Race War reminds us that the story of our country is the history of racial conflict, and that our future may depend on how—or if—we can resolve it. “To accept racism is quintessentially American,” writes Wise, “to rebel against it is human. Be human.”

Essays on racial flashpoints, white denial, violence, and the manipulation of racial fears in America today.

Table of Contents

Preface: Racism and Inequality in Pandemic Times

Introduction: America’s Longest War

1. Post-Racial Blues: Race and Reality in the Obama Years

Good, Now Back to Work: The meaning (and limits) of the Obama victory

Denial is a River Wider than the Charles:  Implicit bias and the burden of blackness in the age of

 Harpooning the Great White Wail: Reflections on racism and right-wing buffoonery

 Imagine for a Moment: Protest, privilege, and the power of whiteness

 If it Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck:Racism and the death of respectable conservatism

 Bullying Pulpit: The problematic politics of personal responsibility

 No Innocence Left to Kill: Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and coming of age in an unjust nation

 Killing One Monster, Unleashing Another: Reflections on revenge and revelry in America

You Will Know Them by the Eyes of Their Whites: Ferguson and white denial

2. Trumpism and the Politics of Prejudice

Trump Card: Reflections on racism and the art of the heel

Discovering the Light in Darkness: Donald Trump and the future of America

 Reeking City on a Dung Heap: The dangerous worldview of Donald Trump

Patriotism Is for Black People: Colin Kaepernick and the politics of protest

 If It’s a Civil War, Pick a Side: Charlottesville and the meaning of Trumpism

 Making a Murderer (Politically Profitable): Immigration and hysteria in Trumplandia

 Racist Is too Mild a Term: The President is a white nationalist

 The Face of American Terrorism Is White

 America Is an Idea (and It’s the Right that Hates It)

 Pandemic-ing While White: Privilege, protest and identity in lockdown America

 Trumpism vs. America: What 2020 is really about

3. Confronting White Denial, Deflection, and Fragility

 White Denial Is as American as Apple Pie

 Colorblindness and the Coronavirus

 Weaponizing Appalachia: Race, class and the art of white deflection

 Chicago Is Not a Punch Line (or an Alibi): White deflection and black-on-black crime

 Identity Politics Are Not the Problem, Identity-Based Oppression Is

Farrakhan Is Not the Problem: Exploring the appeal of white America’s bogeyman

 You May Not Be Racist but Your Ideology Is: Why modern conservatism is racist

 Who’s the Snowflake Now? White fragility in a time of turmoil

 Race, Class, Violence, and Denial: Mass murder and the pathology of privilege

 Injustice Is Not a Glitch, It’s a Feature:  Understanding the depth of the problem

4. Mis-Remember When: Race and American Amnesia

 Dream Interrupted: The sanitizing of Martin Luther King Jr.

 Holocaust Denial, American-Style

 When Innocence Is the Crime:

Race, rebellion and violence in the white mind

 No Shit Snowden: NSA spying and the privilege of white memory

 History, Memory, and the Implicit Racism of Right-Wing Moralizing

 Europe Didn’t Send Their Best Either: Immigration and the lies we tell

 Racism Is Evil but Not Un-American

 MAGA Is a Slur and Your Hat Is Hateful

5. Armed With a Loaded Footnote: Debunking the Right

 Cheap White Whine: Debunking reverse discrimination and white victimhood

 Rationalizing Unequal Policing: Exposing the right’s war on justice

 Hey Conservatives, Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings Either: Debunking the lie of welfare dependence

Baby Mama Drama: Debunking the Black Out-of-Wedlock Birth Rate Crisis

Con-Fusion Ethics and Deceptive Data: The war on affirmative actio

Debunking the Model Minority Myth: Asian Americans as pawns in a white game

 Intelligence and Its Discontents: Debunking IQ and the absurdity of race science

 Nazis Make Lousy Researchers: Debunking the myth of Jewish power

 6. Where Do We Go From Here?

 Voting Is a Tactic, Your Bumper Sticker Is Not

 It’s Not the1960s Anymore (and Perhaps it Never Was): The lessons and limits of progressive nostalgia

 With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Privilege and denial on the left

 Not Ready to Make Nice: The fallacy of outreach and understanding

 Checking Privilege (While Not Being an Asshole)

Taking Personal Responsibility Seriously: Rejecting white saviorism and embracing allyship

 Forget STEM, We Need MESH: Civics education and the future of America

 Our Fear is Real but it’s Far from Unique: Empathy in a time of pandemic

 Americanism is a Pandemic’s BFF: Rethinking our values in a time of crisis

 Hope Is a Noun, Justice Is a Verb, and Nouns are Not Enough

 About the Author

Tim Wise, whom scholar and philosopher Cornel West calls, "A vanilla brother in the tradition of (abolitionist) John Brown," is among the nation's most prominent antiracist essayists and educators. He has spent the past 25 years speaking to audiences throughout North America, on over 1000 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of conferences, and to community groups across the nation about methods for dismantling racism.

Wise's antiracism work traces back to his days as a college activist in the 1980s, fighting for divestment from (and economic sanctions against) apartheid South Africa. After graduation, he threw himself into social justice efforts full-time, as a Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized in the early 1990s to defeat the political candidacies of white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. From there, he became a community organizer in New Orleans' public housing, and a policy analyst for a children's advocacy group focused on combatting poverty and economic inequity. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Smith College School of Social Work, in Northampton, MA., and from 1999-2003 was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville, TN.

 Wise is the author of seven previous books, including Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America and has been featured in several documentaries, including "The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump and the Politics of Race and Class in America," and "White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America." Wise is one of five persons—including President Barack Obama—interviewed for a video exhibition on race relations in America, featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

His media presence includes dozens of appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR, feature interviews on ABC’s 20/20 and CBS’s 48 Hours, as well as videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms that have received over 20 million views. His podcast, "Speak Out with Tim Wise," features bi-weekly interviews with activists, scholars and artists about movement building and strategies for social change.