“White Rage” (2016), a book by Carol Anderson, documents the anti-Black racist policies, laws and court decisions of the US government from about 1865 to 2015. Racism goes way beyond the Klan or the N-word or rude people on escalators – it reaches to the highest levels of government and is right there in the public record for all to see. Anderson is a professor of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Recommended for anyone who believes in respectability politics, bootstraps, or clueless White people.
Blacks do not suffer from benign neglect or bootstraps unpulled – but from White rage: White public officials who go out of their way to hurt Black people, to prevent them from voting, getting a good education, living in a nice neighbourhood, etc. Even when it means hurting fellow Whites or the nation as a whole. It is no accident that ordinary White people do worst when and where the US is at its most racist.
Hood not required: Anderson:
“White rage doesn’t have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.”
Here is but a taste:
“For example, almost five times as many black college-bound high school seniors as white came from families with incomes below twelve thousand dollars [circa 1980]. The [Reagan] administration reconfigured various grants and loan packages so that ‘the needier the student, the harder he or she would be hit by Reagan’s student-aid cuts.’ Not surprisingly, nationwide black enrollment in college plummeted from 34 to 26 percent.”
It goes on and on like that, for 150 years, through Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights Movement and the first Black president. On and on. And on.
And just as she is finishing the book in 2015 – Dylann Roof is gunning down a Bible study at a Black church (June 17th). And Trump is coming down the escalator to run for president (June 16th).
“Not all Whites” – She does not say how many Whites are afflicted with this rage or why, and leaves White allies out of her account. But except for brief periods, the enraged somehow always manage to have a lock on Congress or at least the Supreme Court, so that it is always two anti-racist steps forward, 1.95 racist steps back. She calls it “backlash”, but it seems more like just Tuesday.
Respectability politics if anything only makes things worse:
“Black respectability or ‘appropriate’ behavior doesn’t seem to matter. If anything, black achievement, black aspirations, and black success are construed as direct threats. Obama’s presidency made that clear.”
Blocking Black advancement, after all, is the whole point.
Anderson:
“The truth is, white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution, weakened the nation’s ability to compete economically, squandered billions of dollars on baseless incarceration, rendered an entire region sick, poor, and woefully undereducated, and left cities nothing less than decimated. All this havoc has been wreaked simply because African Americans … were unwilling to take no for an answer.”
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- books – books I read in 2021
- respectability politics
- “not all Whites”
- The bootstrap myth
- The N-word
- Ronald Reagan
- Are most White people benevolently clueless?
- The mass incarceration of Black men
- 2015:
- Tucker Carlson on Ta-Nehisi Coates – if you are wondering what “rude people on escalators” refers to.
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Abagond 
I read this book in 2018 and remember feeling so outraged that, from the very beginning until now, America has been so deliberate in stacking the deck against us. Of course, we know this–or, at least, I knew this–but reading page after page of historical proof just left me feeling so done.
Learning about history in school was only mildly interesting. Maybe because I was a teenager/young adult, but much of it felt distant and disjointed. Dr. Anderson’s stories of how so many former Confederate leaders were appointed or elected to key state and federal government positions after the war, or how Black schools were closed for months or even years at a time just made me want to holler and throw up both my hands.
This book and her YouTube lectures really helped bring America’s funky-ass history to life for me.
I’m glad you chose this book to read and spotlight. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about U.S. History especially as it relates to systemic oppression.
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Will look up Anderson on the net—but I agree with the post. Apartheid policies are deliberate and structural. Some say the Magna Carta is an elitist document for the elites….and so is America. It comes from a feudal heritage that valued hierarchy because the (real) “power” was/is always in the hands of the “few”. This makes the structure of democracy, a hypocrisy. Any discussion of power must also critique capitalism as this is one of 2 tools used for power (the tools are = wealth and law). Both systems privilege the elite—which is why the path to wealth for African-Americans is stopped by laws—it is to stop their path to power.
It is a mistake South Africa made when it got rid of the system of state apartheid (laws) without dealing with the intersection of economic apartheid.
The global economic system is also built on apartheid.
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I have this in my Audible queue to listen to.
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The title is stupid since what’s described doesn’t fit the common definitions of rage: 1.
a. Violent, explosive anger. See Synonyms at anger.
b. A fit of anger.
2. Furious intensity, as of a storm or disease.
3. A burning desire; a passion: a rage for innovation in music.
4. A current, eagerly adopted fashion; a fad or craze: when torn jeans were all the rage.
Well, maybe #3 makes more sense. She should have called her book a burning desire for oppression. Robert Caro’s books on powerful men like LBJ and Robert Moses effectively demonstrate the contempt for ordinary people and Blacks in particular, that motivates policies.
“WPA swimming pools
During the Depression, Moses, along with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, was especially interested in creating new pools and other bathing facilities, such as those in Jacob Riis Park, Jones Beach, and Orchard Beach.[22][23] He devised a list of 23 pools around the city.[24][25] The pools would be built using funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal agency created as part of the New Deal to combat the Depression’s negative effects.[23][26]
Eleven of these pools were to be designed concurrently and open in 1936. These comprised ten pools at Astoria Park, Betsy Head Park, Crotona Park, Hamilton Fish Park, Highbridge Park, Thomas Jefferson Park, McCarren Park, Red Hook Park, Jackie Robinson Park, and Sunset Park, as well as a standalone facility at Tompkinsville Pool.[27] Moses, along with architects Aymar Embury II and Gilmore David Clarke, created a common design for these proposed aquatic centers. Each location was to have distinct pools for diving, swimming, and wading; bleachers and viewing areas; and bathhouses with locker rooms that could be used as gymnasiums. The pools were to have several common features, such as a minimum 55-yard (50 m) length, underwater lighting, heating, filtration, and low-cost construction materials. To fit the requirement for cheap materials, each building would be built using elements of the Streamline Moderne and Classical architectural styles. The buildings would also be near “comfort stations”, additional playgrounds, and spruced-up landscapes.[27][28]
Construction for some of the 11 pools began in October 1934.[29] By mid-1936, ten of the eleven WPA-funded pools were completed and were being opened at a rate of one per week.[23] Combined, the facilities could accommodate 66,000 swimmers.[30][31] The eleven WPA pools were considered for New York City landmark status in 1990.[32] Ten of the pools were designated as New York City landmarks in 2007 and 2008.[33]
Moses allegedly fought to keep African American swimmers out of his pools and beaches. One subordinate remembers Moses saying the pools should be kept a few degrees colder, allegedly because Moses believed African Americans did not like cold water.[34] ”
““I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy’s window, and say it smells like roses.”
— Lyndon B. Johnson”
Blacks are the least powerful in the US hierarchy and are meant to stay that way. The few who ‘rise’ above the common herd are no less dedicated to keeping things as they are. H.B. Obama didn’t break the pattern.
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Modern example. UK trying to make protests illegal after the George Floyd protests because… a statue of a slave trader was destroyed.
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I recently came across a podcast segment that dealt with how US tax policy is designed to disadvantage Black people.
In this 13 minute audio segment, Janine Jackson of CounterSpin discusses tax policy with Professor Dorothy A. Brown of Emory University. Professor Brown is the author of the book, The Whiteness Of Wealth.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/591671/the-whiteness-of-wealth-by-dorothy-a-brown/
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Professor Brown uncovers how the tax code disadvantages Black people in three key areas like:
✔︎ retirement benefits
✔︎ home ownership
✔︎ marriage
The discussion about retirement benefits and taxes was really interesting. According to Professor Brown:
https://fair.org/home/the-system-for-building-wealth-is-designed-for-white-wealth/
Most interesting is how Professor Brown describes getting a lot of pushback from White academics about her research. Their dismissive responses to her findings are in marked contrast to how general public audiences respond to her. Professor Brown described general public audiences as, “…hungry for what I had to say, and curious, and were listening and attentive.”
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Respectability Politics don’t serve Black people. Martin Luther King was shot and killed while wearing a suit. Barack Obama our first historically Black President was made to produce his birth certificate and his family was disrespected and referred to as a primate. Black people can do everything right, and still be looked upon with disdain by the dominant culture.
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“ ordinary White people do worst when and where the US is at its most racist.”
Maybe this is true for the US, but it’s false in South Africa and Rhodesia. Whites did best before “majority rule”.
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“…except for brief periods, the enraged somehow always manage to have a lock on Congress or at least the Supreme Court, so that it is always two anti-racist steps forward, 1.95 racist steps back. She calls it “backlash”, but it seems more like just Tuesday.”
A better title for this book would have been White Systems Maintenance.
The so-called “enraged” politicians, jurists, corporate chieftains and media flunkies work constantly to maintain White supremacist systems set up centuries ago.
There is no overriding emotion that drives them. They are not enraged. They are cold and calculating. They are always in “backlash” mode.
They labor to maintain these systems because they believe in the the structure of White supremacy. They are taught their entire lives that the system is theirs to protect. Their motto is “not on my watch”.
They know full well that without active, intergenerational thwarting, Black people in particular would find a way to thrive.
Black people thriving and determining their own lives and futures would dissolve the lie of White supremacy.
If Black people (as a group) were no longer forcibly held at the bottom of society, other groups would start demanding fairness and equity.
If those other groups were treated with fairness and equity, White Systems would collapse and the source of White power and priviledge would be gone.
White Rage is a sexier title than White Systems Maintenance, but doesn’t begin to describe the motives behind the people who maintain the current system.
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Now let’s talk about Black Rage in South Africa and how it is killing White farmers.
The best thing for blacks would be to build their own countries in their ancestral lands.
Look at Jews. After WWII, they didn’t spend their lives trying to integrate with Germans, instead, they built their own country (which is now rich, innovative, and influential) in their ancestral lands.
Imagine if blacks did that instead of whining to Americans about how much they want access to American institutions.
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