BACKLASH by George Yancy is a new book which further explores his plea to "listen with love" to comments about perpetuating racism and sexism. Inside Higher Ed recently interviewed Yancy, a professor at Emory University, about his new book and about the threats expressed towards him after the initial column. Yancy says, "So, the hatred seems to have been projected onto me because I had put my finger on the pulse of their [white people's]denied racism."

In BACKLASH, Yancy reprints the full opinion piece (a 2015 New York Times essay titled "Dear White America"), includes a foreword by Cornell West, and adds horrific quotes from the response to his article with three essays about the struggles for black people in America. Sadly, this topic is all too timely – see, for example, "When Calling the Police Is a Privilege" in the latest Atlantic magazine. Tackling white entitlement and other biases, BACKLASH fits with the work we have been trying to do as a school community around the issue of race, but it requires some courage, stamina, and introspection to read, for as Yancy says, "What I'm asking is that you first accept the racism within yourself."

Links in live post:
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-america/?_r=1
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/24/author-discusses-new-book-how-americans-respond-discussions-race
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/when-calling-the-police-is-a-privilege/558608/

This seems like a real missed opportunity. Yancy's "Dear White America" letter, published in the New York Times in 2015, was a spark that started a conversation (or, in some cases, a vitriolic hissy fit), and I was hoping this book would expound on the letter in a way that would help open our white eyes to the structure of white privilege that makes up our world. Unfortunately that's not the case here.

Yancy covers well the ground of overt racism by sharing the many horrific responses he received after "Dear White America" was published, and he states over and over again how while this overt racism is easiest for us white people to denounce, it's not the be-all and end-all of white racism and privilege, and we whites should not use our denouncement of blatant KKK-style racism as absolution. However, he rarely gets into the details of what exactly the white power structure of our society looks like today so that we can *get it.* He gives only two or three examples, such as being followed in a store due to the color of his skin, and not until at least halfway through the book (after a lot of lecturing about white racism, white privilege, etc.). By then, the people that most need their eyes opened have either already stopped reading or have already assumed a defensive stance! Perhaps changing the order of the book, so these examples (and hopefully others) come first, would get people thinking about things first, critically instead of defensively. Yancy also mentions an article by Peggy McIntosh where she gives 46 examples of white privilege, and then says "I highly recommend this article." Great, but...why not give some more examples here instead of just directing people to read a different article to *get* what you're trying to explain?

Listen. I know it's not the job of people of color to educate we white people on our racism, either overt of covert. But if the purpose of the "Dear White People" letter and of this book, as Yancy repeatedly states, is to hold up an honest and unflattering mirror to us white people of the world, to give us the gift of truth and honesty and inviting us to be vulnerable and honest in return, then DO IT. Simply saying "white people are racist" repeatedly doesn't help us to SEE IT, to recognize or acknowledge it. The last line of "Dear White America" DOES:

"If you have young children, before you fall off to sleep tonight, I want you to hold your child. Touch your child's face. Smell your child's hair. Count the fingers on your child's hand. See the miracle that is your child. And then, with as much vision as you can muster, I want you to imagine that your child is black."

More of that would make all the difference in this important book and conversation.

I am not sure how I felt about this book. Having read "Dear White America", I was anxious to read this entry. I do understand what the author was trying to do, but throughout my reading I kept asking myself" Does he really think this is going to make anyone admit their racism""? The book is written with "love' as the author states many times, but honestly, I did not feel the love. All i felt was a sort of bitterness toward White America. I must say that the author has a way with words and some will agree, some may not. But, this book can be a good conversation starter. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

The backlash in Backlash is the vile, hateful and vulgar response by white bigots and supremacists to George Yancy’s Dear White America, an editorial in the New York Times in 2015. In the article, Yancy offered what he repeatedly calls his “gift” to white readers, to recognize their own racism. In Backlash, Yancy gives the bigots far too much stature, quoting their ugly missives, voicemails and death threats, painstakingly analyzing their word choices, questioning their semantics and patronizing their English. As if they were credible and had value. He lowers himself to their level repeatedly. He has also spent an enormous amount of time on their misogynist websites, giving him further ammunition against their atrocious ignorance. He even criticizes the responses of whites who thanked him. He is not easy to please.

Yancy’s argument is that America is innately racist by its institutions. So even if you’ve married interracially, have children of a different race, and never uttered the n-word, you are still a racist if you are white. “Loving a few Black people is not proof you have confronted your own racism,” he says. You still enjoy white privilege and don’t have to be on the defensive every day. Yancy says “We (Blacks) have been forced to lay claim to our humanity … ad nauseam.” He repeats and pounds this message continuously. It gets old.

Where Backlash really falls down is in its terribly shallow scope. For someone who (frequently) touts his PhD, Yancy’s world is remarkably tiny. His navel-gazing never reaches beyond American borders. As I’m certain he knows, the USA is not the problem. Man is the problem. All over the world, majorities oppress minorities. Race is an exclusive club whose members are easy to identify. The Malays oppress the Chinese in their midst. The Burmese abuse the Rohingya, and the Japanese are superior to everyone in the world. Possibly the most striking example was Liberia, where America shipped Black slaves 200 years ago, sending them “back to Africa” (though few had ever been there). The slaves immediately lorded it over the natives, keeping them unemployed, ignorant, out of government, unequal and subservient - in their own land.

Every society has its derogatory names for people of other nationalities, races, and religions. No one is perfectly Politically Correct. Yancy must know all this, but Backlash makes it seem this is a uniquely American disease, aimed only at American Blacks.

Backlash is Yancy taking revenge and getting the last word, nothing more. Although he repeats (too) many times that it is written with “love”, it drips with sarcasm, anger and bitterness aimed directly at whites.

For Yancy, the USA is a racist society, and therefore all whites are racists. Yancy’s bottom line is if you aren’t part of the solution (and precious few make the cut), you are the problem. End of discussion.

David Wineberg