Editorial RevieW:
Publisher's Weekly: "Activist, lecturer and director of the new Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE), Wise works from anecdote rather than academic argument to recount his path to greater cultural awareness in a colloquial, matter-of-fact quasi-memoir that urges white people to fight racism "for our own sake." Sparing neither family nor self, Wise recalls a racist rant his antiracist mother once delivered, racial epithets uttered by his Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother and the "conditioning" that leads him to wonder, for a split-second, if people of color are truly qualified for their jobs. He considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor: his grandmother's house, which served as collateral for a loan he needed for college, for instance, was in a neighborhood that had formerly barred blacks. Resistance to racism, Wise declares, requires support (it's better for a group to speak out against racial tracking than for one "crazy radical" to do it), and that's presumably part of what this volume means to provide. And while Wise sometimes falls victim to sweeping judgments—the act of debating racial profiling, he declares, is "white-identified," because only whites have the luxury to look at life or death issues as a battle of wits—his candor is invigorating"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1518907865?_encoding=UTF8&isInIframe=0&n=283155&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#product-description_feature_div
Personal Review:
Personally, I really enjoyed the novel. Already having exposure to the ideology behind white privilege and institutionalized racism through kritikal arguments in policy debate, I think this book really helped me to understand the concepts much better, and to open my eyes to how they play out in the real world. I think the perspective that Wise uses to frames the book, using personal stories and memories to show the physicality of white privilege, is also very brilliant. He comes at racism through a different lens, with an alliance between those of the white race and those of the black and brown race, and how that is essentially key to racial justice for all. The book really made me do some reflecting of what I believe in, and the warrants behind why I believe in them, and I would definitely recommend the book to someone who wants to challenge themselves both academically and philosophically. I think it is also a very good book to read if you are someone who hasn't really opened up your mind to the reality of a society that disproportionately targets people of color, and catalyzes the success of the white race. The book is astoundingly thought-provoking, and I will definitely read more from this author, and books stemming from similar concepts.