In the tradition of Randall Kennedy’s Nigger and Shelby Steele’s The Content of Our Character, Acting White demonstrates how the charge that any African-American who is successful, well mannered, or well educated is “acting white,” is a slur that continues to haunt blacks. Ron Christie traces the complex history of the phrase, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the tensions between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X to Bill Cosby’s controversial NAACP speech in 2004. The author also writes candidly of being challenged by black students for his “acting white,” and also of being labeled a race traitor in Congress by daring to be Republican. This lucid chronicle reveals how this prevalent put-down sets back much of the hard-earned progress for all blacks in American society. Deftly argued and determinedly controversial, this book is certain to spur thoughtful discussion for years to come.
Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Christie (Black in the White House) aspires to construct a historical account of the pejorative "acting white" and dismantle its legitimacy. He traces the roots of the phrase back to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which "planted the seeds of the idea that black inferiority is the result of blacks seeking favor with whites," but he points to the Black Power movement as the real culprit in propagating the "acting white" slur. While figures such as Homer Plessy and W.E.B. Du Bois stand out for their efforts to achieve political representation for blacks, others such as Marcus Garvey criticized those intentions as opportunities for "acting white." Christie cites Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Obama as examples of why "hard work, dressing well, speaking well, and ambitiously pursuing a fulfilling life is not a ˜white' thing." However, the book becomes less credible when Christie, a political analyst and former special assistant to George W. Bush, laments his own experiences of being tagged with the slur he now tries to examine. While Christie's frustration is admirable and his references well researched, the book's tone occasionally comes across as desperate and more personally motivated rather than persuasive and objective.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Christie, a conservative accused of “acting white,” explores the historical roots of that particular insult targeted at blacks who are considered somehow racially disloyal. He goes back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the origins of such charges and explores the back and forth tensions between historical figures, including W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, to examine the often confused and contradictory notions of racial loyalty versus individualism. He moves on to examine the lives of black public figures whose authenticity and loyalty have been questioned—Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Barack Obama—and examines the underlying politics of disagreement with views at odds with those of the majority of blacks. Christie argues that many blacks of heroic stature, from Homer Plessy to Rosa Parks, were “acting white” in asserting their rights. He points to the rise of black-power sentiments during the civil rights era and a growing sense of black identity that encouraged a cultural isolation that continues to this day, one that disdains the mainstream middle-class culture as “white” and, therefore, to be avoided. --Vanessa Bush
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a teacher who has taught in a middle-class school with 98% African-American youth, I am quite familiar with the legacy of the "acting white" idea. At its worst, it poses a serious obstacle to the civil-rights dream of an integrated society where skin color no longer matters. Ron Christie's "Acting White" is an interesting historical examination of how the "acting white" concept has developed and manifested itself in American history, and why we need desperately to get beyond it if Du Bois's, King's, and Brown v. Board's dream of an integrated society is to be realized.
Christie starts with a chapter on Stowe's famous novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which, of course, gave rise to the derisive label of "Uncle Tom." While this chapter has the unfortunate feel of a book report (the writing assumes familiarity with the novel and is largely exegetical in nature), Christie shows that the character of Uncle Tom should not necessarily be seen as a sell-out, but was intended also to be seen as a very strong man whose desire to protect two slave girls leads to his death at white hands. In other words, our conflation of "Uncle Tom" with sell-out is not only oversimplistic, but belies a real misunderstanding of the novel and its intent.
The next few chapters focus on the competing visions of Booker Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, with the author firmly championing the vision of the latter. Washington, Christie writes, desired to see blacks accept inferior status by desiring, in some sense, achievement of "equality" by serving whites. Du Bois's vision, as Christie writes, was for blacks to gain political and civic equality and prove that they could be equal to whites by becoming their academic equals as well.
It is hard to argue with Du Bois's vision, but I think that Christie's view of Washington is a bit oversimplistic. As evidenced by books like Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, Washington believed that sacrificing immediate political/social equality by having blacks "earn" equality economically would eventually lead to a more lasting equality that's strength derived from self-sufficiency. Where Du Bois's vision, in other words, might lead to a more immediate equality, but also one that left blacks largely dependent on white benevolence. Washington sought an equality that may have taken longer to achieve, but once achieved, left blacks dependent on no one but themselves. Interestingly, Christie also forgets to mention that toward the end of his life, Du Bois became a champion of segregated education as the only way to guarantee fairness to black students. (This would certainly complexity Christie's portrayal of Du Bois as integrationist and Washington as separationist.)
While I certainly share Christie's admiration for Du Bois, I can't help but think that his portrayal of Washington was oversimplistic (especially for someone who appreciates the nuances of Uncle Tom's Cabin).
From here, we discuss Martin Luther King and Brown v. Board. At the center of both visions was an assumption that the goal was integration rather than separation. Sadly, many whites did what they could to fight this vision tooth and nail and, perhaps only naturally, the Black Power movement and its call for blacks to separate themselves from white culture to a greater or lesser degree. While the intentions may have been good - if integration is proving too difficult, maybe we can bypass it - the effects were often devastating. African-Americans increasingly began to fall behind educationally and economically.
From here, the book takes a more editorial tone examining the controversial "pound cake" speech bemoaning the lack of progress post Brown v. Board, his experience befriending supposed "sell-out" Clarance Thomas, and the presidency of Barrack Obama. Christie is, of course, a conservative, but the book itself is not a conservative screed. It is obvious that Christie has great respect not only for what Thomas has been able to achieve, but what Obama has as well. Christie only bemoans the fact that many African-Americans still experience (often peer- or self-imposed obstacles from seeing Thomas or Obama as someone that they, too, could be.
All in all, this is a very interesting and provoking book that mixes history, personal narrative, and editorial. Christie does not "blame" anyone for the phenomenon of "acting white" per se, in that he even sees Washington, Malcolm X, affirmative action, et. al, as being motivated by good intentions. The idea of "acting white" is more or less portrayed as an unintended consequence of a confluence of factors, but nonetheless damaging for all that. The overall point: if America has any hope of being an integrated society where all are seen as equals and skin-color is seen as merely a cosmetic difference, we need to get beyond the idea that there is something it is to "act white." Point taken.
Christie starts with a chapter on Stowe's famous novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which, of course, gave rise to the derisive label of "Uncle Tom." While this chapter has the unfortunate feel of a book report (the writing assumes familiarity with the novel and is largely exegetical in nature), Christie shows that the character of Uncle Tom should not necessarily be seen as a sell-out, but was intended also to be seen as a very strong man whose desire to protect two slave girls leads to his death at white hands. In other words, our conflation of "Uncle Tom" with sell-out is not only oversimplistic, but belies a real misunderstanding of the novel and its intent.
The next few chapters focus on the competing visions of Booker Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, with the author firmly championing the vision of the latter. Washington, Christie writes, desired to see blacks accept inferior status by desiring, in some sense, achievement of "equality" by serving whites. Du Bois's vision, as Christie writes, was for blacks to gain political and civic equality and prove that they could be equal to whites by becoming their academic equals as well.
It is hard to argue with Du Bois's vision, but I think that Christie's view of Washington is a bit oversimplistic. As evidenced by books like Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, Washington believed that sacrificing immediate political/social equality by having blacks "earn" equality economically would eventually lead to a more lasting equality that's strength derived from self-sufficiency. Where Du Bois's vision, in other words, might lead to a more immediate equality, but also one that left blacks largely dependent on white benevolence. Washington sought an equality that may have taken longer to achieve, but once achieved, left blacks dependent on no one but themselves. Interestingly, Christie also forgets to mention that toward the end of his life, Du Bois became a champion of segregated education as the only way to guarantee fairness to black students. (This would certainly complexity Christie's portrayal of Du Bois as integrationist and Washington as separationist.)
While I certainly share Christie's admiration for Du Bois, I can't help but think that his portrayal of Washington was oversimplistic (especially for someone who appreciates the nuances of Uncle Tom's Cabin).
From here, we discuss Martin Luther King and Brown v. Board. At the center of both visions was an assumption that the goal was integration rather than separation. Sadly, many whites did what they could to fight this vision tooth and nail and, perhaps only naturally, the Black Power movement and its call for blacks to separate themselves from white culture to a greater or lesser degree. While the intentions may have been good - if integration is proving too difficult, maybe we can bypass it - the effects were often devastating. African-Americans increasingly began to fall behind educationally and economically.
From here, the book takes a more editorial tone examining the controversial "pound cake" speech bemoaning the lack of progress post Brown v. Board, his experience befriending supposed "sell-out" Clarance Thomas, and the presidency of Barrack Obama. Christie is, of course, a conservative, but the book itself is not a conservative screed. It is obvious that Christie has great respect not only for what Thomas has been able to achieve, but what Obama has as well. Christie only bemoans the fact that many African-Americans still experience (often peer- or self-imposed obstacles from seeing Thomas or Obama as someone that they, too, could be.
All in all, this is a very interesting and provoking book that mixes history, personal narrative, and editorial. Christie does not "blame" anyone for the phenomenon of "acting white" per se, in that he even sees Washington, Malcolm X, affirmative action, et. al, as being motivated by good intentions. The idea of "acting white" is more or less portrayed as an unintended consequence of a confluence of factors, but nonetheless damaging for all that. The overall point: if America has any hope of being an integrated society where all are seen as equals and skin-color is seen as merely a cosmetic difference, we need to get beyond the idea that there is something it is to "act white." Point taken.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ron Christie misunderstands the rift between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
March 25, 2013
By M. Heiss
Format:Hardcover
As excited as I was to read this book, and as interesting as the subject is, and as pertinent and relevent as the insult "Acting White" still is, I hesitate to rate the book 5 stars.
Ron Christie fundamentally (deliberately?) misunderstands the positions os Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. He mischaracterizes Washington as an Uncle Tom, a go-alonger, a sell-out, and he mischaracterizes DuBois as a principled, ardent believer in black education. Hold everything.
Back up to the Atlanta Exposition in 1895.
The Civil War has ended. Reconstruction has ended. Black Americans have gathered to display their advances in mechanical engineering, etc. It is the Atlanta Exposition.
Elsewhere in America, there has been an increase in anarchist violence. Labor unrest has killed thousands and caused millions and millions of dollars in property losses. Railroad strikes, steel strikes, coal strikes. Violent strikers threaten US industries across the country, including in the south. In addition, there is a big "Back to Africa" movement going on, where "concerned" whites are trying to send blacks "back" to colonize Africa (Liberia).
With this in mind, Booker's Atlanta Compromise speech makes more sense. Many, many immigrants were coming to America. Many, many immigrants were bringing labor unrest and communism into America. Booker T. Washington was explicitly saying to southern business people:
+You do not need to hire immigrants. Hire us, instead.
+We are the people you have come to know. You do not need to fear that we will burn down your factories, like these immigrants are doing all across America.
+We are the same people who have worked alongside you for centuries, in peace. Work with us.
+You do not need to send us "back" to Africa. This is our home. We want to learn to care for ourselves. We have already accomplished much: look around at this Exposition. We do not want to be a burden on white people.
+We will not make communist demands of you, unlike these creepy immigrants.
+With you, we will build a stronger South. We will be like one hand, one unit, one South; but we will be individuals, separate from you.
You can read the text of the Atlanta Compromise speech online OR in the appendix of Ron Christie's book. With this speech, Booker T. Washington was hoping to keep the doors of opportunity open to blacks in the south. To call him "accomodationist" is simply wrong.
W.E.B. DuBois... now this is another matter. DuBois wanted education for blacks and an assertion of their civil rights. That's what all the books say, right? What the books rarely mention is that W.E.B. DuBois was a committed Marxist. He wanted social revolution and the downfall of capitalism. Of COURSE he hated Booker's ideas to become successful in America through hard work and capitalism. DuBois loathed capitalism and wanted to see it thrown on the dustbin of history. The sooner, the better. You can read W.E.B. DuBois's writings anywhere, but not in Ron Christie's book. Read for yourself.
History has treated these two men unjustly. Booker T. Washington deserves more acclamation, and W.E.B. DuBois deserves more condemnation.
Ron Christie does nothing to set this historical situation straight, he just repeats the same old, same old. Washington bad, DuBois good.
The Washington-DuBois conflict is poorly done within an otherwise interesting book.
"Acting White" is the idea that courtesy, dignity, and self-reliance are "foreign" to Blacks -- that these characteristics belong to Whites and we must, at all costs, reject them. Educational attainment, logic, and self-discipline are not something "the oppressors" do; they are something we as Americans must ALL do in order to be successful. Thrift and moderation are the challenges that instill character to all races.
And that's what I like about the book.
Ron Christie fundamentally (deliberately?) misunderstands the positions os Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. He mischaracterizes Washington as an Uncle Tom, a go-alonger, a sell-out, and he mischaracterizes DuBois as a principled, ardent believer in black education. Hold everything.
Back up to the Atlanta Exposition in 1895.
The Civil War has ended. Reconstruction has ended. Black Americans have gathered to display their advances in mechanical engineering, etc. It is the Atlanta Exposition.
Elsewhere in America, there has been an increase in anarchist violence. Labor unrest has killed thousands and caused millions and millions of dollars in property losses. Railroad strikes, steel strikes, coal strikes. Violent strikers threaten US industries across the country, including in the south. In addition, there is a big "Back to Africa" movement going on, where "concerned" whites are trying to send blacks "back" to colonize Africa (Liberia).
With this in mind, Booker's Atlanta Compromise speech makes more sense. Many, many immigrants were coming to America. Many, many immigrants were bringing labor unrest and communism into America. Booker T. Washington was explicitly saying to southern business people:
+You do not need to hire immigrants. Hire us, instead.
+We are the people you have come to know. You do not need to fear that we will burn down your factories, like these immigrants are doing all across America.
+We are the same people who have worked alongside you for centuries, in peace. Work with us.
+You do not need to send us "back" to Africa. This is our home. We want to learn to care for ourselves. We have already accomplished much: look around at this Exposition. We do not want to be a burden on white people.
+We will not make communist demands of you, unlike these creepy immigrants.
+With you, we will build a stronger South. We will be like one hand, one unit, one South; but we will be individuals, separate from you.
You can read the text of the Atlanta Compromise speech online OR in the appendix of Ron Christie's book. With this speech, Booker T. Washington was hoping to keep the doors of opportunity open to blacks in the south. To call him "accomodationist" is simply wrong.
W.E.B. DuBois... now this is another matter. DuBois wanted education for blacks and an assertion of their civil rights. That's what all the books say, right? What the books rarely mention is that W.E.B. DuBois was a committed Marxist. He wanted social revolution and the downfall of capitalism. Of COURSE he hated Booker's ideas to become successful in America through hard work and capitalism. DuBois loathed capitalism and wanted to see it thrown on the dustbin of history. The sooner, the better. You can read W.E.B. DuBois's writings anywhere, but not in Ron Christie's book. Read for yourself.
History has treated these two men unjustly. Booker T. Washington deserves more acclamation, and W.E.B. DuBois deserves more condemnation.
Ron Christie does nothing to set this historical situation straight, he just repeats the same old, same old. Washington bad, DuBois good.
The Washington-DuBois conflict is poorly done within an otherwise interesting book.
"Acting White" is the idea that courtesy, dignity, and self-reliance are "foreign" to Blacks -- that these characteristics belong to Whites and we must, at all costs, reject them. Educational attainment, logic, and self-discipline are not something "the oppressors" do; they are something we as Americans must ALL do in order to be successful. Thrift and moderation are the challenges that instill character to all races.
And that's what I like about the book.
5 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The reader should be aware that the main thrust of this book does not begin until around page 124. Before then, the author uses the "black side" of American racial history as a strawman to set up his thesis about "acting white." Mr. Christie's claim is that the phrase "acting white," Eubonics, Affirmative Action (AA), and the way black mothers name their children, are the culprits for nearly all evil within the black community? However, in my view he never quite gets this thesis off the ground, for all the reasons given below.
From the outset, to be fair to the author, there is a single instance well-acknowledged where we can grant the fact that his thesis has a modicum of currency: It is when the epithet "acting white" is hurled at more studious peers, by less studious and more intimidating inner city school children. Otherwise it's use here (and thus the author's thesis) turns into fairy dust - into a kind of cheap ideological contrivance built on a quicksand of "author-defined" strawmen.
Since the author apparently saw that it would suit his purposes better to never actually tie down the meaning of "acting white," predictably utter confusion reigned in what otherwise should have been a careful analysis. I say "should have been" because the history that Mr. Christie put forth to frame the analysis (although one-sided) was certainly first-rate, and carefully done. However, when it came to the main menu item of the book, delineating the phrase "acting white," the author had to punt early, and everything but the kitchen sink was thrown in as "acting white:" inconsistencies, contradictions, who wielded the epithet, context, all bedamned. The analysis never quite recovered from the body blow of this definitional confusion.
As careful and as enlightening as his historical survey was, the author never quite got his hands around his main thesis: that hurling the epithet "acting white," somehow (along with Eubonics, AA and the way black mothers name their children), is the source of all cultural evil in the black community? On that one issue, the only important one in the book, the author stumbled badly and could not be distracted by the "nuanced handling" that this phrase required.
As a result, what could have been (and should have been) a five star book devolved into a mean-spirited conservative ideological contrivance. Mr. Christie has no one to blame for this failure but himself. For, it was he who unnecessarily (and lazily) tied himself into knots by making the phrase "acting white" a floating almost random variable. First "acting white" is this; then it is that? First it is an insult hurled by whites, then one hurled by blacks? Any kind of "author-defined" negative behavior by blacks from Booker T. Washington to Barack Obama, when it suited his narrow designs, became situationally defined as "acting white." [Now, come on Mr. Christie, you are a very smart man?]
The coup de grace of the analysis occurred when he tired to claim that Ebonics, AA and the way black mothers name their children is the cause of their poverty and is generally responsible for their victomology? He backed himself into this corner by failing throughout the book to acknowledge even once what the real problem was with the issue of race. Even in using the naming example, egregiously he failed to even acknowledge that the authors of the study using that example implied that white racism was the only logical answer to that particular phenomenon. Likewise, with the "Black Doll test," the author must have been aware that as recently as 2005, the test was repeated by Kiri Davis with the same results as during deliberation before the Supreme Court of the 1954 School Integration Decision, 56 years earlier: that a majority of black kids still preferred the white dolls and saw the black ones as ugly and evil. And finally, on AA, Mr. Christie carefully defends the Bakke case, but fails to mention that white women were the largest recipient of AA. So much for Mr. Christie's feigned interest in racial fairness and progress?
The sad fact is that due to ideological reasons, the author could not acknowledge the obvious, that the "Negro Problem" is not (and has never been) a "Negro problem" at all, but a white problem: purely a "problem of white racism," the continuous perpetuation of illicit and illegal white prerogatives, advantages, and entitlements. The author tried very skillfully to wiggle his way out of, to hide from, and to finesse his way pass this unpleasant fact.
He did so primarily by speaking of white brutality only in the passive voice, a common trick used mostly by white racists. They do so because using the passive voice, leaves the impression that there is no agency involved in white racial violence, no return address for all the murder and mayhem that the author chronicles throughout the book, namely: slavery, lynching, beatings, sicing dogs and spraying water on peaceful protestors, a century of American Apartheid, a half century of legal segregation, share-cropping, and now three decades of illegal segregation, the 1957 pogroms against blacks to prevent implementation of the 1954 Supreme court Decision (which was the law of the land) - in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Boston. The shooting of James Meredith and the bludgeoning of Emmitt Till, the murder of Medgar Evers, Viola Luizzo, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. The bombing of Dr. King's home and the Church in Birmingham with four little girls trapped inside, and the assassinations of Dr. King, JFK, RFK and Malcolm X. And this is just for starters. These actions were in no way passive at all and were not at all about Eubonics, naming children, AA, or hurling the epithet "acting white." They were acts (to quote Frederick Douglass) that "would disgrace a nation of savages."
Mr. Christie did not once accord any of these shameful actions as much as an "active voice" in his narrative, let alone mention them as causative. Never once did he ask the question who were the people engaged in this violent history, he so carefully chronicled? And why were they engaged in such savage brutality? Apparently, all this violence was just things that happened "out in the ether" of American society against black people for no particular reason at all? Apparently, in the author's mind this violent history could not possibly have been as important a determinant of black cultural behavior as hurling the epithet "acting white," AA, the way black mothers named their babies, and Ebonics?
In his view, and as indicated, the real problem with black Americans were first their nonviolent protests, then the chest-beating posture of the Black power movement such as the Black Panthers, and finally it was Ebonnics, AA, the way black mothers named their children, and hurling the epithet "acting white"; not multi-generational white violence and discrimination designed to maintain a racist social order, one that still remains very much intact today. In Mr. Christie's one-sided analysis of history and his contrived thesis, he failed to mention that as impotent and symbolic as these black reactions to white racism were, they did not violate any U.S. laws, nor did they cause directly any deaths of Americans, black or white. But on the missing side of this racial equation, the white side, the era of lynching alone resulted in over 5,000 wanton black American murders.
So, does Mr. Christie have a point about "acting white?" Yes, perhaps a narrow, trivial, and very much contrived one. But it all points to a kind of wishful thinking on his part that has become a necessary and defensive conservative pathology by those who adopt the posture of Mr. Christie and Mr. Mc Whorter (who Christie leans on heavily for support): To them both, Blacks are victims not because of a history filled with the violence perpetrated against them by whites, but because they choose to be, and because they used the faulty tactics such as the ones listed above, but especially because of Eubonics, AA, the way they name their children and most of all because of being accused of "acting white," end of story, period. [Come on now, Mr. Christie, give me a break?]
Sadly, the "divide and conquer" circle this author is trying to square cannot be squared by leaving out the real cause of racism in America: The continuing cross-generational illicit benefits that white Americans (and non-blacks who identify with white privileges) are still allowed to accrue and enjoy with impunity. "Acting white," does not even rise to the level of a footnote in the orgy of violence called white American racism, period. As long as the historical narrative is restricted to the story of only one side of the racial equation, in this case to the history of the black reaction to white racism, and not to white racism itself, we will never find solutions to America's racial problem. Three stars.
From the outset, to be fair to the author, there is a single instance well-acknowledged where we can grant the fact that his thesis has a modicum of currency: It is when the epithet "acting white" is hurled at more studious peers, by less studious and more intimidating inner city school children. Otherwise it's use here (and thus the author's thesis) turns into fairy dust - into a kind of cheap ideological contrivance built on a quicksand of "author-defined" strawmen.
Since the author apparently saw that it would suit his purposes better to never actually tie down the meaning of "acting white," predictably utter confusion reigned in what otherwise should have been a careful analysis. I say "should have been" because the history that Mr. Christie put forth to frame the analysis (although one-sided) was certainly first-rate, and carefully done. However, when it came to the main menu item of the book, delineating the phrase "acting white," the author had to punt early, and everything but the kitchen sink was thrown in as "acting white:" inconsistencies, contradictions, who wielded the epithet, context, all bedamned. The analysis never quite recovered from the body blow of this definitional confusion.
As careful and as enlightening as his historical survey was, the author never quite got his hands around his main thesis: that hurling the epithet "acting white," somehow (along with Eubonics, AA and the way black mothers name their children), is the source of all cultural evil in the black community? On that one issue, the only important one in the book, the author stumbled badly and could not be distracted by the "nuanced handling" that this phrase required.
As a result, what could have been (and should have been) a five star book devolved into a mean-spirited conservative ideological contrivance. Mr. Christie has no one to blame for this failure but himself. For, it was he who unnecessarily (and lazily) tied himself into knots by making the phrase "acting white" a floating almost random variable. First "acting white" is this; then it is that? First it is an insult hurled by whites, then one hurled by blacks? Any kind of "author-defined" negative behavior by blacks from Booker T. Washington to Barack Obama, when it suited his narrow designs, became situationally defined as "acting white." [Now, come on Mr. Christie, you are a very smart man?]
The coup de grace of the analysis occurred when he tired to claim that Ebonics, AA and the way black mothers name their children is the cause of their poverty and is generally responsible for their victomology? He backed himself into this corner by failing throughout the book to acknowledge even once what the real problem was with the issue of race. Even in using the naming example, egregiously he failed to even acknowledge that the authors of the study using that example implied that white racism was the only logical answer to that particular phenomenon. Likewise, with the "Black Doll test," the author must have been aware that as recently as 2005, the test was repeated by Kiri Davis with the same results as during deliberation before the Supreme Court of the 1954 School Integration Decision, 56 years earlier: that a majority of black kids still preferred the white dolls and saw the black ones as ugly and evil. And finally, on AA, Mr. Christie carefully defends the Bakke case, but fails to mention that white women were the largest recipient of AA. So much for Mr. Christie's feigned interest in racial fairness and progress?
The sad fact is that due to ideological reasons, the author could not acknowledge the obvious, that the "Negro Problem" is not (and has never been) a "Negro problem" at all, but a white problem: purely a "problem of white racism," the continuous perpetuation of illicit and illegal white prerogatives, advantages, and entitlements. The author tried very skillfully to wiggle his way out of, to hide from, and to finesse his way pass this unpleasant fact.
He did so primarily by speaking of white brutality only in the passive voice, a common trick used mostly by white racists. They do so because using the passive voice, leaves the impression that there is no agency involved in white racial violence, no return address for all the murder and mayhem that the author chronicles throughout the book, namely: slavery, lynching, beatings, sicing dogs and spraying water on peaceful protestors, a century of American Apartheid, a half century of legal segregation, share-cropping, and now three decades of illegal segregation, the 1957 pogroms against blacks to prevent implementation of the 1954 Supreme court Decision (which was the law of the land) - in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Boston. The shooting of James Meredith and the bludgeoning of Emmitt Till, the murder of Medgar Evers, Viola Luizzo, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. The bombing of Dr. King's home and the Church in Birmingham with four little girls trapped inside, and the assassinations of Dr. King, JFK, RFK and Malcolm X. And this is just for starters. These actions were in no way passive at all and were not at all about Eubonics, naming children, AA, or hurling the epithet "acting white." They were acts (to quote Frederick Douglass) that "would disgrace a nation of savages."
Mr. Christie did not once accord any of these shameful actions as much as an "active voice" in his narrative, let alone mention them as causative. Never once did he ask the question who were the people engaged in this violent history, he so carefully chronicled? And why were they engaged in such savage brutality? Apparently, all this violence was just things that happened "out in the ether" of American society against black people for no particular reason at all? Apparently, in the author's mind this violent history could not possibly have been as important a determinant of black cultural behavior as hurling the epithet "acting white," AA, the way black mothers named their babies, and Ebonics?
In his view, and as indicated, the real problem with black Americans were first their nonviolent protests, then the chest-beating posture of the Black power movement such as the Black Panthers, and finally it was Ebonnics, AA, the way black mothers named their children, and hurling the epithet "acting white"; not multi-generational white violence and discrimination designed to maintain a racist social order, one that still remains very much intact today. In Mr. Christie's one-sided analysis of history and his contrived thesis, he failed to mention that as impotent and symbolic as these black reactions to white racism were, they did not violate any U.S. laws, nor did they cause directly any deaths of Americans, black or white. But on the missing side of this racial equation, the white side, the era of lynching alone resulted in over 5,000 wanton black American murders.
So, does Mr. Christie have a point about "acting white?" Yes, perhaps a narrow, trivial, and very much contrived one. But it all points to a kind of wishful thinking on his part that has become a necessary and defensive conservative pathology by those who adopt the posture of Mr. Christie and Mr. Mc Whorter (who Christie leans on heavily for support): To them both, Blacks are victims not because of a history filled with the violence perpetrated against them by whites, but because they choose to be, and because they used the faulty tactics such as the ones listed above, but especially because of Eubonics, AA, the way they name their children and most of all because of being accused of "acting white," end of story, period. [Come on now, Mr. Christie, give me a break?]
Sadly, the "divide and conquer" circle this author is trying to square cannot be squared by leaving out the real cause of racism in America: The continuing cross-generational illicit benefits that white Americans (and non-blacks who identify with white privileges) are still allowed to accrue and enjoy with impunity. "Acting white," does not even rise to the level of a footnote in the orgy of violence called white American racism, period. As long as the historical narrative is restricted to the story of only one side of the racial equation, in this case to the history of the black reaction to white racism, and not to white racism itself, we will never find solutions to America's racial problem. Three stars.
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