It's the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions That Get under the Skin of Blacks and Whites [Hardcover]

Lena Williams (Author), Charlayne Hunter-Gault (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2000

A black person is taken aback when a stranger uses his first name. - A white person fails to recognize a black colleague outside the office. - A black executive is followed around a department store and then can't get a taxi to stop for her. - A white person comments in amazement on how articulate an Ivy Leaque professional is-a black Harvard graduate. Despite the progress our country has made since the civil rights movement, we live in separate worlds. Although people of different races work together, go to school together, live in integrated neighborhoods, and have developed long lasting friendships, we're still undeniably divided. Why? Ignorance. In this fast, funny, smart and forthright book, New York Times reporter Lena Williams tells it like it is. Writing from her own experiences and from what she has learned through conducting focus groups of blacks and whites all over the country, Williams opens our eyes to the annoying things we do and explains what they mean and how to avoid them. If you've ever noticed these sights-and especially if you haven't- you'll find It's the Little Things an eye opener, a delight, and an important bridge between our separated cultures.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If black Americans are doing better (on a statistical basis) and some commentators downplay the significance of race, why does there remain such interracial tension? New York Times journalist Williams, expanding on a much-talked-about 1997 article, suggests that the problem lies with the "microaggressions" inherent in everyday interactionsAsome intentional, others not. Some examples: the white folk who claim not to see color, Williams notes, often ignore the possibility that blackness can be valued. Meanwhile, no one claims not to see gender. Whites who casually address blacks by their first names don't recognize the long history of demeaning blacks by first-name address. White-run parties at school that don't acknowledge black music leave the black minority uncomfortable. Despite the book's subtitle, this is mostly about black attitudes; white voices are given a chapterAmany say they hate it when blacks turn "innocuous things into a racial guilt trip"Aand Williams and some of her black respondents acknowledge their own episodic racial hostilities. Another chapter gives voice to non-black minorities. Much of this book rings true for the groups interviewedAWilliams's black informants are mostly middle-classA but some of her generalizations seem over the top: for example, that "no respectable black person would ever arrive at a party on time." And sadly, even some examples she cites might be interpreted from opposite directions: is the white who refuses to sit next to a black youth on a two-person subway seat practicing racial hostility, as she suggests, or trying to avoid it? Despite these flaws, Williams's provocative book is sure to stimulate much discussion with its candid depiction of race relations.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Never mind the subject of affirmative action, there are a myriad of everyday misunderstandings that occur between black and white Americans that roil race relations. Williams, a reporter for the New York Times, speaks from experience about a range of annoying to dangerous incidences that are caused by the lack of understanding between the races. Williams examines the arenas of the workplace, public places, school, home, social settings, and the media. She recounts incidents from the mundane to the infamous--the Charles Stuart and Susan Smith cases where whites accused fictitious black men of murder and kidnapping when they themselves were guilty. But Williams mostly focuses on daily situations: black people unable to get a cab or service at a restaurant, being followed in a store, or having difficulty selling a home unless they disguise their ownership. Williams also gives whites a say in the awkwardness of interaction between the races for fear of saying or doing something offensive. Revealing, sometimes amusing, look at the sad state of race relations. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (September 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151004072
• ISBN-13: 978-0151004072
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,651,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Insightful but not truly helpful, July 16, 2003

By 

Ann Ueda - See all my reviews

This review is from: It's the Little Things: Everyday Interactions That Anger, Annoy, and Divide the Races (Paperback)

I read Ms. Williams' book to better understand racism in this country as experienced and described by Black people. (I am an Asian American woman and recognize that my own experiences with racism and oppression are unique to me and, to some extent, to my specific racial/ethnic group.)

Her book will definitely provide you with some sense of how some Black people experience life in this country. And for that, the book is both an opener for the eyes and the soul.

You may be very surprised at what angers, amuses, and discomforts Black people. (I myself learned many new things that I would not otherwise have known.) You may think that many things are due to mistaken assumptions or false understandings of "White people." (That's certainly true enough, something that Ms. Williams on occasion admits to being a problem.)

But I promise you: If you read this book with open eyes and an open soul, you will never view encounters with Black people--your own and those of other people around you--the same way again.

It doesn't really matter if the beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions of the Black people quoted in the book are true or if you think they're true. Some of them are not. What does matter (and why you should care) is that there are a myriad of things that White people do--consciously and unconsciously--that really angers Black people. And as long as they continue to exist and anger Black people, we as a country won't get very far ahead in "race relations" and healing ourselves from racism.

Other readers have identified problems with Ms. Williams' book. At times, Ms. Williams' sentiments do sound petty and unrelated to the topic at hand. Ms. Williams does not bother to consider how other issues like gender, class (a big issue that, ironically enough, she does not recognize in herself or her friendship circle), etc. also affect the experiences of both Whites and Blacks. The book is anecdotal and would have benefited greatly from an analytical methodology. The experiences described in the book are from a very select group of people who she met through a series of focus groups and primarily from her friendship circle. Ms. Williams provides no solutions or strategies for what she describes.

But, for all those problems and faults, the book is still worth reading. (It is surprisingly easy reading for being such a potentially difficult and sore subject.)

If her book makes you rethink the way we interact with each other and Black people, then it's done more than it's share of work towards increasing dialogue between people and races. And if it makes you rethink that, then I don't think it's too much more to make people actually change the way they interact with people from different races.

50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars As divisive and ill thought out as anything by Pat Buchanan, March 9, 2002

By 

David (Delray Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It's the Little Things: Everyday Interactions That Anger, Annoy, and Divide the Races (Paperback)

Lena Williams, a journalist with the New York Times, here expands an article she wrote about little misunderstandings that fuel racial unease. In the process, she offers an idiosyncratic, ill-informed, contradictory, and all together divisive account of race relations.

Example: Williams decries that whites cannot see the beauty of African Americans because their images of attractiveness include only whites. Incredibly, she later reveals that marriages between whites and African Americans upset her, and that she personally would never consider having a relationship with a white person (even if this person was her ideal match in all respects other than skin color). Indeed, she calls white-African American marriages "another form of black self-hatred" (p.203).

Example: Williams chastises whites for showing no interest in African American culture. Later, Williams happily notes that a white patron of an African American ethnic restaurant will likely be stared down and purposely made to feel uncomfortable for encroaching into African American space. Williams feels this is perfectly reasonable.

Example: Williams notes that national surveys are obviously biased because she personally does not know any African Americans who have participated in them. She adds that no survey of 1,000 people can possibly represent 280 million Americans. Her skepticism is based on her lack of information. She simply is unaware of the principles of random sampling, and has no interest in learning of them. Indeed, her "Do you know any one who has been polled?" line of reasoning was popular with Barry Goldwater in 1964 when he claimed the polls were biased against Republicans.

Example: In discussing a landmark Affirmative Action case, Williams asks whatever became of the plaintiff, Allan Bakke. Her answer "Who knows? And I certainly don't care..." (p. 232)

That typifies the value of this book. It is a demagogic rant against things that bother Ms. Williams. If Pat Buchanan were an African American who disliked whites (instead of the other way around) he would be perfectly happy to have produced this work.

Ms. Williams may feel far too many people have failed to examine the role of race relations in their lives, and that is no doubt true. That cause is hardly advanced, however, by a person who neither thinks nor cares about our common humanity.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is nothing short of a diatribe, June 2, 2001

By 

Kristin Ferguson (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It's the Little Things: The Everyday Interactions That Get under the Skin of Blacks and Whites (Hardcover)

Every negative stereotype about white people is brought up and chuckled over in this book. Where Williams ostensibly brings up perceived white shortcomings in order to dispel the myths, she actually seems to be gleefully reinforcing them. By quoting the opinions voiced in her focus groups (and, more often, by family and friends) she discusses how flat white people's butts are, how thin their lips are, how early they show their age. Where she brings up perceived black shortcomings, she turns them into points of pride, or at least explains them in sympathetic terms.

She obviously is using this forum to air her own opinions and suspicions. She quotes her niece as saying that the American government is "importing white people" from Eastern Europe, then does nothing to support or refute the statement. She raises the claim that the anti-fur movement in America only came about because "black women were finally able to afford minks," then quotes her mink-owning sister. She hints strongly that Nielsen doesn't allow blacks to participate in their ratings system (she says she's never met a black family with a Nielsen box, but how many white families has she met with one? Nielsen families are specifically instructed never to divulge that they are Nielsen families) and makes the arrogant and erroneous assertion that the reason there aren't more black people competing on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" is because they "have better things to do than learn trivia." Then she says she believes that show and others like it are rigged: "They're not about to let one of us show them up on national television and leave the audience with the impression that a black person could actually be smarter than a white person," Williams writes. Who are "they"? And why would anyone listen to the author of that sentence about a better understanding between blacks and whites? I was terribly disappointed by this book. I certainly hoped for more.

Williams' obvious racism aside, the style of writing is slapdash, with conversational ejaculations thrown in for effect. It seems to be the work of a public speaker, not a journalist. Grammar and spelling mistakes abound--throughout the text the past tense of the verb lead is spelled lead, a mistake that Spellcheck wouldn't catch. Where was her editor? I'm only sorry the lowest rating I can give is one star. This book deserves none.