Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male [Paperback]

Tim Wise (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

In this highly anticipated follow-up to White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, activist Tim Wise examines the way in which institutional racism continues to shape the contours of daily life in the United States, and the ways in which white Americans reap enormous privileges from it. The essays included in this collection span the last ten years of Wise’s writing and cover all the hottest racial topics of the past decade: affirmative action, Hurricane Katrina, racial tension in the wake of the Duke lacrosse scandal, white school shootings, racial profiling, phony racial unity in the wake of 9/11, and the political rise of Barack Obama. Wise’s commentaries make forceful yet accessible arguments that serve to counter both white denial and complacency—two of the main obstacles to creating a more racially equitable and just society. Speaking Treason Fluently is a superbly crafted collection of Wise’s best work, which reveals the ongoing salience of race in America today and demonstrates that racial privilege is not only a real and persistent problem, but one that ultimately threatens the health and well-being of the entire society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this absorbing compilation of essays, Wise (White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son), an anti-racist activist and writer, continues to plumb white privilege, racism and responsibility. The first grouping, "Challenging White Denial," ("White denial has been a hallmark of the nation's racial history") considers the mechanisms utilized by white people when dealing with the concept of racism: minimization, rationalization, defection, and competing victimization; the second, "Confronting White Privilege" reviews the historical and current exercise of white preferential treatment and assesses the costs to whites in contemporary American life ("detrimental in the long run to their economic, social, cultural, and community-related interests"). Wise's reflections are often stimulated by current headlines (e.g. Don Imus, Barry Bonds, Jeremiah Wright, the Duke Lacrosse case) and repetitions slip in; the essays are best read as they were written-in small doses. While those who disagree with White will probably avoid it, his bracing and bold arguments might inspire sympathetic readers to join his "fight for an end to racism and privilege, not merely as an act of altruism toward others, but for our own sakes too."
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Review

"Tim Wise is one of the most brilliant, articulate, and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation ... He is a national treasure." -- Michael Eric Dyson

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593762070
• ISBN-13: 978-1593762070
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., and has been called, ""One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation,"" by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise has spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale and Columbia, and has spoken to community groups around the nation. Wise is the 2008 Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kansas: an honor named for the lead plaintiff in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. He is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. A collection of his essays, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male, was published in the Fall of 2008."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tim Wise is at it Again, August 14, 2010

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male (Paperback)

Tim Wise is at it again. Not since "White Like Me," has he launched such a spirited attack on what he has euphemistically called "Racism 2.0," the latest more stealth but no less potent version of the old brutal version of Racism 1.0. Here he marshals all of the statistics for those who care, of how the racial chips are still stacked heavily against mostly black Americans, but also against any Americans of color, including Asians, who tend to do better than whites on all of the parameters that racists whites consider determinative, including on standardized intelligence tests. But rather than get into the statistics of the racial politics Wise uncovers, (I notice that other reviewers have covered them well in any case), I want to suggest to the author that as one of only a handful of remaining active and vocal white anti-racists, that he did not go quite far enough.

The real price of racism (which incidentally is also the real reason that it remains so persistent) is that white humanity remains so heavily invested in, and dependent on, its not so well-hidden but cross-generational benefits. It is with a combination of denial, tribal bullying, skewed laws (and even more skewed law enforcement), thinly veiled racist justifications for continued racial discrimination, as well as informal "white only" tribal networks, that whites continue to maintain the fiction of racial superiority, a fiction that helps to maintain the ideology of racism in the present steady state.

But also, as this author has been the first to point out, it is "pandering to white racism" that keeps the light from shining on the true source of America's racial problems: continuing white comfort with, and confidence in, the present fragile social arrangements. Arguably, it is as much "professional blacks from the "Uncle Tom Nation," like our biracial president, and his millionaire supporters like Oprah, Bill Cosby and the president of BET, Bob Johnson, as much as the racists themselves, lean over backwards to continue to accommodate the "latter day racists" and thus continue to enable and assist the installation of Racism version 2.0. Were this cadre of enablers able to muster the courage to stand up on their hind legs and use their "always accidental success" not as an example of how "fair" the American system has been, but as what their success really means: that they are but the tokens that disproves the much larger rule of racism as usual,then the vast majority of racist whites would no longer be so smug in declaring Obama's election the beginning of a new "post-Racial America." How can this be when every objective indicator of black progress except a few tokens here and there, has turned decidedly for the worse, and is doing so at a faster and faster rate?

As Wise shows here, the proof is always in the pudding, and the facts continue to show overwhelmingly that even in post-racial America, blacks are falling behind at a rate so alarming, that arguably, it is faster than at any time in the nation's history. In such a world Obama's presidency simply becomes a shield and a veil for continuing racism in the same steady state.

And as is usual for Wise, he cites chapter and verse. And the details are far from pretty. As blacks sink further and further into America's racist quagmire, white Americans, using a combination of denial, political correctness, the shield of "professional Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas from the "Uncle Tom Nation," and racist police forces in most of the inner cities, to become more and more heavily invested in a pernicious bankrupt profoundly unfair and racist social order.

Something has got to give.

Tim Wise sees where this is all heading and wants to use reason to head if off. But he is a lonely voice in a wilderness of white denial. Five stars.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A required read., November 24, 2009

By 

TED L "CITIZEN" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male (Paperback)

A real education about America and the real intelligence of it's people. While it's now to be read in a humorous way, as that was not the intention of the author, there are many elements of humor as one recognizes the absurdity in the thinking of it's "citizens."

Unfortunately, those who should read it, most probably won't. Their mind is already made up, please don't bother then with the facts. Remember, most people who are among those getting screwed, have no idea that they are getting screwed, and believe it's only the other guy.

Then again, hopefully this review will entice them to actually read this book for the betterment of America.

11 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rich collection of essays, September 9, 2008

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male (Paperback)

This book contains Mr. Wise's wonderfully cogent essays on race going back 7 or 8 years. The essays are well written in a calm, logical manner.

White people are 70 percent of drug users yet are only about 10 percent of persons imprisoned for drug possession in this country. At the same time black and latino folks are 25 percent of the drug users in this country yet make up close to 90 percent of the people imprisoned for the crime. Wise notes that in spite of spite of such a reality, citing a Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education study, around 95 percent of white people believe a typical drug user to be black. It is true, he notes, that African Americans commit a higher rate of some street crimes than their percentage of the total population of this country. That is to be expected for folks who grow up in the terrible conditions of the inner city. But blacks only commit about 3 percent of the violent crimes each year, according to Wise. On the other hand white people commit a disproportionate share of the serial killing, child molestation and drunk driving in this country. Young white college students disproportionately make up our country's binge drinkers. White men are two thirds of our rapists.

Wise talks a little about the crimes of white collar white folks. It was old white dudes who deliberately bombed Iraq's electrical grids in 1991, knowing full well that such actions would shut off electricity to Iraq's water and sewage treatment plants and so cause tens of thousands of deaths from epidemics. It was white Republicans who oversaw US aid to the death squad democracies in Central America in the 1980's, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was white men who cut funding for the levees in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina or diverted such funds to build freeway off-ramps for casinos. It was white guys who caused the Bhopal horror. It was white guys who used the sexual organs of Native Americans they murdered as souvenirs as our brave troops did at Sand Creek Colorado in 1864.

One of my favorite points that Wise makes is that while many white folks tend to picture blacks as dangerous criminals, they don't similarly racially categorize crime when white kids from "good families" go on rampages. Almost all school shootings have been conducted by white kids. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage have been caused by beer riots at universities. During a riot at Michigan State University in the late 90's, white students were seen trying to pry a rifle from a police car and at Washington state University in the same period, 23 cops had to be sent to the hospital. Now if these youth trying to steal the rifle were black, you can imagine that police would have shot and killed them. At Michigan State in 2002, white students launched a premeditated riot, threw rocks and bricks and bottles at cops and chanted "f--- the police." At Woodstock 1999 young white people trashed the place, looted ATM machines and young white ladies were raped by some of the young white fellows in attendance.

Wise argues that this is still very much a racist society. He cites academic studies to show that well qualified blacks with no criminal records have trouble getting well paying jobs, housing, home loans, etc. Black people are being ethnically cleansed out of New Orleans, as their housing is demolished under the guise of Katrina reconstruction. He cites a Journal of Public Health study which showed that from 1991 to 2000, close to 900,000 black people died because physicians chose not to provide them with proper care.

Wise argues that whites tend to be oblivious to their own privilege. Much of this country's wealth was originally produced on the backs of black slaves. Beginning with the New Deal, federal programs built up the wealth of white people. This is especially true of the education and housing assistance provided by the GI Bill, which played a leading role in establishing the middle class of the Baby Boom years. Of course, African Americans, including black WWII veterans, were largely excluded from such programs. Even today, blacks who earn good income still tend to have a very small amount of wealth. The assets acquired through such New Deal programs have been handed down through the generations to the point where an impoverished white family today still often has more wealth than a black family that earns a middle class income.

Wise finds it interesting that the plaintiffs in the University of Michigan affirmative action case before the Supreme Court only objected to the special points awarded in University admissions processes to students of color. People have ignored the fact that white people also effectively get special preferences in college admissions that have nothing to do with pure and simple academic achievement. For example, applicants from the almost exclusively white working class Upper Peninsula of Michigan are given special points during application reviews (at the University of Michigan). The school gives out other points during admissions processes that also effectively give preference to white kids.

Wise weighs other issues in the book, including the Duke Rape case, Ronald Reagan, the confederate flag, illegal immigration, hate speech codes at universities, and the case of a white girl who was the victim of racial taunts by black people during her childhood. . He attacks Senator Obama, which is interesting in light of his association with the "Progressives for Obama" group. He dismembers the "What About Oprah?" argument that white people often use to counter charges about racism hindering African Americans. He notes that most white people have historically believed, for example according to polls in the early 60's, that African Americans have no less chance than white Americans to be successful in American society. Thus the present day dismissal of black claims of racism by most of white America is nothing new.