“White rage” and the cooptation of black identity

A critique of Carol Anderson’s White Rage

     In today’s commentary, I critically review White Rage by Carol Anderson.  The book reached The New York Times bestseller list, and it was listed as a notable book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Chicago Review of Books.  It was recommended in a recent Twitter conversation on “whiteness.”

White rage at black advances, and the New Jim Crow

     Following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the city went up in flames.  Carol Anderson observes that the media framed the issue in terms of black rage, debating whether or not black rage was justified.  However, Anderson maintains, what really was at work was white rage, which is expressed not through visible violence but through the courts, legislatures, and government bureaucracies.

      The trigger for white rage is black advancement, Anderson maintains.  The problem for whites is not the mere presence of black people, but blacks with drive, ambition, and aspirations. …