Summary Of White Rage The Unspoken Truth Of Our Racial Divide Sparknotes

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide Book Review Draft 1

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide is about the history of African Americans’ fight for civil rights in the United States. The author, Carol Anderson creates a meticulous time line of the struggle for civil rights starting with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the election of President Donald Trump after the only black president, President Barack Obama. Anderson goes much deeper than any normal history textbook and gives cultural context to major events for African Americans and the white reactions to these events which mitigated these gains. The author argues that with every African American civil rights victory there is a strong detrimental reaction

Mississippi passes a series of laws called the Black Codes. The Black Codes took away any chance African Americans had of being a prosperous, financially independent member of society by forcing blacks to sign labor contracts with unfair pay and horrible working conditions. The laws essentially re-enslaved African Americans. Many other southern states followed and past similar Black Codes (Anderson, pp. 19-21). Anderson continues to give example after example similar to this one, clearly showing the resistance the white establishment had to change and the immoral, illegal and violent reactions they had to improvements in African Americans’ civil

At first I thought the title of this book and the very blunt rhetoric Anderson used throughout the book was a weakness because as a white person, I felt offended by terms like “white rage.” I felt that she was condemning an entire race for the action of a few people. However, after I forced myself to keep an open mind, I found that her forceful, white and black, right and wrong language really helps her argument throughout the book. Anderson wrote this book to display a trend in American history, a broad overarching concept, not to condemn or praise a race. I also came to appreciate that her language should not concern itself with my feelings. She did not write this history for a white person to read, like almost every other historical book I have read. Instead she wrote this book of facts to support an argument, that accurately and clearly records the history in this country and that shines a light on a hard truth for all American to face. I believe that Anderson’s language is very much in tone with her book and is an additional tool she uses to force her readers to recognize the truth about America’s past. That being said, I wish more people would read this book, or a book like it. I think Caucasians will inherently not want to read a book with such clear, formidable language because white people have been raised in a society that praises them and that