Show 400: “Dear White America…” w/ Tim Wise

“Dear White America…” w/ Tim Wise

Audio here!

Prominent anti-racist essayist, educator, and author, Tim Wise, joins the Equal Time For Freethought this Saturday with a message for white folks: shape up, because your status as a “majority” is about to be shipped out.

According to estimates, people of color will be the majority in the United States by no later than 2050.  The change in demographics is just one of four fronts on which “white normativity,” as Wise calls it, is being challenged.  In his latest book, Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Wise pens a 153 page letter directly to white Americans (as well as non-whites who subscribe to a destructive ideology of white privilege), that challenges and dismantles the roots of their beliefs.

Wise, who does not “hate white people” as many have claimed, says white folks of today should not assume blame for the racially motivated atrocities of their forefathers, but do have a responsibility to foster a socially just and equal society today.

In this interview, Wise will discuss changes on the other three fronts – political, economic, and cultural – as well as elaborate on points made in his book including how whites’ inability to identify with the pain of black and brown people – in particular, a failure to acknowledge and stop predatory lending practices in communities of color – may have contributed to the spread of high-cost mortgage tools into middle “white” America.

Dear White America is Wise’s sixth book.  Others include his acclaimed memoir, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama.