White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-racism

How Does It Feel to Be a White Problem?

Contributions by Rebecca Aanerud, Barbara Applebaum, Alison Bailey, Steve Garner, Robin James, Crista Lebens, Steve Martinot, Nancy McHugh, Bridget M. Newell, David S. Owen, Alexis Sartwell, Karen Teel Edited by George Yancy

Not available to order

Publication date:

21 October 2014

Length of book:

282 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739189504

White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-racism powerfully emphasizes the significance of humility, vulnerability, anxiety, questions of complicity, and how being a “good white” is implicated in racial injustice. This collection sets a new precedent for critical race scholarship and critical whiteness studies to take into consideration what it means specifically to be a white problem rather than simply restrict scholarship to the problem of white privilege and white normative invisibility. Ultimately, the text challenges the contemporary rhetoric of a color-blind or color-evasive world in a discourse that is critically engaging and sophisticated, accessible, and persuasive.
Many books have grappled with Du Bois’s “souls of black folk,” but this is the first to wrestle deeply with his forgotten concern for the immoral “souls of white folk”—the greatest racial problem facing this country. Philosopher George Yancy has compiled yet another major book that teaches well about the deepest racial realities shaping this much-troubled nation.