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Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White By Schocken Buy Cheap Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White. With Special Pomotions Fast Shipping List Price : $16.75 Price Save : $15.75 SalesRank :136919 Warranty:

Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White Description

Edited by David R. Roediger, Black on White brings together some of the most succinct writing ever on what it means to be white--from the African American point of view. Consider, for example, William J. Wilson's satiric "What Shall We Do with the White People?": For many centuries now have they been on this continent; and for many years have they had entire rule and sway; yet they are today no nearer the solution of the problem, "are they fit for self-government"--than they were at the commencement of their career. Or bell hooks's critical "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination": Usually white students respond with naïve amazement that black people critically assess white people from a standpoint where "whiteness" is the privileged signifier. Their amazement that black people watch white people with a critical "ethnographic" gaze, is itself an expression of racism. Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Alice Walker are just a few of the heavy-hitters included in an anthology that runs the gamut of African American writers and thinkers. --Alix Wilber American literature boasts a long history of white authors writing about blacks. From Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, to Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial study of ethnicity and intelligence, The Bell Curve, the right of white writers to examine the lives of black people is accepted without comment. But where are the commentaries by black writers on white culture? They exist, to be sure--Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name just a few, have all written on the subject of "white folk"--but little if any of this work ever makes it into the consciousness of mainstream America. This new anthology might just change all that.

Costumer Reviews

4.0 Out Of 5 Stars (2 Customer Reviews)  
Reviews for Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White (Paperback) I saw this book in the public library and had to check it out. As a white woman who is concerned about civil rights issues, I felt I had to read it. Well, it was certainly eye-opening and uncomfortable in some places.

These African-American authors and cartoonists, featured in these essays, excerpts, and visual art representations, did not pull back from their feelings and observations. They said what they meant, and meant what they said! Their viewpoints were vastly different from mine, and I had to stop and really THINK about it, sometimes in mid-paragraph. That they were telling the truth, from their perspective, cannot be denied.
Reviews for Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White (Paperback) Surprisingly candid perspective on the Caucasian American. This was purchased as a text for a course in Communicating Across Cultures an its a keeper. I have not completed the book, but I am 'meeting' an array of writers from a range of era through the 1900's.

You can sit down and plow through, but I am enjoying a small grouping of 'chapters' each time I open it. Then taking some time to consider i just read before taking on another chunk.

Don't expect a book full of anti-white man rants...but a series of snapshots that show us how American culture has not shone their brightest in response to a supposed racial superiority.

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