The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege

by Robert Jensen

Book Overview

An honest look at racism in the United States, and the liberal platitudes that attempt to conceal it.

This book offers an honest and rigorous exploration of what Jensen refers to as the depraved nature of whiteness in the United States. Mixing personal experience with data and theory, Jensen faces down the difficult realities of race, racism, and white privilege. He argues that any system that denies non-white people their...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872864499
• ISBN13: 9780872864498
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Imprescindible

Este libro expone los principios básicos de la supremacía blanca que invade todos los aspectos de la sociedad de los estados unidos. Lo recomiendo para todo el mundo.

Very Good Exploration of Racism

The author does a very good job of bringing to the attention of the reader one of the major sources of racism: white privilege. While it is understandably rejected by those who benefit from racist practices and beliefs, the book does provoke people (who are open about the issue) to reconsider their involvement in such privilege.

People react because it's true!

Having read the book, and now reading the negative comments, it is clear to me that this book strikes a cord, and those who are most outraged are those who are afraid of losing the power and privilege their race affords them. Their reaction is all the more reason you should read this book. I say this as a college educated white woman. The analysis is in depth and historically spot-on. Anyone who wants to understand the predicament we, as a society, find ourselves in - in terms of race relations and class stratification - should read Jensen's book. Of course, be prepared to go on a personal, as well as intellectual journey, because if you read this book with your heart open, you will have to face the truth about how you (we all) have internalized racism. That's not a bad thing. If you want to change the world, the best thing you can do is to first change yourself. I suspect the reviewers who are reacting the most are those who are afraid of what they will find on their personal journey. Thank you to Jensen for lighting the way for those of us who are willing to be honest and do the self-reflection necessary to deal with these issues.

A great starting point

This book is a good starting primer for those who are unfamiliar with white privilege. I especially like how the book is footnoted, so you can immediately look at his sources, and also how he suggests further reading. A must for every white person.

What Price Privilege?

Review of The Heart of Whiteness For those who choose to take the trip, Professor Jensen has charted a course, in plain English, and with few pretensions, to fuller understanding of the depth of the scars that American racism has left on our humanity. It has infected our individual and collective psyches with a disease that is difficult to overcome: the disease of color prejudice, white privilege, white supremacy, white superiority, and white racism. In the same vein as that of Lillian Smith's "Killing the Dream;" or Tim Wise's "White Like Me;" or indeed with the same skill and moving passion as the F. H. Griffith classic, "Black Like Me," professor Jensen has used his own life experience, and his considerable intellectual skills to shake not just the white conscience, but the conscience of America. And while he cannot be blamed for not solving all the problems he raised, we must all be grateful to him for having the courage to raise them, and for doing so in such a clear-minded, passionate and committed manner. In this short volume, the University of Texas at Austin Professor, Robert Jensen, has demonstrated that he has acquired the necessary self-knowledge (the escape velocity needed to propel himself beyond the orbit of "naïve white supremacy" into the orbit of "fully self-conscious white supremacy") to break away from the comforts of white privilege. This is an important and necessary, but as he so eloquently noted, an insufficient step on the road to overcoming the disease of white privilege, and its larger manifestation, American style white racism. Jensen has let the cat out of the bag: White humanity is just short of a fraud built on the quicksand of propped up privileges, unfair advantages, unjust prerogatives, structural injustices, four-century-old myths, four centuries of violence and genocide, and lies, all insulated and protected by a system of soft tyranny and spatial Apartheid. In short, if one understands Jensen correctly, America has sacrificed all of the little humanity it has, on the altar of skin color superiority. As Jensen has discovered, in this his much-needed second thrust -- re-entering the old orbit of white supremacy armed with self-knowledge -- is a much trickier step than being a content, "naïve white supremacist." For, as the author has discovered, the invisible power of systemic racial hegemony is the ultimate goal, and the real name of the game of white supremacy. Jensen makes clear a truism seldom recognized: that American racism is no longer personal. It no longer matters how many committed anti-racists we can summon to a given cause; or who hates or does not hate blacks; or how many skinheads roam the streets, the anti-racists cannot acquire (nor will they ever constitute) a critical mass in American society. The consolidation and preservation of white privilege through systemic racist power is self-defining, self-promoting, and now all but a self-regulating and self-sustaining process. There