Tim Wise - Dispatches From the Race War

Tim Wise is one of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation. His considerable rhetorical skills, his fluid literary gifts and his relentless search for the truth make him a critical ally in the fight against racism and a true soldier in the war for social justice. His writing and thinking constitute a bulwark of common sense, and uncommon wisdom, on the subject of race, politics and culture. He is a national treasure.

Michael Eric Dyson, author of Race Rules, Holler if You Hear Me, and Between God and Gangsta Rap

Tim Wise is a vanilla brother in the tradition of John Brown.

Cornel West

[Wises] work is revolutionary, and those who react negatively are simply afraid of hearing the truth.

Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels and Yo Mamas Disfunktional!

Tim Wise is one of the few people, along with perhaps Frederick Douglass, who has ever really spoken honestly and forcefully to white people about themselves.

Charles Ogletree, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

The fate of this country depends on whites like yourself speaking the truth to those who dont want to hear it. In this, you are as one with the Biblical prophets. You are more likely to be condemned than lauded, and yet your words are no less important. So, keep speaking out. At the very least, some future archeologists sifting through the ashes of this civilization may be able to find evidence that there were some who offered truth as a cure for the disease that destroyed us.

Derrick Bell, Professor of Law, New York University

Tim Wise is one of those rare public intellectuals whom numerous authors have suggested are becoming extinct in this society. He is evidence that this is not the case. In my judgment, he is the very best of the white anti-racism writers and commentators working in the U.S. media today.

Joe Feagin, Graduate Research Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M

One of the brilliant voices of our time.

Molefi Kete Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University

Wise is the nations leading antiracist author/activist.

David Naguib Pellow, professor of Ethnic Studies, University of Minnesota

[His] is the clearest thinking on race Ive seen in a long while written by a white writerright up there with the likes of historians Howard Zinn and Herb Aptheker as far as Im concerned.

Dr. Joyce King, Benjamin Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Georgia State University

You are to be commended for your brave stance against apartheid. If more young people followed your lead, the world would be a better place.

Whoopi Goldberg

Tim Wise

Copyright 2020 by Tim Wise All

Rights Reserved.

Open Media Series Editor: Greg Ruggiero

Cover design: Victor Mingovits

ISBN: 978-0-87286-809-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wise, Tim J., author.

Title: Dispatches from the race war / Tim Wise.

Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, [2020] | Series: Open media series

Identifiers: LCCN 2020036401 (print) | LCCN 2020036402 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872868090 (paperback) | ISBN 9780872868373 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: RacismUnited StatesHistory21st century. | White supremacy movementsUnited StatesHistory21st century. | Trump, Donald, 1946Influence. | United StatesRace relationsHistory21st century. | African AmericansHistory21st century21st century | MinoritiesUnited StatesHistory21st century. | Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory21st century.

Classification: LCC E184.A1 W574 2020 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 305.800973/0905dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036401

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036402

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

www.citylights.com

B Y THE TIME you read these words, we will know the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. We will know whether American votersor at least 75,000 people or so in a handful of key stateshave re-elected Donald Trump for four more years or decided to end his time in office and return him to reality television. No matter the answer, this book will remain relevant, because the issues about which it is concerned pre-date his presidency and, if history is any guide, will continue to plague us long after he is gone.

That said, this has been a strange time to compile a collection of essays on race and racism. With a man such as Trump in the White House, I knew as I began work on this volume how quickly events could change and how often race-related stories could emerge from an administration that, from the beginning, sought to divide the nation along lines of race, ethnicity, and religion, for political gain. Keeping up could prove hard, and I always suspected we could get near publication time only to have to insert something at the last minute to reflect the latest outrage. Little did I suspect, however, what 2020 would ultimately have in store for the nation.

As I write these words, it is autumn, and the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the planet. More than 200,000 people have died in the United States alone, and estimates as to what may lie ahead are unsettling. Experts say that at least 60 percent of the earliest deaths in the United Statesand most of those that occurred latercould have been avoided had President Trump taken the threat seriously from the beginning. Had he even listened to members of his own administration and the intelligence community that serves himvoices that were trying to tell him in early January of the dangers aheadtens of thousands of Americans who have died might still be alive today. Likewise, had he been as concerned with public health as with his own private gain, he might have resisted calling for a quick re-opening of shuttered businesses in the hopes of an economic rebound. But with millions thrown out of work and the economy contracting by one-third in mid-summerthe largest single economic collapse in contemporary national historyTrumps concerns were with spurring commerce and evincing optimism that the virus would magically disappear: anything to bolster his sinking poll numbers and his re-election chances. The results, of course, were predictable and have proved tragic. Sending children back to school, encouraging people to gather in restaurants, bars, churches, crowded downtown streets and beacheslobbying tirelessly for a return to normalthe president and his enablers have endangered the lives of millions. This they have done for the sake of political marketing, hoping that even if hundreds of thousands more die, his attempts to blame the virus on China (where it originated, although the most virulent strain to hit the U.S. came from Italy) will convince enough voters that none of the suffering was his fault.

According to the data, around half of all fatalities have been persons of color, and the mortality rate for black, Latinx and indigenous folks has been about 2.5 times higher than for whites. It is not likely a coincidence that the Trump administration met the present challengeone in which people of color have done a disproportionate share of the dyingwith such nonchalance. Indifference to black and brown suffering, if not outright hostility to black and brown peoples, has been a hallmark of Trumps presidency and most of his life. And if this had not been clear enough from the administrations response to COVID, it would be made glaringly obvious from its reaction to the other major event of this year: the uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police.