Kansas City News Blog

This is the kind of guy we love. Last time we checked Tim Wise's MySpace page, we were greeted with the warning:

"Hate mail, while neither appreciated nor desired, will be graded for form, content, spelling and grammar."

Wise is a white guy who writes about white racism; he's also a frequent speaker on the college lecture circuit and sometimes he's a teacher (last year, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues at Washburn University in Topeka).

I fell for Wise last summer, when his essay titled "Your Whiteness Is Showing: An Open Letter to Certain White Women Who Are Threatening to Withhold Support from Barack Obama in November" was circulating on the Internet.

Tim Wise

White sisters, follow the argument if you dare:

You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. ... But on the first part of the above equation -- the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity -- you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. ... It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women -- you know, the ones who aren't white like you and most of your friends -- but rather, like white men! Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical, to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white people. So here's the first question: What the hell is that about?

He goes on to explain exactly what it's about. Elsewhere, like on his blog, you'll find arguments to counter any claim that we're now living in some sort of "post-racial America," why the word "holocaust" applies to what happened to American Indians, and hype for his brand new book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama.

The book promises to address questions like, "Is black success making it harder for whites to see the problem of racism, thereby further straining race relations, or will it challenge anti-black stereotypes to such an extent that racism will diminish and race relations improve? Will blacks in power continue to be seen as an 'exception' in white eyes? Is Obama 'acceptable' because he seems 'different than most blacks,' who are still viewed too often as the dangerous and inferior 'other'?"

It's exactly the kind of shit we need to be talking about right now, which is why I'm excited that Wise makes a day-long stop at Johnson County Community College on Tuesday, February 17. He gives a talk from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Craig Community Auditorium, gets honored with a reception from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Carlsen Center lobby, and speaks again from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Yardley Hall.

Argue about it here if you want. But if you're really brave, you'll show up and argue about it there.