Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America

Following up his 2015 New York Times op-ed letter, "Dear White America," which went viral, Yancy (philosophy, Emory Univ.; Christology and Whiteness) creates a teachable moment with this book and continues to offer a new perspective on white supremacy. After a foreword from Cornel West titled, "The End of White Innocence," Yancy provides an introduction, a reprint of the op-ed, and three essays about the existential struggle of black life in America, past and present. The author calls on white America to face the legacy and contemporary manifestations of its long-standing racism. In combining analysis of ideological abstractions with their concrete manifestations, Yancy provides both context and critique of the sheer brutal magnitude of persisting white terrorism. He argues that racial reconciliation in America requires whites to examine their selves and particularly their sense of white entitlement.