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

Abstract

In The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that question whites wanted to ask him was: How does it feel to be a problem? In The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen writes that it is time for white people in America to self-consciously reverse direction of that question and to fully acknowledge that in racial arena, they are problem. While some whites would like to think that we have reached the end of in United States, and others would like to celebrate diversity but are oblivious to political, economic, and social consequences of a nation-and their sense of self-founded on a system of white supremacy, Jensen proposes a different approach. He sets his sights not only on racism that can't be hidden, but also on liberal platitudes that sometimes conceal depths of that racism in polite The Heart of Whiteness offers an honest and rigorous exploration of what Jensen refers to as depraved nature of whiteness in United States. Mixing personal experience with data and theory, he faces down difficult realities of -racism and white privilege. He argues that any system that denies non-whites their full humanity also keeps whites from fully accessing their own. This book is both a cautionary tale for those who believe that they have transcended racism, and also an expression of hope for genuine transcendence. When white people fully understand and accept painful reality that they are indeed the problem, it should lead toward serious attempts to change one's own life and join with others to change society. Robert Jensen is author of Citizens of Empire. He is a professor of media ethics and journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

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