White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White

Easily one of the most important books I have ever read. This book beautifully shows why it's important to understand how pervasive and systemic racism is in our society to this day, and how to theologically address it as Christians. The author, Daniel, guides us through the process of awakening to the racism in our society, including the racism we may unknowingly be propping up, and how to move on and help support our black brothers and sisters in a healthy way. This book really opened my eyes to what the Bible says about oppression, especially the theology of reconciliation. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Short Review: If possible I would make this a 4.5 star book, but I am rounding up for importance.

Part of what I have come to understand over the past several years is how much as a White man, I can point to other people as having culture and simply say of myself and others like me, that, ‘this is the way it is'. Other people have a culture, implicitly Whites often say we just have reality. Whiteness has become normative.

Part of the importance of this book is that the exploration of what it means to be White is largely left unexplored. This become more important as the demographic and cultural power of White people in the US declines. What was assumed is starting to be challenged and there is a backlash. That backlash is largely not explored or explained away in other means because many are unwilling or unable to explore what race means for Whites.

This is not a perfect book. Especially at the beginning I was a bit irritated at the ‘dumb white guy' stories. But I do think the exploration of ignorance around culture and other racial or ethic groups is real, it is just that that type of ignorance makes me uncomfortable because it often comes at someone else's expense. (I hate watching talent shows because I don't ever want to watch anyone bomb.)

But past that initial discomfort I found this book very helpful. I say that as someone that has done a lot of reading on race and history and culture. This was a very helpful book and I am planning on reading it with a group soon.

There was a quote in the documentary I am not Your Negro by James Baldwin that basically said, racism is not a Black problem, racism is a White problem. It is Whites that created the problem and Whites that will have to solve the problem.

Being White is not only about racism. But the concept of being White is relatively recent and was only put into legal code in the US as part of legal matters around slavery and citizenship. So any discussion of Whiteness has to talk about history.

There are two additional books that I think pair together well. The first is The Myth of Equality. It is about why racial inequality exists in the United States. Both White Awake and the Myth of Equality are from Intervarsity Press are explicitly Christian and are new (2017) books. Both are well worth reading.

The third is The End of White Christian America by Robert Jones. Jones is the head of a polling company that focuses on religious polling. This was released in 2016 and is largely a book about polling and demographics. It is not a book of theology or history as much as demographics. He is not making a moral or theological claim with his title. He is making a demographics one. Historically most of the US population has been White (Protestant) Christian. Today White (non-Hispanic) Christians (Catholic or Protestant) are only 43% of the country. Down from 70% in the 1970s. Culturally White Christians are still dominant in many important ways. But that cultural power is declining because of the declining demographic power.

The mix of these three books is very helpful to see why we are at the place we are at right now. From there, you can go in a million directions to explore further.


My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/white-awake/