Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America

by Thandeka

Thandeka explores the politics of the white experience in America. Tracing the links between religion, class, and race, she reveals the child abuse, ethnic conflicts, class exploitation, poor self-esteem, and a general feeling of self-contempt that are the wages of whiteness.

Genres: Race, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Psychology, Sociology, History, Anti Racist

184 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

Reviews

[Drick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thandeka takes a psychological approach to understanding white racism and contends that "whiteness" is a elite standard of life and worldview that most middle and working class whites never attain but aspire to. In order to do that they must forsake their working class and ethnic cultural roots to appropriate whiteness and become "white." This becomes a kind of white racism against working class whites. She also posits that many whites were shamed as children against socializing or befriending people of color and so at an early age got the message that whites don't mingle with blacks and other people of color. This too created what she calls white shame.

I found this to be a thought provoking book even if I could not personally remember being shamed in the way she describes (though she would say I probably was but I just don't remember). However it did force me to think about the race-based messages I did receive as a child from parents, teachers, and other significant adults in my life. There is no question my life was steered down a very narrow "white" line, and only in college did I begin to step out of that pre-determined structure that so many of my childhood friends have never transgressed. I knew I had transgressed because I got various messages designed to shame me back into "good [white] behavior.

One of my earliest professors on racism, Dr. Charles Tillman, contended (in the late 1970's) that racism was a mental illness. Thandeka opens up insights into the dynamics of white culture that are mostly overlooked that support Tillman's thesis. Thandeka's makes me wonder what messages have I forgotten, and more importantly what are the white shame messages I may have inadvertently passed on to my own children. This is a book I will ponder for some time to come.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This short book centers around the concept of "white shame," when white people are introduced into the racialized world when they learn their white community won't accept them fully if they choose to associate with people of color. Thandeka brings a lot of pieces together to demonstrate this concept. While I didn't always follow what she was saying, and am still not sure if I buy into her concept of white shame in the way that she explains it, this book was successful in that it caused me to understand much more deeply the way that our system was set up to pit non-upper class white people against people of color and how closely economics and racism go hand-in-hand. I wish she had gone deeper on some concepts, and used more than just anecdotal stories, but it provided me a sort of gateway into other works that will.

[Darla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purchased after I heard the author speak at a UU Church I attended. Still working to get all the way through. Absorbs me completely whenever I pick it up.

T takes us through her own journey researching and interviewing white folk and finding a common thread that many whites are able to identify a crucial moment in their lives where they were called upon by their caretakers or peers to do something unjust to someone identified as non-white as a visible sign of their choice to identify with their white status or to suffer the consequences of not doing so whether that meant withdrawal of love and affection, refusal of basic human needs, or being ostracized by the peer group.

It is not an easy book to read and should not be, but it is groundbreaking. I hope my description has done it at least partial justice.

[Conrad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have met and personally found her likeable and intelligent, but the book should have been titled how black people perceive whites rather than learning to be white. If you think of the book as a painting, the canvas is a racially divided country. I agree with that perception, and I think it would be easy to support that assertion with anecdotes and statistics. But she projects onto that canvas a psychological theory that is much more difficult to support, so difficult that she does not support it at all. She just keeps re-stating it as if it becomes more obvious with each re-stating. In fact, what does become obvious is her inability to offer any defense of her theory. I think the premiss of the book had promise, but the delivery was a disappointment.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This was a fascinating book. It was our English Dept. summer book read, and it knocked my socks off. I learned so much about being white, how race came to be in America, and the wages of and for whiteness. It's academic (definitely something to be read in chunks, talked about with others) so it's not a beach read or anything, but so worth the time.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book- you can skip over some of the other books on whiteness I've read such as White Like Me by Tim Wise, How the Irish Became White and others in favor of Thandeka's. It's relatively short, but also has the advantage of being pretty accessible for an academic book. As an African-American educator in a mostly white profession, Thandeka became curious about how white people formed their identities. She began an experiment by challenging her white colleagues to play a "game" in which they would include mention of the race of any person they discussed in conversation- every time she suggested this, and the person attempted to go along with it, they stopped soon after, explaining awkwardly that it made them feel "uncomfortable". Thandeka reaches back into our history and our psychology- when and how we are first taught that we are white and what that means.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thandeka's interdisciplinary approach is impressive and compelling. Mostly from a psychological view, she also weaves historical, economic, and theological strands of analysis through her overview of what whiteness is and how it manifests itself in the individual and in society. Damn good read, imo.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something every American should read.

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, but I disagree with its basic thesis [which states that white racial identity is rooted in shame]. It also is based on anecdotal research, not on true social/behavioral science.

[CTEP]

This month, I read Learning to be White by Thandeka. In her book, Thandeka posits this thesis: white shame is the result of a psychological suppression wherein the white individual rejects certain aspects of their selfhood, which aspects misalign with the paragon of whiteness they have come to observe in society at large. Whiteness is not realized until non-whiteness is rejected. But this rejection is never easy and often results in serious pain for the rejecter. At the same time however a white ideal is perpetuated–an ideal often the progeny of Puritan class values and niceties. Thaneka's objective here is neither to excuse nor admonish whites for their cowardice, but rather to shine a torch into the depths from whence such cowardice stems, and in so doing elucidate the network of obstacles that deter white bravery.

Anecdotes throughout the text exemplify this rejection and the pain it causes. Writer Don Wallace's op-ed essay about his childhood spent learning to fear the police is examined as case material for an adoption of whiteness rather than a resistance of racial injustice. Conservative pundit Norman Podhoretz's Jewish upbringing is also cited as an example of whiteness adoption. To succeed, Podhoretz was forced to infiltrate WASP culture by donning its affectations and internalizing its demeanors. As a result, he was forced to reject his own Jewishness along with the other trappings of non-whiteness that upset WASP cultural standards. Podhoretz and Wallace's are only two examples of the many cases presented throughout the course of the text, but they provide for our purposes enough of an idea of the types of cases that interest Thandeka.

For whites, Thandeka's text is a necessary affirmation in the same way that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah was a necessary condemnation. The providence of this book needed exploration, and its audience will be uplifted by the validation it provides. Racism, microaggression, and white rejection of non-whiteness are all different things, and exist on a spectrum or continuum. And for compassionate, sympathetic whites fearing rejection by the society that affords them the privileges they cannot escape, this book is a nod at the internal rifts torn open in the process of becoming white.

[Jess]

Read the first two chapters as part of a discussion group. Would continue with the rest of the book if I didn't have a lot of assigned reading right now. Takes a compassionate look at how white people are socialized into whiteness without realizing it, which will be helpful for some (though probably frustrating for others).

[Molly Stewart-Gallus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent. Some of this stuff about WASP culture is done elsewhere but it connects it all up in a tidy bundle. People talk about this like it's race-baiting but a lot of it is tame stuff about WASP Puritanism and classism evolved into whiteness.

[howdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can already tell this is my best book of 2018 (and it isn't even 2018 yet)

[T.Kay Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.

[Elizabeth Rickert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in my Religious Education class in seminary. It changed my worldview from the inside out. I highly recommend it.

[Meg Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very thought-provoking. I am still absorbing the content.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I pulled quite a bit from this book that will influence a piece of fiction that I'm working on. White shame is the dominant theme and how it affects our relations today and has in the past. The call to reconsider yourself the "working class" versus the "middle class" can open up many other areas for investigation in our American lives. The connection of caretaker fear and religious views of confessing sins have brought about shame and fear into our common lives through treasured relationships was great imagery.

Also, the use of Alice Miller's book was personal as I had finished reading that not long ago and found it to be applicable for my own life.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really dense, but is an excellent read, especially for those like me who are older and grew up being acculturated into systemic racism. The author really understands and frames the wounds that socialization into racism inflicts on white people in a way that almost all other AR/AO work doesn't address. This book is helping me heal and is making it easier for me to talk about racism and oppression as a white person of privilege. Not an easy read by any means (how long is it taking me to get through it?), but definitely useful.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am reading this book as a 'book club' of sorts - we are discussing it bi-weekly in a small group before sunday service at my UU church.

So far this book has really shown me a lot that I have never seen firsthand in my own life. It gives me some insight in understanding the way things are the way that they are as far as classism and racism in the modern day US.

The discussions, as you might imagine, are passionate and enlightening. I am really enjoying the experience an learning a lot.

[Carole Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thandeka delves into the history of the invention of race by plantation owners fearful of their African and European enslaved workers uniting against them. She details how Euro-American children are inducted into whiteness by the communities on which they depend, and reveals the scars left on the psyche of Euro-Americans forced to cut off parts of their own humanity in order to fit into the artificial category "white".

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking book about how white racial identity is formed/ forced upon Euro American kids. Related to a lot of it, made sense of some emotions that I hadn't been able to really name before.

Worth reading--- a way to talk about race with white (" ") people that goes beyond guilt towards reunification and restoration

[Rev. Sharon Wylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thandeka posits that racism has its own harrowing effects on whites, who are forced through emotional abuse to deny parts of themselves in order to conform to a social construction of whiteness that benefits upper class elites. This is a powerful invitation to white people to reflect on their formational experiences of being “white.”

[Amalia]

A classic. One of the FEW (I can count them on one hand) moments in law school when I got to buy a book that actually mattered!

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical and psychosocial analysis of the "wages FOR whiteness" -- the process by which white racial identity is established.

[Allison Varvaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author basically states that all white people at some point in their lives have done something they're ashamed of toward a person of another race. It was very black and white (pun intended).

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I expected.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on whiteness. Very important for critical whiteness studies and helpful to a paper I just wrote.