Backlash by George Yancy

BACKLASH by George Yancy is a new book which further explores his plea to “listen with love” to comments about perpetuating racism and sexism. Inside Higher Ed recently interviewed Yancy, a professor at Emory University, about his new book and about the threats expressed towards him after the initial column. Yancy says, “So, the hatred seems to have been projected onto me because I had put my finger on the pulse of their [white people’s] denied racism.” 

In BACKLASH, Yancy reprints the full opinion piece (a 2015 New York Times essay titled “Dear White America”), includes a foreword by Cornell West, and adds horrific quotes from the response to his article with three essays about the struggles for black people in America. Sadly, this topic is all too timely – see, for example, “When Calling the Police Is a Privilege” in the latest Atlantic magazine. Tackling white entitlement and other biases, BACKLASH fits with the work we have been trying to do as a school community around the issue of race, but it requires some courage, stamina, and introspection to read, for as Yancy says, “What I’m asking is that you first accept the racism within yourself.”