The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. With so much attention on the flames,' she argued, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.' National Book Critics Circle Award WinnerĪ New York Times Notable Book of the YearĪ Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the YearĪ Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016įrom the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America-now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson.Īs Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in The Washington Post suggesting that this was, instead, 'white rage at work.

White rage book review