White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

"The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. A formidable array of policy assaults and legal contortions has consistently punished black resilience, black resolve." 

White rage, as Anderson defines it, is not a nebulous or ever-present hatred of black people. It is a fundamentally reactionaryphenomenon, one which takes hold in response or reaction to the progress of racial justice in this country. White rage flares up every time there is a significant step towards true equality and full citizenship for African Americans. 

"We have the model for how to do this, he told the throng of seven hundred. 'Use legal means if possible, force if necessary. But put the niggers out. Put them out.'" 

These words were spoken by the president of a Detroit Homeowner's Association in 1925, when a black doctor and his family moved into their white neighborhood. They show how, even in the North, keeping African Americans out superseded all other concerns, including the law itself.

"Prince Edward County is emblematic of the way that systematized racism not only destroys black lives but also undermines the very strength of the United States." 

The government of Prince Edward County, Virginia, sabotaged their whole public-school system, harming students of every race, rather than choosing to integrate black and white students. Anderson calls this example "emblematic" because white rage is not only harmful to African Americans; rather, it is harmful to entire communities, and to the entire country.