Tim Wise, whom scholar and philosopher Cornel West calls, ""A vanilla brother in the tradition of (abolitionist) John Brown,"" is among the nation's most prominent antiracist essayists and educators. He has spent the past 25 years speaking to audiences throughout North America, on over 1000 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of conferences, and to community groups across the nation about methods for dismantling racism. Wise's antiracism work traces back to his days as a college activist in the 1980s, fighting for divestment from (and economic sanctions against) apartheid South Africa. After graduation, he threw himself into social justice efforts full-time, as a Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized in the early 1990s to defeat the political candidacies of white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. From there, he became a community organizer in New Orleans' public housing, and a policy analyst for a children's advocacy group focused on combatting poverty and economic inequity. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Smith College School of Social Work, in Northampton, MA., and from 1999-2003 was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute in Nashville, TN. Wise is the author of seven previous books, includingDear White America: Letter to a New Minority, Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America and has been featured in several documentaries, including ""The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump and the Politics of Race and Class in America,"" and ""White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America."" Wise is one of five persons-including President Barack Obama-interviewed for a video exhibition on race relations in America, featured at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC. His media presence includes dozens of appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR, feature interviews on ABC's 20/20 and CBS's 48 Hours, as well as videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms that have received over 20 million views. His podcast, ""Speak Out with Tim Wise,"" features bi-weekly interviews with activists, scholars and artists about movement building and strategies for social change.
Praise for Tim Wise's Dispatches from the Race War Through clear examples, inscrutable logic, and the power of direct language, Wise challenges White Americans to identify and understand the racism inscribed in the very American project and in the everyday acts of 'being American.' -Romi Mahajan, Countercurrents . . . shares some of the clearest, most honest thinking about racism, inequality, and white privilege that you are ever likely to hear from a white man. 'Can we just put aside all the rationalizations and deflections to which we reflexively pivot and instead imagine what it must feel like to walk through life having to always think about how to behave so as not to scare white people, or so as not to trigger our contempt?' he asks. -Joseph Barbato, NY Journal of Books Praise for Tim Wise Tim Wise is a vanilla brother in the tradition of John Brown . . . -Cornel West One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation. He is a national treasure. -Michael Eric Dyson What Tim Wise has brilliantly done is to challenge white folks' truth . . . to see that they have a responsibility to do more than sit back and watch, but to recognize their own role in co-creating what is either a fair, inclusive, truly democratic society or a society that is predicated on indifference towards those who are labeled as 'others' truth . . . -Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (Wise's) work is revolutionary, and those who react negatively are simply afraid of hearing the truth . . . -Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of History, University of South ern California Tim Wise is one of the few people, along with perhaps Frederick Douglass, who has ever really spoken honestly and forcefully to white people about themselves . . . -Charles Ogletree, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Di rector, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice The fate of this country depends on whites like yourself speaking the truth to those who don't want to hear it. In this, you are as one with the Biblical prophets. You are more likely to be condemned than lauded, and yet your words are no less important. So, keep speaking out. At the very least, some future archeologists sifting through the ashes of this civilization may be able to find evidence that there were some who offered truth as a cure for the disease that destroyed us. -Derrick Bell, Professor of Law, New York University (His) is the clearest thinking on race I've seen in a long while written by a white writer . . . right up there with the likes of historians Howard Zinn and Herb Aptheker as far as I'm concerned. -Dr. Joyce King, Benjamin Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Georgia State University Sparing neither family nor self . . . he considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor . . . His candor is invigorating. -Publishers Weekly