Tim Wise

Last updated
Tim Wise
Tim Wise (cropped).jpg
Wise in 2011
Born
Timothy Jacob Wise

(1968-10-04) October 4, 1968 (age 55)
Education B.A., Political Science
Alma mater Tulane University
Occupation(s) Anti-racism activist, writer
Children2
Website timwise.org

Timothy Jacob Wise (born October 4, 1968) [1] is an American activist and writer on the topic of race. [2] He is a consultant who provides anti-racism lectures to institutions. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Wise was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to Michael Julius Wise and LuCinda Anne (née McLean) Wise. His paternal grandfather was Jewish (of Russian origin). The rest of his ancestry is mostly northern European, including some Scottish. [4] [5] Wise has said that when he was about 12 years old his synagogue was attacked by white supremacists. [6] Wise attended public schools in Nashville, graduating from Hillsboro High School in 1986. [7] Wise has a BA from Tulane University in New Orleans. He majored in Political Science and minored in Latin American Studies. [8] While a student, he was a leader in the campus anti-apartheid movement, which sought to force Tulane to divest from companies still doing business with the government of South Africa. His anti-apartheid activism was first brought to national attention in 1988, when South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu announced he would turn down an offer of an honorary degree from Tulane after Wise's group informed him of the school's ongoing investments there. [9]

Career

After graduating from Tulane in 1990, Wise started working as an anti-racism activist after receiving training from the New Orleans-based People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. Wise began initially as a youth coordinator, and then associate director, of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, the largest of the various organizations founded for the purpose of defeating political candidate David Duke when Duke ran for U.S. Senate in 1990 and Governor of Louisiana in 1991. [10] [11] After his work campaigning against David Duke, Wise worked for a number of community-based organizations and political groups in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, including the Louisiana Coalition for Tax Justice, the Louisiana Injured Worker's Union and Agenda for Children. [12] Later in the 1990s, Wise began lecturing around the country on the issues of racism, criticizing white privilege (his own included), [2] and defending affirmative action. [13]

From 1999 to 2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute. [14] Wise argues that racism in the United States is institutionalized due to past overt racism (and its ongoing effects) along with current-day discrimination. Although he concedes that personal, overt bias is less common than in the past (or at least less openly articulated), Wise argues that existing institutions continue to foster and perpetuate white privilege, and that subtle, impersonal, and even ostensibly race-neutral policies contribute to racism and racial inequality today. [15] Wise starred in a 2013 documentary entitled White Like Me , based on the book by Wise of the same name. [16]

Personal life

After living in New Orleans for ten years, Wise relocated to his native Nashville [17] in 1996. In 1998, he married and has two children. [17] Wise considers himself Jewish by heritage and ethnicity, but does not practice Judaism as a religion. [18] He is a critic of Israel, and philosophically opposed to Zionism, which he views as not only oppressive to non-Jews in Palestine, but detrimental to Jews as well, and counter to Jewish values. [19]

Written works

Related Research Articles

White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and was a key justification for European colonialism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Duke</span> American white supremacist (born 1950)

David Ernest Duke is an American politician, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party. His politics and writings are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite".

Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species can be subdivided into biologically distinct taxa called "races," and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.

Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege, the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism, and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people. It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century. It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allen J. Ellender</span> American politician (1890–1972)

Allen Joseph Ellender was an American politician and lawyer who was a U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1937 until his death. He was a Democrat who was originally allied with Huey Long. As Senator he compiled a generally conservative record, voting 77% of the time with the Conservative Coalition on domestic issues. A staunch segregationist, he signed the Southern Manifesto in 1956, voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and opposed anti-lynching legislation in 1938. Unlike many Democrats he was not a "hawk" in foreign policy and opposed the Vietnam War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randall L. Gibson</span> American politician

Randall Lee Gibson was an attorney and politician, elected as a member of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senator from Louisiana. He served as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. Later he was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and a president of the board of administrators of Tulane University.

White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Critical race theory</span> Intellectual movement and framework

Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing how social and political laws and media shape social conceptions of race and ethnicity. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.

Pelican Publishing Company is a book publisher based in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. It was acquired in 2019 by Arcadia Publishing, a leading publisher of local and regional content in the United States.

Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is the concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are forms of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by black people and other people of color cause disadvantages for white people.

The New Century Foundation is a white supremacist organization founded in 1994 by Jared Taylor known primarily for publishing a magazine, American Renaissance, which promotes white supremacy. From 1994 to 1999, its activities received considerable funding by the Pioneer Fund. The organization also has a DBA name of American Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">France Winddance Twine</span> Native American ethnographer

France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Twine has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published 11 books and more than 100 articles, review essays, and books on these topics.

Racial democracy is a term used by some to describe race relations in Brazil. The term denotes some scholars' belief that Brazil has escaped racism and racial discrimination. Those researchers contend that Brazilians do not view each other through the lens of race and do not harbor racial prejudice towards one another. Because of that, while social mobility of Brazilians may be constrained by many factors, gender and class included, racial discrimination is considered irrelevant.

Laissez-faire racism is closely related to color blindness and covert racism, and is theorised to encompass an ideology that blames minorities for their poorer economic situations, viewing it as the result of cultural inferiority. The term is used largely by scholars of whiteness studies, who argue that laissez-faire racism has tangible consequences even though few would openly claim to be, or even believe they are, laissez-faire racists.

Post-racial United States is a theoretical environment in which the United States is free from racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarence Lusane</span> American writer and activist {born 1953)

Clarence Lusane is an American author, activist, lecturer and freelance journalist. His most recent major work is his book The Black History of the White House.

<i>Between Barack and a Hard Place</i>

Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama is a non-fiction book by the anti-racist writer and educator Tim Wise, published by City Lights in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-racism</span> Beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism

Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to create equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and workplace anti-racism.

Elizabeth "Beth" Rickey was an American activist and leader in the anti-racism and anti-discrimination movement. Her efforts specifically focused on exposing former neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

White defensiveness is a term to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo.

References

  1. Drick, Boyd (October 23, 2015). White Allies in the Struggle for Racial Justice. Orbis Books. ISBN   9781608336159 via Google Books.
  2. 1 2 Bradley, Adam (March 29, 2009). "Book Reviews: 'Between Barack and a Hard Place' By Tim Wise | 'More Than Just Race' By William Julius Wilson". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
  3. Cook, David (July 2009). "By The Color Of Their Skin: Tim Wise On The Myth Of A Postracial America". The Sun (403).
  4. "Silly Nazis: Encounters With Idiots, from Childhood to the Present". Tim Wise. 2010-11-08. Retrieved 2013-05-28. More to the point, and as regards myself, my Jewish lineage extends only on my Y-chromosome, that is to say, my paternal paternal line, as three of my four grandparents are of Northern European and decidedly non-Jewish derivation.
  5. Wise, Tim (2005). White Like Me. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press. p.  5. ISBN   1-932360-68-9.
  6. Tim Wise on Race and Racism in America; The Rock Newman Show (44-47 min. mark); December 10, 2014
  7. "Class of 1986, Hillsboro H.S. (Nashville, TN)". Tree52. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
  8. "Tim Wise". DePauw University. Archived from the original on June 21, 2010. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
  9. Kadeem (May 7, 2011). "Power of One: Tim Wise". SUAVV. Archived from the original on January 30, 2012.
  10. Lee, Martin A. (Spring 2003). "Detailing David Duke". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. 18 (109): 295–310. doi:10.1023/A:1023250105036. S2CID   36135157.
  11. Applebome, Peter (February 6, 1992). "THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Republicans; Duke's Candidacy Raises Legal Questions About State Ballot Laws". The New York Times.
  12. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son; Tim Wise; Soft Skull Press; Pgs. 168-173
  13. Mugo wa Macharia (October 22, 1996). "Reverse discrimination debate causes outrage". Golden Gater. Archived from the original on May 21, 1997.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  14. "About". 29 May 2010.
  15. McLarin, Kim (September 3, 2006). "MODERN LOVE; Race Wasn't an Issue to Him, Which Was an Issue to Me". The New York Times.
  16. Harris, Aisha (August 16, 2013). "Are You White? Then You Should Probably Watch This". Slate .
  17. 1 2 Cook, David (July 2009). "By The Color Of Their Skin, Tim Wise On The Myth Of A Postracial America". The Sun .
  18. Time Wise website: "Responding to a Young Reactionary: White Privilege, Judaism and the Making of Sloppy Analogies" March 5, 2015
  19. "Zionism articles". TimWise.org. Retrieved June 15, 2012.
  20. "The Book".