Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage

Two-Faced Racism examines and explains the racial attitudes and behaviours exhibited by whites in private settings. While there are many books that deal with public attitudes, behaviours, and incidences concerning race and racism (frontstage), there are few studies on the attitudes whites display among friends, family, and other whites in private settings (backstage). The core of this book draws upon 626 journals of racial events kept by white college students at twenty-eight colleges in the United States. The book seeks to comprehend how whites think in racial terms by analyzing their reported racial events.

Customer Reviews:

I love this book!

By E. John - October 4, 2009

I found myself carrying this book around even after I'd read it once. Was it because people would ask me about it (mainly black people)? Was it because I wanted white people to think about the subject? Was it because it gave me immunity when I experienced covert racism and called people on it?

ALL OF THE ABOVE, and more! I kept re-reading parts and quoting from it; it was better to have the book handy to look up the quotes.

This was a great study and is a wonderful book.

An Important Book

By Ernest - November 23, 2010

Occasionally in the U.S. media, one reads articles about whites making racist comments about racial minorities in areas that are considered to be private, such as racist statements made by senior Texaco executives at a 1994 meeting or Senate majority leader Harry Reid stating that President Obama had a chance of winning because he was both "light-skinned" and didn't speak with a "negro dialect", or a Harvard Law student sending an e-mail asserting that blacks, on average, are less intelligent. However, this book "Two-Faced Racism" demonstrates that these are not random, isolated incidents but represent a wide spread phenomenon among many whites where they present a color-blind public front while in private settings they reveal the racist views they hold towards people of color. The authors of the book, as part of an extra credit assignment, has 626 white students in colleges and universities throughout the United States write the racial incidents they view over the course of a school... read more

Super

By Arnie Tracey "Noir Boy" - November 30, 2012

An at-times-preachy peek behind the fake poker faces of Americans (white America). The solicited diaries of college students, as they journalize the congenital racist backstage antics of their friends, strangers, families and co-workers.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Sad because it's true.

The road to national perdition passes through this centuries old, socially sanctioned, utterly normalized mental-illness.

Great read--Highly recommended for one and all.