Getting Smart about Race

In Getting Smart about Race, Margaret Andersen provides a lucid and sensitive meditation on racial inequality, analyzing both the origins of American racism as well our current social and political conflicts. Based on rigorous sociological research, this volume is written in an accessible narrative style and will provoke meaningful conversations about our nation’s future.

-- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University
Like the cartoon fish who wonders what water is, white Americans are often oblivious to racism. This book is a necessary and timely corrective. Margaret Andersen has written an important examination of the "water" that continues to stubbornly define and divide us. I strongly recommend it. -- Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and The Last Stone; journalist
Margaret Andersen's clear, empathetic, evenhanded, and engaged writing can change the awareness of white readers who decide to face "all of this talk about race." Andersen makes their effort both worthwhile and rewarding. She lets readers know they matter and that what they think and do matters to the racial climate of this country--even the world. She shows us it is not too late to get smarter and outgrow what she calls the "commonsense racism" of our childhood environments and educations. The humane tone of this book is a gift to all who are making efforts toward social justice in the United States. -- Peggy McIntosh, Author of Privilege, Fraudulence, and Teaching As Learning and Founder of National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity)
Getting Smart about Race promotes social understanding, drawing our attention to the peculiarly structural nature of systemic racism, while revealing some of its unlikely victims: white people. Gracefully written, accessible, and deeply illuminating — a reflexive work of singular importance that should be read and digested by everyone. -- Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology, Yale University, author of The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life and Code of the Street
Dr. Andersen’s approach to conversations around racism is accessible to people of all backgrounds, and provides a useful point of entry to discussions of race in a modern context. This book makes an important contribution to modern day efforts to dismantling racism across the country. -- Kristen Clarke, president and executive director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
In a clear, elegant, and thorough way, Margaret Andersen makes us all ‘smart about race’. She tells us what race, racism, and prejudice are, their effects in society, and what we can do to change the racial order of things. Getting Smart about Race will help advance our national dialogue about the continuing significance of race.

-- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University; author of Racism Without Racists
Margaret Andersen’s Getting Smart about Race is a roadmap for the substantive and constructive conversation about race we say we need to have. With the first sentence and one thoughtful question, she unsettles the racial landscape...But she doesn’t just discuss the problem, she offers a way for us to discover the shared humanity which must be the foundation for racial healing in the United States of America. -- Jeffrey Blount, Emmy-award winning television director and author of The Emancipation of Evan W