What was your motivation in writing the original Washington Post op-ed on which the book was based?Īs a historian I understand the power of narratives and how they define and frame reality. She cites support from Emory College Dean Robin Forman, faculty colleagues who read and commented on drafts, Emory students who served as research assistants, and Woodruff Library, which had “every book I needed every database was there.”īelow, Anderson talks about the ideas behind “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.” “This is a book that could not have happened without Emory University’s incredible intellectual strengths, from students, to faculty, to resources,” says Anderson. Anderson put her research and writing into high gear to get the manuscript into print - and into the national conversation - quickly. The op-ed resulted in a literary agent seeking her out and publisher Bloomsbury offering a book contract. What she did not anticipate was the op-ed going viral with more than 5,000 online comments on the Post’s website, becoming one of the most-read articles of the year. “When you say things of consequence, there are consequences,” says Anderson, who is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and chair of African American Studies. In her op-ed she called Ferguson “the latest outbreak of white rage,” the result of white backlash against African American advancement. White Rage is an important new addition to the national dialogue about race in America.When Emory historian Carol Anderson wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on protests and lootings in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the death of Michael Brown, she knew there would be a reaction. Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, every time African Americans have made advances towards full democratic participation, negative white reaction has sparked a deliberate pushback against their gains. White Rage won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and was a New York Times best seller. Anderson wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that this was instead white rage in action.Īnderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and a Guggenheim Fellow in Constitutional Studies. The events of August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri were referred to as black rage by media commentators in describing the angry response by African Americans. From the Civil War to the Ku Klux Klan to current examples of police brutality, her work is just as relevant when discussing present-day headlines as it is to the past. In White Rage, Carol Anderson demonstrates how strong pushback against racial progress has been ongoing throughout our history.
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