Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence / White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

[March 2nd, 2005]

^Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

By Judith Butler

(Verso, 168 pages, $25)

How our elected officials, media, and social and cultural institutions manage and manipulate the expression of grief is one of the principal concerns of Judith Butler's excellent new book.

For Palestinian residents of the U.S., for example, any public mourning of family members' deaths is frowned upon. To do so, particularly if those souls were killed by the U.S.-allied Israeli Defense Forces, may be considered anti-Semitic. When asked to print an obituary for two Palestinian families killed by Israeli troops, the San Francisco Chronicle recently declined, stating that it "did not wish to offend anyone," according to Butler. "We have to wonder under what conditions public grieving constitutes an 'offense' against the public itself."

Showing sympathy toward victims of U.S. attacks is similarly discouraged. When a dead child in Afghanistan "emerges in the press coverage, it is not relayed as part of the horror of war, but only in the criticism of the military's capacity to aim its bombs right. We castigate ourselves for not aiming better, as if the end goal is to aim right."

Suspension of human rights in Guantanamo Bay, U.S. support for torture abroad, and calls by our government to submit to a policy of war without question are likewise a denial of the capacity of others to mourn, to feel—and ultimately, Butler argues, to be human. Joel Preston Smith

^White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

By Tim Wise

(Soft Skull Press, 250 pages, $13.95)

The title conjures up a Saturday Night Live short film from the '80s, in which Eddie Murphy, with the help of a makeup artist, transforms temporarily into a white guy. He suddenly finds himself in a world where white people on public buses throw parties as soon as the lone black rider exits, and a white loan officer can't wait to give him all the money he needs.

Tim Wise's book makes similar—if less comical—points. White Americans, knowingly or not, afford one another privilege while holding back others. While this seems obvious, it's a point demanding restating, because, as Wise observes, white Americans often avoid discussions of race or choose to ignore it completely. That's why people don't get it when Wise, who is white, calls himself an "antiracial activist."

Wise's arguments are aimed less at starting a street movement than promoting personal change in his readers. He tells of growing up in Tennessee, as red as a red state gets, and joining the campaign to defeat neo-Nazi David Duke. Wise's style is matter-of-fact, if not eloquent, and his anecdotes have been field-tested after years on the seminar circuit.

Wise avoids moralizing by focusing on his own experiences. He comes across at times as a movement of one, living out his ideals with minimal societal and cultural support. If writing about race were easy, this important book would be unnecessary. Richard Melo