LITMIR.BIZ

       PREFACE

       “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”

      IT’S A QUESTION no one likes to hear, seeing as how it typically signifies an assumption on the part of the questioner that something is terribly wrong, something that defies logic and begs for an explanation.

      It’s the kind of query one might get from former classmates on the occasion of one’s twenty-year high school reunion: “Dear God, what the hell happened to you?” As a general rule, people don’t ask this question of those whom they consider to have dramatically improved themselves physically, emotionally, or professionally. Instead, it is more often asked of those considered to be seriously damaged, as if the only possible answer to the question would be, “Well, I was dropped on my head as a baby,” to which the questioner would then reply, “Aha, I see.”

      So whenever I’m asked this, I naturally recoil for a moment, assuming that those inquiring about the matter likely want to know what happened to me, only so that they may, having obtained the answer, carefully avoid at whatever cost having it (whatever it may be) happen to them. In my case, however, the cynicism with which I greet the question usually turns out to be unwarranted. Most of the persons who ask me “what happened” seem to be asking less for reasons of passing judgment than for reasons of genuine confusion.

      As a white man, born and reared in a society that has always bestowed upon me advantages that it has generally withheld from people of color, I am not expected to think the way I do. I am not supposed to speak against and agitate in opposition to racism and institutionalized white supremacy. Indeed, for people of color, it is often shocking to see white people even thinking about race, let alone challenging racism. After all, we don’t have to spend much time contemplating the subject if we’d rather not, and white folks have made something of a pastime out of ignoring racism, or at least refusing to call it out as a major social problem to be remedied.

      But for me, ignoring race and racism has never been an option. Even when it would have been easier to turn away, there were too many forces and circumstances pulling me back, compelling me to look at the matter square in the face—in my face. Although white Americans often think we’ve had few first-hand experiences with race, because most of us are so isolated from people of color in our day-to-day lives, the reality is that this isolation is our experience with race. We are all experiencing race, because from the beginning of our lives we have been living in a racialized society, in which the color of our skin means something socially, even while it remains largely a matter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Race may be a scientific fiction—and given the almost complete genetic overlap between persons of the various so-called races, it appears to be just that—but it is a social fact that none of us can escape no matter how much or how little we may speak of it. Just as there were no actual witches in Salem in 1692, and yet anti-witch persecution was frighteningly real, so too race can be a falsehood, even as racism continues to destroy lives and, on the flipside, to advantage those who are rarely its targets.

      A few words about terminology: When I speak of “whites” or “white folks,” I am referring to those persons, typically of European descent, who by virtue of skin color or perhaps national origin and culture are able to be perceived as “white,” as members of the dominant racial group in the Western world. I do not consider the white race to be a real thing, biologically, as modern science pretty well establishes that there are no truly distinct races, genetically speaking, within the human species. But the white race certainly has meaning in social terms, and it is in that sense that I use the concept here.

      As it turns out, this last point is more important than you might think. Almost immediately upon publication, this book’s first edition came under fire from various white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who launched a fairly concerted effort to discredit it, and me as the author. They sought to do this by jamming the review boards at Amazon.com with harsh critiques, none of which discussed the content—in all likelihood none of them had read the book—but which amounted to ad hominem attacks against me as a Jew. As several explained, being Jewish disqualifies me from being white, or writing about my experiences as a white person, since Jews are, to their way of thinking, a distinct race of evildoers that seeks to eradicate Aryan stock from the face of the earth.

      Of course, on the one hand (and ignoring for a second the Hitlerian undertones), it is absurd to think that uniquely “Jewish genes” render Jews separate from “real” whites, despite our common and recent European ancestry. And it’s even more ridiculous to think that such genes from one-fourth of one’s family, as with mine, can cancel out the three-quarters Anglo-Celtic contribution made by the rest of my ancestors. But in truth, the argument is irrelevant, given how I am using the concept of whiteness here. Even if there were something biologically distinct about Jews, this would hardly alter the fact that

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