"White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide"
4-5:30 PM | Forum Hall, Palmer Commons
Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, Emory University

Since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, White reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow. Then there was the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House. Carol carefully links these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition. She pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, and renders visible the long lineage of White rage, adding an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.