PRAISE FOR

BETWEEN BARACK AND A HARD PLACE

“Wise’s short book reads like an old-school polemic: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for the 21st century… . A post-racial United States is an imagined country.”

—Washington Post

“Wise, a white anti-racism activist and scholar (and author of White Like Me), pushes plenty of buttons in this methodical breakdown of racism’s place in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory… . There’s no sugar coating here for whites, nor are there any news flashes for Americans of color, but Wise bravely enumerates the unpalatable truths of a nation still struggling to understand its legacy of racist oppression.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Wise outlines … how racism and white privilege have morphed to fit the modern social landscape. In prose that reads like his lightning-rod speeches, he draws from a long list of high-profile campaign examples to define what he calls ‘Racism 2.0,’ a more insidious form of racism that actually allows for and celebrates the achievements of individual people of color because they’re seen as the exceptions, not the rules.”

—Colorlines

“This book makes an intriguing argument and is packed with insight. Wise clearly explains the complexity of institutional racism in contemporary society. He continuously reminds the reader that Obama’s victory may signal the entrenchment of a more complicated, subtle, and insidious form of racism. The jury is still out.”

—Multicultural Review

“Tim Wise has looked behind the curtain. In Between Barack and a Hard Place he explores the real issues of race in the Obama campaign and incoming presidency, issues that the mainstream media has chosen to ignore. His book debunks any notion that the United States has entered a post-racial period; instead he identifies the problems that emerge in the context of the victory of a black presidential candidate who chose to run an essentially non-racial campaign. With this book, Wise hits the bull’s-eye.”

—Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor of
BlackCommentator.com and co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal