1. Rachael Smith
618 Cabrillo St.
San Francisco, California
94118
If you attended Tim Wise’s talk on Tuesday, February 26th, then you experienced
the happy chaos of more than 600 people spilling into McLaren Hall and scrambling to
find a seat. And it wasn’t just the USF community that showed up – professors and
students from all over the bay area commuted to our campus to see Cornel West’s
“vanilla brother,” the most prominent antiracist activist in the nation – a white man who
also happens to be a refreshingly ruthless critic of white privilege.
One may think we are well on our way towards a post-racist society, especially
after the second inauguration of our black president. Some of us claim to “not see” color,
that we accept everyone as equal and in turn, we stay hushed on the subject of racism.
We fear that just by talking about racism, we perpetuate it. Tim Wise considers this a
delusion and sheds light on it by applying the same silent solution to world hunger:
“Imagine if someone were to say to you, ‘Did you know that there are billions of children
around the world starving due to lack of food—SHHHH!!! Damn fool! Don’t talk about
starvation… People will starve.’”
As well as being a prominent antiracist activist, Tim Wise is the author of six
books, one of them being the acclaimed memoir "White Like Me: Reflections on Race
from a Privileged Son” (City Lights Publishers, 2012). Wise has spoken at over 800
college campuses before ours, where he came to discuss a central theme of his 2010 book
"Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity.” The
book argues for deeper color-consciousness in both public and private practice.
In terms of political colorblindness, Tim Wise demands that we wake up and
smell the black coffee. Dripping with sarcasm, he tells us that a black president can mean
racism is taken care of – exactly in the way that sexism is magically gone in Pakistan due
to their past female prime ministers. Wise says no, asserting that a black president does
not warrant us to consider ourselves so vastly superior to our days of slavery that we
suddenly have permission to numb ourselves from reality, and assume the “politically

2. correct” position of color-blindness. Wise says that we cannot be blind to color, because
“color has had consequences and continues to have consequences”.
After a warm welcome from Dr. Mary J. Wardell, Wise stepped up to the podium,
not in a suit but in a casual green cargo jacket. After a few friendly jokes, he assured us
that the talk he’d give would be in no way mild. Being on our private Catholic Jesuit
campus, he even pointed out the historically incorrect, light-skinned Jesus that hangs on
most crucifixes. Yes, he went there – and then, discussed Chris Rock’s controversial
tweet circa July 4th last year: “Happy White People’s Independence Day! The slaves
weren’t free, but I’m sure they enjoyed the fireworks.”
Contrary to Wise’s approachable demeanor, it was understood that for as long as
he stood behind that podium, we were in for some cold hard truth: particularly about the
racial consequences that lie within wealth distribution, unemployment and healthcare.
Wise states that wealth is being disproportionally and unfairly distributed in our
country. The result is that wealth expands exponentially, because of interest, creating
larger and larger wealth gaps. And it is not necessarily income that matters in this
country. It is our accumulated wealth that allows us to buy houses, and start businesses,
and be valid participants in this nation.
Wise asserts that a typical white middle class family has 20 times the net worth of
their typical African-American and Latino family counterparts. Close to 100,000 dollars
more. And he suggests that it is not because they’ve worked harder, nor is it because
white men have some wizardly investment wisdom. Wise assures us that, “there is an
awful lot of money that can be lost by white guys without any help from black people, or
Mexicans, whether they are documented or not.” It seems that there is no way that
domestic theft by any minority group could possibly amount to the efficiency of the white
men on Wall Street, who managed to lose 12 trillion dollars in a matter of 18 months last
year.
Wealth distribution is all dependent upon if one can even get a job to begin with,
and Wise shared some statistics pertaining to national unemployment with us that day.
Black people and Latinos are twice as likely to be unemployed than comparable white
people. In 2009, the white teen unemployment rate hit 25.3 percent, a historic high, and

3. the nation was up in arms. However, what remained unmentioned that year was the black
teen unemployment rate, which was 45 percent and had been that way since the early 90s.
Wise jumped from topic to topic like jazz, and as he put it, “not the smooth kind”
– the third prominent topic being health care. Wise shares that the Healthcare and
Wellness Committee seem to be utterly bewildered as to why, though these minorities
have health care available to them, are still presenting negative outcomes. Health care is
related to geography, which is related to race. Day-to-day experiences of racialized
mistreatment, both micro and macro aggressions, Wise says has significant physiologica l
consequences. African-American women, with a college degree, health care coverage and
a good job have double the infant mortality rate of their offspring than even poor white
women that are less educated, and who smoke every day of their pregnancy. Wise
approximates that the health of at least 8,500 people are being affected by this racial
consequence and yet, the Healthcare and Wellness Committee cannot speak of it.
Because not to see color, not to talk about racism, for some reason is the decided upon
“solution.”
Wise closed his talk with the simple plea for race conversation, if even just out of
self-consideration as a nation. In 20 years white people will be the minority – or at the
very least, will be sharing the population 50/50 with non-whites. Race conversation is
gravely essential to our country’s future, and Wise suggested that his mere presence on
our campus attests to that. Wise said, “I am 44 years old, I am white, I have a bachelor’s
degree, and I can come and tell you more about the system of racism and get away with
more, than the President of the United States. That’s how not post-racist we are.”
After a dynamic Q&A period, the talk had ended. Everyone was inspired, looking
bright and hopeful out in the lobby. “I think it provided some really important food for
thought in a community that has a lot of racial diversity but not a lot of dialogue about it,
and still considers itself progressive,” said Haley Zaremba, Media Studies major at USF
(’14).
When asked for any words of further advice for our students, Wise said to start by
taking personal inventory. Take a good look at your life and your privileges. “Let it
percolate. Let it sink in,” he says. Then get more involved in local social justice
foundations that are already established – for example, The Catalyst Project, a center for

4. political education and movement-building based here in San Francisco. Their
information can be found at www.collectiveliberation.org. Tim Wise’s feature-length
documentary film, “White Like Me” explores his personal biography and political
analysis as well, and is scheduled for release this April. As Benjamin Lempert, current
professor of Harlem Renaissance Literature said, “more important than just agreeing with
Tim Wise, would be to have the actual conversation.”