With a new preface and updated chapters, White Like Me is one-part memoir, one-part polemical essay collection. It really is a personal examination of how racial privilege styles the daily lives of white Us citizens in every realm: employment, education, housing, criminal justice, and somewhere else.

Using stories from his have life, Tim Smart demonstrates the ways that racism not only burdens people of color, but also benefits, in relative terms, those who are “white like him.” He discusses how racial privilege could harm whites over time and make progressive social change not as likely. He explores the ways in which whites can challenge their unjust privileges, and explains in apparent and convincing vocabulary why it is in the very best curiosity of whites themselves to take action. Using anecdotes rather than stale statistics, Smart weaves a narrative that’s simultaneously readable and yet scholarly, analytical and yet available.