The author and activist chats about his new book, white denial and gay rights.

Tim Wise isn't your average white guy.

The author and activist, who began his work as an organizer with the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, has spent the last three decades combating racism from within “the belly of the beast of whiteness,” as he puts it.

In his new book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, Wise reflects on what he calls Racism 2.0—a new brand of white supremacy that operates under the guise of post-racialism.

He talked with ColorLines about his approach to racial justice activism and the challenges and possibilities advocates face under the new administration.

How do you calibrate your message to all these different groups you speak to and about? Whom do you see as your main audience?
Obviously, my initial, and primary audience is white folks who typically haven't really been asked to think about these issues very much, especially not by another white person.

I sort of take that direction to do that from two sources: First, the old admonition that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] gave to white activists in '67, which was, “Go work with your people.”... It's scary to do sometimes. It's a lot easier to sort of do the kumbaya moment thing, rather than to go and challenge your own, and I take that advice that folks of color gave very seriously.

And then secondly, my relationship with the folks at the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and other mentors of color whom I've had, who have said, ”We really need for you to principally work on challenging other white folks to think about these things in a new way."

Is the goal better integration between communities or dialogue for dialogue's sake? What's the end game?
“It's not the role of so-called experts, whether they're white or folks of color, to really do that thinking for the people at the grassroots.

When the SNCC members would get together in church basements in the South in 1961, '62, '63, and sit there for eight hours hammering out plans about how they were going to break the back of apartheid in Mississippi, they didn't go in and listen to a bunch of experts tell them what to do. They went in, and listened to one another, thought it through, framed some of objectives and came out with some amazing plans. And not one of those strategies was handed down by the so-called experts.

Dr. King, James Lawson, all those folks—as important as they were from the motivational angle and inspirational angle and the framework angle—they're not the ones who really set forward a lot of the strategy. Those were grassroots folks..... And so the role of the writer, the essayist, the speaker, is to broaden people's analysis and understanding of what they need to be looking at, and then trust that they have the competence and the ability, and certainly the wherewithal, and the desire, to be the instruments of their own liberation.

Do we need soul-searching in the racial justice movement about how we can make ourselves more relevant to other communities and movements?
The soul-searching has to be mutual. I think the problem with building coalitions has been far more a problem of other social justice movements not wanting to look at race and privilege.... But at the same time,we do have to first of all say, “We're not saying we're wanting to supplant your existing critical work on healthcare, education, militarism, the, environment, with anti-racism work.” We're not saying, ”Hey stop all that other stuff, and do what we're doing.”

What we're saying is, ”We're trying to offer an analysis, a lens that you can bring to your important work, to make your important work more successful. And I think maybe, we haven't always communicated [that] as well as we should.”