Tim Wise
Tim Wise
Timothy Jacob "Tim" Wiseis an American anti-racism activist and writer. Since 1995, he has given speeches at over 600 college campuses across the U.S. He has trained teachers, corporate employees, non-profit organizations and law enforcement officers in methods for addressing and dismantling racism in their institutions...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth4 October 1968
CountryUnited States of America
believe inability requires stare states truth united
To believe that the United States is post-racial requires an almost incomprehensible inability or unwillingness to stare truth in the face.
writing color years
Antiracism is not "my" campaign. I have been doing antiracism organizing, activism, educating and writing for 20 years, in one form or another, but it's not a personal crusade. My work is part of a larger tradition, and larger effort, involving mostly people of color, and of course some white allies as well.
thinking color keys
I think for folks of color the key to combatting racism period is a) trusting their instincts and b) solidarity with one another.
children color long
People of color have to do this work as a mater of everyday survival. And so long as they have to, who am I to act as if I have a choice in the matter? Especially when my future and that of my children in large part depends on the eradication of racism? There is no choice.
real mean tangible
Being asked to describe what 'post-racial' means is a bit like being asked to describe a leprechaun, cold fusion or unicorns: we know what is meant, but, if we are willing to be honest, we also know that none of the four describe something real, something tangible, something true.
thinking white remember
There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them...
reality color white
The system of white supremacy is intended to make folks of color doubt themselves, their intelligence, their abilities, their very sanity. And so it's important to remember that folks of color know their own realities.
song fighting winning
And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.
air empowering growth
The power of resistance is to set an example: not necessarily to change the person with whom you disagree, but to empower the one who is watching and whose growth is not yet completed, whose path is not at all clear, whose direction is still very much up in the proverbial air.
children kids color
So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe was the old," in one stroke eradicating the narratives of indigenous persons for whom America was hardly new, and any nonwhite kids whose old worlds had been in Africa or Asia, not Europe.
country white people
If you want to know if racism is a problem in your country, you might not want to ask white people.