White Like Me  

"What does it mean to be white?"

This is the question that filmmaker Tim Wise focuses on in his documentary White Like Me. Wise, an anti racist educator, sets out to disprove the notion that America has entered a post-racial society. Using stories from his childhood, events of the Civil Rights movement, interviews with college students, and various statistics, Wise explains that we still live in a society filled with racial inequality and white privilege. He claims that America as a whole is oblivious to the legacy of white supremacy, and that the majority of people don't realize what it means to be "white like him."

I think this documentary is interesting because I've never known of anyone to approach the issue of racism the way that Wise has. Rather than looking at society through the eyes of minorities, he explores what it's like to be white. The only things that I disliked about the documentary were the way that he interpreted some of the statistics that he used, as well as the short amount of time that he devoted to addressing reverse discrimination. I felt that Wise intended to shut down an opposing view, but instead he introduced a concept and didn't give a convincing argument against it. The facts that he used to defend his point about white supremacy included education and incarceration statistics. I felt that some of these weren't appropriate to use because they could be interpreted differently if used in another context. Wise's decision to incorporate reverse discrimination into the documentary resulted in me thinking about these statistics in a different way than he intended for his viewers to. 

Overall, White Like Me was an informative piece that brought together much of what we learned about race and inequality in our FYS class.

For more information about Time Wise and White Like Me:

http://www.timwise.org/books-and-dvds/white-like-me/