About the book:

“Vivid and engaging, Silent Racism persuasively demonstrates that silent racism—racism by people who by all accounts would be classified as “not racist”—is instrumental in the production of institutional racism. Trepagnier argues that heightened race awareness is more important in changing racial inequality than judging whether individuals are racist. The collective voices and confessions of “nonracist” white women heard in this book help reveal that all individuals harbor some racist thoughts and feelings. Trepagnier argues that the oppositional categories of racist/not racist are outdated. The oppositional categories should be replaced in contemporary thought with a continuum model that more accurately portrays today’s racial reality in the United States.”

Following the ideas in his book The Heart of Whiteness, Jensen argues that — even decades after the significant achievements of the civil-rights movement and with an African-American president — it is still appropriate to describe the United States as a white-supremacist society, in terms of how we think and how we live. Through an analysis of contemporary racial ideology, Jensen presents a framework for critiquing the naturalizing of power and privilege in other arenas of our lives (gender, class, nationality, and ecology). How have we come to accept so easily systems of domination and subordination? How did we become resigned to hierarchy? How can we challenge the unjust and unsustainable nature of the systems in which we live?