MICHAEL BRANDOW

New English Review Press

June 27, 2023

 

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"Michael Brandow gives us a personal survey of Jim Snow America, where all social ills are blamed on whiteness and black citizens are showered with preferences and excuses. This is the 'lived experience' of an older middle-class white American negotiating the racial battlefield, told with unsparing frankness and considerable wit."

 

—John Derbyshire, author of We Are Doomed

 

 

What’s the Problem Now? Black Grievances and White Guilt

is an old white guy’s witty and insightful account of his struggle to survive in New York City without becoming a racist. Unlike so many others in these uptight times of stifling seriousness and cartoonish certainty, he hasn’t forgotten how to laugh at his race, or at another race. Anecdotes from a lifetime of “culture clashes” with black people are set against playful, non-dogmatic reflections on hot-button issues like black identity, white self-loathing, and racial conflict. This old white guy may not be a racist, but he admits our current infatuation with blackness has made him numb with “racial boredom.” A tragicomedy for people of all shades.