Searching for Whitopia
An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
As America becomes more and more racially diverse, Rich Benjamin noticed a phenomenon: Some communities were actually getting less multicultural. So he got out a map, found the whitest towns in the USA -- and moved in.
A journalist-adventurer, Benjamin packed his bags and embarked on a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America, to some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation. Benjamin calls these enclaves "Whitopias." In this groundbreaking book, he shares what he learned as a black man in Whitopia. Benjamin's journey to unlock the mysteries of Whitopia took him from a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations in North Idaho to exurban mega-churches down South, and many points in between. A compelling raconteur, bon vivant, and scholar, Benjamin reveals what Whitopias are like and explores the urgent social and political implications of this startling phenomenon.
Benjamin's groundbreaking study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the social and political forces propelling the rise of Donald Trump. After all, Trump carried 94 percent of America's Whitopian counties. And he won a median 67 percent of the vote in Whitopia compared to 46 percent of the vote nationwide.
Leaving behind speculation or sensationalism, Benjamin explores the future of whiteness and race in an increasingly multicultural nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Starting in 2007, Benjamin, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Demos, and, more significantly, an African-American, spent two years traveling through America's whitest communities patches of Idaho and Utah and even pockets of New York City where, according to his research, more and more white people have been seeking refuge from the increasingly multicultural reality that is mainstream America. There's plenty of potential in this premise, but Benjamin writes without any sense of purpose, alternating between undigested interviews with policy experts, self-indulgent digressions on the pleasures of golf and real estate shopping and sketchy portraits of his subjects. Despite Benjamin's countless conversations with everyone from Ed Gillespie, former head of the GOP, to a drunk in an Idaho bar, he never offers any fresh insights or practical suggestions. He concludes by barraging the reader with a series of unearned "musts": "we must revitalize the public sector," "we must work hard for a new universalism." If his time in the nation's whitest enclaves gave him any specific thoughts about how those ideals might be achieved, he would have done well to share them.
Customer Reviews
Refreshing factual book
Interesting views and experience . Liked the fact it was written by a multiracial black person . Wish everybody would read thT book. Should be part of high school political science class list of books to study.