Autobiography of an Ex-White Man: Learning a New Master Narrative for America

by Robert Paul Wolff

Autobiography of an Ex-White Man is an intensely personal meditation on the nature of America by a White Philosopher who joined a Black Studies Department and found his understanding of the world transformed by the experience. The book begins with an autobiographical narrative of the events leading up to Wolff's transfer from a Philosophy Department to the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, and his experiences in the Department with his new colleagues, all of whom had come to Academia from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Wolff discovered that the apparently simple act of moving across campus to a new Department in a new building worked a startling change in the way he saw himself, his university, and his country. Reading as widely as possible to bring himself up to speed in his new field of academic responsibility, Wolff realized after a bit that his picture of American history and culture was undergoing an irreversible metamorphosis. America, he realized, has from its inception been a land both of Freedom and of Freedom for the few, and then for those who are White; Bondage at first for the many, and then for those who are not White. Slavery is thus not an aberration, an accident, a Peculiar Institution -- it is the essence and core of the American experience. Wolff's optimistic outlook leads him to express the hope that our acknowledging the realities of America's racial history and present will begin to tear down the formidable barrier to change. He sees this refashioning of the American story as a first step toward the crafting of a truly liberatory project. Robert Paul Wolff is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the author of numerous books, including Introductory Philosophy and In Defense of Anarchism.

Table of Contents

PrefaceAutobiography of an Ex-White ManMr. Shapiro's Wedding SuitA New Master Narrative for AmericaThe American GriotA Concluding WordNotesThe Original Syllabus of Fifty Major Works of Afro-American StudiesBooks by Robert Paul WolffIndex of Names

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

150 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2005

About the author

Robert Paul Wolff was an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Wolff has written widely on topics in political philosophy, including Marxism, tolerance (against liberalism and in favor of anarchism), political justification, and democracy.

Reviews

[Karen Adkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

So let's start with the fact that, in the post-Dolezal universe (I can't believe I just wrote that), this title sounds unfortunate. But don't let that put you off! First, it's clearly a literary allusion (Wolff is riffing on James Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man), but more substantively, this is just a really moving and thoughtful lived and historical reexamination of what it means to be American. Wolff (who for the record was one of my professors in graduate school) left his career as a professional philosopher to join the Afro-American studies program at Mass as they were putting together what has become a very successful PhD program. As someone who had a pretty long career in not just political philosophy but political activism, particularly around issues of racism, he saw himself as pretty aware. And the complete reversal he gets to this idea once he immerses himself in his colleagues' world is radical. It's not just hearing the stories they tell him: he realizes all his encounters with police, even when he's protesting, have been polite and respectful--not so for his equally upper-middle-class and professional black colleagues. But immersing himself into Afro-Am history, literature, philosophy, sociology (he helpfully includes the list of 50 texts that have entering PhD students read in a cohort seminar their first year) makes him realize that the story of America history books tell (the story of freedom and exceptionalism) is really a story of white America. He efficiently makes his case (his chapter examining history textbooks' presentation of slavery, and their cosmetic revisions over the decades, makes this bad faith crystal clear), and then presents an alternative story of this country that he thinks is more accurate to the reality rather than the ideology of the country. Because he's Wolff, the work is framed with plenty of humor and story-telling. Because he's Wolff, his ego also plays no small part (Wolff loves to name drop people and institutions--but to be fair, he's been around plenty of big ones). For a brief book, it's a pretty useful illustration not just of how to reexamine white privilege, but how to think about our history.

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Paul Wolff was a philosophy professor whom I much admired in graduate school and who I had hoped might be my advisor. Unfortunately (for me) he moved to UMass in Amherst so he was unavailable to me. I have long been interested in how various mentors and friends have adapted their philosophical careers to address the contemporary world. One mentor went into Environmental Studies; another studies phenomenologically the clinical encounter between physicians and patients. In his book Professor Wolff describes his transformation in joining the department of Afro-American Studies at UMass.

Autobiography of an Ex-White Man is about the personal story of Professor Wolff’s being assimilated into a new department, as well as his understanding of a new narrative of the American myth. Consistent with many other recent books on racism, Wolff points out that the U.S. is not the land of freedom many imagine. It would be more accurate to say that it is the land of slavery and freedom. He points out, as many have, that the U.S. was built on the prosperity that came from slave labor, and that it has been divided even to the present day on recognizing the humanity and contributions of African-Americans. In line with his observations, the founding myth of the U.S. is not the “promised land,” but something more like “Cain and Abel” (which may be true of most countries).

Professor Wolff’s personal journey is very revealing as regards the dynamics of university administration. He says that he was recruited to facilitate the development of a new PhD program in Afro-American Studies. He adds that he has functioned as the “Shabbes goy,” the non-Jew recruited to perform tasks forbidden on Jewish holidays. At the same time he has had to master the canon of Afro-American history and literature. Even when I knew Professor Wolff, he was willing to challenge convention, and he often ran defense for the new department in an academic environment which mainly paid lip service to black representation.

What I most admire about Professor Wolff is that he was completely willing to redirect his scholarly career in pursuit of an ideal, and that he was flexible enough to make a radical change. Philosophers are often accused of living in an “ivory tower,” but a philosopher like Wolff shows that philosophers can be fully engaged with the world.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this slim volume Wolff describes the transformative experience of being a white professor at the launching of an Afro-American studies program at UMass-Amherst. With a philosopher's pen, sharper than usual because of his politics, he demolishes the traditional historical narrative of the black (and white) experience in terms so clear that a high-school student could understand it. With a very human voice (and a few choice Jewish jokes), Wolff describes the many surprises he experienced looking at the world, finally, through his colleagues' eyes and recognizing his own white privilege. A keeper.