White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy

by Abby L. Ferber

Ferber's provocative critique examines white supremacists' firm belief that white men are becoming victims and the repercussions of their attempts to assert white male power.

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 1998

Reviews

[Dreshawn Stevens · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had it been a diatribe against jewish, asian or black men, this misandric book would've been labeled as hate propaganda.

[Asher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and illuminating book revealing how race and gender are constructed in white supremacist discourse and what that means for mainstream constructions of race and gender.

[Laura]

Buffon and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach are considered early founders of modern anthropology. Blumenbach advanced his own systematic racial classification in his 1775 study On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, designating five human races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. While he still considered races to be the product of one creation, he ranked them on a scale according to their distance from the “civilized” Europeans. He introduced the term “Caucasian”, chosen because he believed that the Caucasus region in Russia produced the world’s most beautiful women. This assertion typifies the widespread reliance upon aesthetic judgments in ranking races. West asserts that the tremendous influence of the classical revival upon Enlightenment thought embedded classical ideals of beauty and proportion within science. Ancient Greeks were believed to represent the ideal, and they became the standard against which other peoples were literally measured. West argues that the role of Greek classical aesthetics and cultural norms in shaping modern scientific discourse about race cannot be underestimated. In the work of Blumenbach, the aesthetic criteria and cultural ideals of Ancient Greece began to come to the forefront... he praised the symmetrical face as the most beautiful... precisely because it approximated... the proper anatomical proportions found in Greek sculpture.”

[Mckinley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raises some interesting points worth examining. Looks at the anxiety over interracial sexuality that prevails in white supremacy discourse through their publications and writing.
Legislation of the 'one-drop-rule' (one drop of black blood makes the person black) means that white women in relationships with black men are harmful but not white men having sexual relations with black women.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a sociology textbook and somewhat dated, but not that much, sadly.

[Kirsten Dyck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ferber's research is done on out-of-date literature (even at the time she was writing), her argument goes around in circles, and she commits a stunning failure of logic in advocating both the eradication of race as a concept and the continuation of Affirmative Action. Read her compilation volume "Home-Grown Hate" instead.