Lilian Thuram is a footballer who has spoken out about Racism. This book uses that experience as a starting point, but he doesn’t stop there. He zooms out to explore issues of Race and Racism. In particular, he explores the creation of the concept of the White Race and its mirror, the concept of the Black Race. It looks at both identities, exploring how these identities function as a cage for both black and white individuals.
Most books on racial identity have a particular context or setting, emerging from the USA or UK. This book is particularly interesting since it explores how the concepts of Race and Racism act and interact in France and mainland Europe.

If you have studied issues around Race, much of this book’s arguments will feel familiar. Other authors have covered this ground. However, if you are new to the concepts explored, this book could provide you with an engaging primer. It’s a recommend. It may be a good gift to give to a young football fan who wishes to understand current debates around Racism.

"There's another Black on the third floor. I think you'd get on well."

Lilian Thuram is completely unknown to most Americans. He is a household name in Europe and throughout the Caribbean, where he is from. He is tall, fit, handsome, and a world-class football star. But unusually, he is also an intellectual. I have seen him interviewed numerous times over the past couple of decades. He is precise, clearheaded, insightful, well-spoken, careful, direct, eloquent and a critical listener. And as a world celebrity/traveler, he is invited to speak and participate in innumerable situations, out of total respect. So given the opportunity to review the English translation of his latest book, White thinking, I said yes instantly.

The process he calls White thinking is insufferably sanctimonious and self-centered. He says Whites firmly believe they are the most "humanist, neutral and universal" people in the world. This gives them the right to impose their values on everyone else, even though they are not humanist, neutral or universal by any measure. The simple fact they killed 50-60 million Blacks in order to export 12-13 million slaves to the New World is just a starting point. The sorry truth is they are not repping humanity, but capitalism, the winner take all, everyone for themselves attitude that is destroying the ecosphere as we know it. Concepts like caring, solidarity, the common good, conservation and respect do not figure in White universalism.

Even today, Whites are still out there imposing their policies, values and perspectives on everyone else. Thuram gives the lovely example of a White giving advice to a Black co-worker: "There's another Black on the third floor. I think you'd get on well." The White thinks of it as being considerate and giving valuable guidance. Now imagine a Black saying that to a White.

To demonstrate the rightfulness of White thinking, Whites had to invent myths about Blacks. They made them subhumans, ignorant, oversexed, murderers, rapists and thugs, incapable of controlling themselves, let alone being given responsibilities. It is of course a way to justify incredible cruelty as Whites protected their assets (slaves) and grew their capital (more slaves). Black bodies were the key to their success, so they had to be portrayed as unworthy of human rights.

At first, it was an obvious fraud. In 1770, after a lifetime observing this White thinking, Abbé Raynal in France published a book where he exposed it:
"...But the Negroes are a human species born for slavery. They are stubborn, deceitful, wicked: they acknowledge themselves the superiority of our intelligence and almost recognise the justice of our empire.
"The Negroes are stubborn, because slavery breaks the last resorts of the soul. They are wicked, but not as much as you deserve. They are deceitful because one does not owe the truth to tyrants. They recognise the superiority of our minds because we have perpetuated their ignorance; the justice of our empire because we have abused their weakness. Faced with the impossibility of maintaining our superiority through the use of force, a criminal policy based in deception was crafted. You have almost persuaded them that they are a singular species, born for abjection and dependence, for work and punishment. You have gone to great lengths to degrade these poor unfortunates, and then you reproach them for being vile."
His book was publicly burned in 1781.

Fast forward to the 20th century and you have this: "In The View from Afar, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss succinctly declares that ‘a universalist doctrine evolves ineluctably toward a model equivalent to the one-party state.’" Homogenizing humanity to White specifications is hardly Nirvana. Thuram calls it the culture of erasure.

He says: "White people need to be invited to stop pretending to be neutral. To be neutral is to sanction racism. White people have to have the courage to remove the mask through which they observe such scenes. In order to intervene, they have to stop being White and become just human. To be human is to go beyond the colour of one’s skin."

For Thuram, it is a simple extension of the patriarchy. The model was honed and proven by cavemen: "Might we not say that the history of male resistance to the emancipation of women is more revealing than the emancipation of women (itself)? And wouldn't the history of White elite resistance to the emancipation of non-Whites be jut as enlightening?"

The central idea is that Whites don't think they're colored: "We need...to realise that they have been educated to see the colour of their skin as politically neutral." So White is normal, and every other shade of skin is a variant, and a lesser one at that: "No one is born White. Whiteness happens to them, whether they like it or not, but unlike for non-Whites, it acts in their favour." And this from people who only represent 16.6% of the global population, and whose origins were of course, quite black. "Thinking White has made me wear a mask of Blackness."

He has a great deal to say about colonization, something the American discussion avoids entirely. His timing is perfect for France, where the upcoming presidential election finds all kinds of nonsense spouting from candidates' mouths. Some claim, for example, that Algeria actually benefited from French colonization, despite the millions of deaths, impoverishment and destabilization the country has yet to overcome. For Thuram, this is White thinking in bloom. (For Americans, it would mean examining the sorry state of the Central American republics, and why so many of their citizens try to immigrate to the US - just as Algerians move to France. But the USA is far too deep in denial to even consider such talk.)

The book is absolutely chock full of looking at things differently, from perspectives that are not White. Here are a few more random observations. White thinking:
-doesn't respect human imperfections
-doesn't respect human life
-does not even see the poorest in society
-means there is always a winner and a loser
-means everyone gets ranked: first, second and third place.
-killed the notion that humans and nature are one
-benefits from diminishing nonWhites
-claims to be sensitive to the Black community. But there is no Black community, any more than there is a White community. Nobody addresses policies to the White community, and pretending that all Blacks think alike is insulting on top of being racist.
-is the Anthropocene.

Thuram's view is focused on France, of course, where the trail of racism is slightly different from what happened in the USA. The hypocrisy is therefore somewhat different, which is interesting in itself. For example, the French do not collect race stats, by law. Since everyone is equal, there is no need, so no one is allowed to. It has made study essentially impossible. And racism is absolutely rampant throughout the country. This makes Thuram's work both frustrating and infuriating, depending on your color.

Lilian Thuram has given his life over to fighting racism. He refutes it with unassailable logic, mountains of research, and a patient approach. But after the pleasure of reading this powerful book, you might wonder what Thuram might have accomplished had he not had to spend his life and his intellect trying to expose pathetic White thinking.

David Wineberg