The Abolition of White Democracy. By Joel Olson. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 248p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Joel Olson's book is a provocative argument for the elimination
of white power in the United States. He argues that whiteness is, unlike
blackness, not an identity but an illegitimate source of political
privilege. Whites have constructed U.S. democracy around conceptions of
freedom, equality, and citizenship that shore up their political privilege
in a fundamentally bipolar racial system. This racial system admits
immigrants and other persons of color only by consistently and ever more
surreptitiously subordinating blacks and furthering white empowerment.
Olson directs his argument against the assumption that white racism lurks
in the application of liberal principles, and not in the principles
themselves. He argues that a prejudicial politics is built into U.S.
democracy and concludes that ridding the system of racial politics
requires altering our basic principles.