Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America

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. (Nov.)