PositiveThe Chicago Review of BooksRow and his sources paint a portrait of whiteness teetering on its axis, inherently unstable ... These might sound like hot takes, but in Row’s hands, they feel cool and contemplative. His essays read less like arguments than meditations on the themes of race. Row digresses; he teases out; he peppers his essays with almost-epiphanies that he promptly complicates. He poses questions and questions himself, hyper-aware of his own subjectivity. More than he generalizes, Row zooms in. His essays overflow with block quotes ... When Row doesn’t quote, he lists examples ... Sometimes, the density of Row’s secondary sources feels like a defense of his right to his subject ... In this collection, Row tries to tell the full story. Still, in passages of White Flights, he continues trying to control how he’s read ... It’s hard for Row—or for anyone—to completely abandon this pose of self-knowledge. But Row argues that white people need to abandon it, along with the attached myth that self-knowledge is a private pursuit.
