Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
Lowest White Boy  By  cover art

Lowest White Boy

By: Greg Bottoms
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $9.45

Buy for $9.45

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

An innovative, hybrid work of literary nonfiction, Lowest White Boy takes its title from Lyndon Johnson's observation during the civil rights era: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket."

Greg Bottoms writes about growing up white and working class in Tidewater, Virginia, during school desegregation in the 1970s. He offers brief stories that accumulate to reveal the everyday experience of living inside complex, systematic racism that is often invisible to economically and politically disenfranchised white southerners - people who have benefited from racism in material ways while being damaged by it, he suggests, psychologically and spiritually. Placing personal memories against a backdrop of social history and cultural critique, Lowest White Boy explores normalized racial animus and reactionary white identity politics, particularly as these are collected and processed in the mind of a child.

©2019 West Virginia University Press (P)2019 Tantor

What listeners say about Lowest White Boy

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Thought Provoking

It is very interesting to hear (read) a book such as this. I greatly appreciate the authors interpretations and point of view from someone other than a black persons viewpoint. I truly feel that this should be a mandatory book read for those who are studying history. It would be interesting to also hear from a mixed race couple who has a mixed raced child and how do they deal with inequalities within their lives. I truly thank you for this book, though NOT eye opening to me, but a real part of this world that needs to be spoken by an informed and well educated “white” person. The author said many things that I have always thought, but it does my heart good to hear a person of the same race say the very thing that has been in my mind for years. If I can belittle someone else and try to convince the majority, then I will be a bigger person and better in everyone’s mind! Hmmm!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Highly Recommend!

I find many recent (3-4 decades) Naturalized immigrants to our country do not know the “true” history, heck most generational Americans don’t either, but these newer immigrants tend to believe the altered history/truth told by White men, whom they came to mimic to achieve The American Dream.

I wanted to read/listen to “Lowest White Boy” before recommending to a Naturalized immigrant, Christian, person of color friend living in West Virginia, married to a White American. Highly Recommend!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!