So we would be racist without knowing it. And this is the strength of his well documented and extremely didactic essay. He patiently demonstrates, using numerous examples, how, by creating blacks, European societies invented whites.  — Le Monde

Ultra documented, fluid and precise, exciting.  — Télérama

The former hero of 1998 suggests that France face its unthought. To advance. — L’Humanité

Beyond racism, Lilian Thuram gives us a plea for those who are stigmatized today in society. — Amina

In a provocative essay, the former footballer and world champion denounces the biased thinking in favour of white people, still widespread today, which stops society seeing all of us as what we are: human beings.

“This is not an is not an anti-White book. I ask for only one thing: that we acknowledge the facts with honesty and our eyes open, that we free our minds from prejudice so that we may one day rise above differences that are skin-deep.”

One day, I asked my oldest friend: “Eric, are you aware that I’m black?” “Yes.” “So… If I’m black, what are you?” “Well, I’m normal.”

Weird word, normal. To me, it was a detonator. I realized abruptly that the Whites don’t see themselves as white and, more broadly, they don’t realize what a dominant position history has placed them in. But when we ask them: “Would you like to be treated like society treats black people?” all, without exception, reply: “No.” It’s good that they know this. But do they really? And why do they let it happen?

These questions are at the root of this essay, where I try to decipher the way white superiority has entrenched itself in our minds through the centuries, to the point where it seems self-evident, even today. That is what Thinking White is: I speak, I tell others what they should be, but no-one has a right to do that to me. Men’s age-old domination over women works in the same way.

This book revisits racism in history: slavery, the Code Noir, the instrumentalization of science and religion, colonial conquests and the empires, post-decolonisation and the pillaging of natural resources, the theft of African heritage, to name a few. It examines the invisible intellectual mechanisms that reinforce white domination. It is not an is not an anti-White book. I ask for only one thing: that we acknowledge the facts with honesty and our eyes open, that we free our minds from prejudice so that we may one day rise above differences that are skin-deep.