White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001

Being a 5th generation native of Dallas, I enjoyed this book immensely. But what I liked most about this book was the frankness and un-whitewashed facts of racism that existed in Dallas from the etiology of the city until this Day. As an African American, I appreciated the way the author told our story in an unfiltered way and with deliberate transparency. I would recommend And require this book to every graduating DISD student before graduation as well as to all ethnic groups coming to or currently living in Dallas. There was very little that I disliked about this book. I would have liked to have read more of the plight of the Native Americans that originally lived in the Dallas area and their stories which I feel would have made the book the complete package. But it still stands as a solid and outstanding book as it is. This is the most comprehensive true document on Dallas’ race relationship and history that I have ever read.

I read this book for the first time as a hard cover from the library. It was so excellent that I ordered a Kindle copy, looking forward to the search function and electronic navigation features so that I could use it for reference. Unfortunately, the ebook is inexpertly formatted around footnotes. Not only is spacing inconsistent, the footnote numbers aren’t electronically linked to the footnote content. I’m greatly disappointed that this important history of race relations in Dallas is not set up for use as a reference resource.I’ll be happy to update this review to 5 stars if the formatting issue is resolved.

This compelling book goes a long way toward explaining Dallas's dysfunctional political machine by exposing the history and nature of its engine. According to Phillips, political power in Dallas has always been partitioned on a sliding scale of "whiteness", with WASPs at the top, African Americans at the bottom, and everyone else (notably Jews and Hispanics) jockeying for position in between-- a practice that is still in effect today. The evidence for Phillips' argument is overwhelming and it will be interesting to see the reaction to this book (if any) by Dallas's power structure and its critics. Phillips spares no one, including Dallas's current civil rights activists, whom he accuses of taking only a superficial stab at real change and minority empowerment.

Well, turns out that the author of the book happens to be my history class teacher in college. Isn't that neat? I like to read, however history is not my strogest subject: toooo much reading. The book arrived in great condition and I'm enjoying it. There's a lot of things I'm learning about Dallas: the city in which I live. I reccommend this book to my fellow Dallasites.

This is a great read written by a highly regarded scholar.

This book has one of the best sections I have found on the role of dispensationalism in American thinking. If you don't know the term, it refers to the belief that there are specific time periods referred to in the Bible and that we are approaching the end times.

The book was informative but is chronologically challenged. The author seemed to jump around time periods and made it difficult to draw a straight line from one event to the next. Also, I felt like not enough time and attention was given to Dallas in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's.

Reveals among other things how wealthy white businessmen promulgated the myth of Dallas as having sprung from nothing but their own acumen, and deliberately used race to keep the working class divided against itself.