A solid first book for white people to read to begin learning about racism. The hook and focus indicated by the title points towards how unprepared we generally are in multiple senses for conversations about race and racism. In particular, most of us never learn to handle “the smallest amount of racial stress” and so “we become highly fragile in conversations about race” (2). The book proceeds to examine the ways in which white experience and self-hood are put together and to present some of the important histories and present-day realities of white supremacy in the United States. The book’s goal is to open space for white readers to work on our fragility, our ignorance, and the many ways we contribute to reproducing racism, and to get better at engaging in both everyday and collective ways with practices of racial justice.
For some reason before I picked it up, I had it in my head that this was a scholarly book, but while its author was trained and has in the past worked as an academic, this is very much a book directed at non-specialist readers. And quite effectively so, I would add. Of course, it should be viewed as a starting point rather than an end point for white folks learning about white supremacy and struggles for racial justice – there are moments when centering white voices critiquing whiteness is useful, but if they are ultimately going to point towards justice, those moments need to be part of a broader context centering BIPOC voices. Even so, I would say there is also value to white folks who have spent more time thinking about these things engaging with this book as well, as most of figuring out how to be anti-racist when you’re born into whiteness is not about acquiring propositional knowledge but about practice, and reading this kind of book can be a useful focus for the sort of constant return of attention to where it needs to be that is inherent to any long-term practice.
It is US-centric, but still a useful read for Canadians. I’d maybe recommend white canucks new to the issue also read Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives and Chlesea Vowel’s Indigenous Writes, just for starters. Also, as is often true of these kinds of anti-oppressive books that focus on individual practice, it doesn’t have a lot to say about opposition to white supremacy as radical collective political project, and that’s ultimately where I think these things need to go.
Still, a very useful read if you are a white North American who hasn’t thought much about race and racism before, and a useful one even if you have.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.