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288 pages, ebook
First published January 9, 2014
“I’ve come to feel that the straightforward airing of experiences and beliefs is a necessary, albeit uncomfortable, pathway to interpersonal and intercultural understanding and healing. Intimate human connection and enduring trust are the rewards of courageous conversation. The trick for me has been learning to stay in the conversation long enough to get to the other side, where niceness gives way to authenticity, understanding, and trust, the ingredients necessary for social stability.”I will try to stay in the conversation long enough, and I hope black citizens also stay in the conversation. I understand the exhaustion, truly. So you don’t have to answer whites all by yourself, and maybe not every time it comes up. But if we’re going to get through this, we’re gonna have to engage. Maybe if whites come at least halfway it won’t be so bad.
“If there’s a place for tolerance in racial healing, perhaps if has to do with tolerating my own feelings of discomfort that arise when a person, of any color, expresses an emotion not welcome in the culture of niceness. It also has to do with tolerating my own feelings of shame, humiliation, regret, anger, and fear so I can engage, not run. For me, tolerance is not about others; it’s about accepting my own uncomfortable emotions as I adjust to a changing view of myself as imperfect and vulnerable. As human.”
"I thought white was the raceless race--just plain, normal, the one against which all others were measured.
What I've learned is that thinking myself raceless allowed for a distorted frame of reference built on faulty beliefs."
The powerlessness and isolation I felt as a bystander (which I didn’t even realize I was) have been replaced by a sense of empowerment that comes with feeling there’s a critical role for me in dismantling racism. But here’s the catch: it’s trickier than one would think to take on the role of ally and not be, well too white. I should not be in the role to take over, dominate, or be an expert. The role is not for me to swoop in and “fix.” The white ally role is a supporting one, not a leading one. (p.302)One of the things I liked about the book was that it was divided into many short chapters, and at the end of each chapter were questions and suggested exercises. This setup seems to lend itself to encouraging group discussions using the book.
...every workshop I went to left me feeling increasingly aware of how easy it was to say something offensive, ironically serving only to ramp up my fears of putting my foot in my mouth and humiliating myself.... I found myself caught in a cycle of seeking wisdom only to become increasingly anxious. The more I became aware of the ways in which I might say the wrong thing and of how fed up many people of color were with white ignorance, the more I sought wisdom." (126)But from where does this wisdom come? It's not the job of people of color to educate whites about their own privilege, but many whites just won't discuss it. What to do?