Welcome straight talk for a new age in race relations.
A librarian and anti-racism educator offers would-be White allies lessons in how to lift up Black women and begin healing the cancer of American racism.
For Whites serious about being allies to African Americans, “words aren’t enough.” Adding hashtags to a social media site or acknowledging that the Black Lives Matter movement is important does nothing to change the systemic injustices that Black Americans—and especially Black women—face every day. Michelle provides a step-by-step guide for committed Whites to evolve beyond race “fragility” and take the hard, sometimes painful actions the author sees as determinants of true allyship. She divides the book into four sections, each representing one week in an ally crash course. The first week begins with learning to recognize one’s own racism and giving Black women the opportunity to take the lead in expressing their feelings, struggles, and discontents, no matter the discomfort on the part of allies. The next step consists of seeing and discussing how race privileges White people and how unexamined relationships with White men support White supremacy. White allies must then actively seek to educate friends, family, and everyone in their sphere about racism and be prepared to fight against push back. They must also use their privilege, especially in mixed-race groups, to prioritize Black women and grant them the space to speak their truths while inspiring other Whites to follow their lead. For every action she details, Michelle offers ideas for journaling and sharing with accountability partners, books and websites to (self-)educate, and starter questions for honest conversations in anti-racism “affinity groups.” Though it focuses mostly on Black women, this timely, no-nonsense handbook offers an important blueprint for White allies to carry out the often uncomfortable but necessary work of promoting racial equality among all marginalized people. Michelle’s work is a useful complement to Sophie Williams’ Anti-Racist Ally and, for parents, Britt Hawthorne’s Raising Antiracist Children.
Welcome straight talk for a new age in race relations.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4967-3837-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dafina/Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
