“Racism demands an artificial and divisive construction of humanity,
in terms of how I make sense of others and also how I envision myself” (246)
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July 14, 2021. Waking Up White And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debbie Irvin. This is the book Irving wishes someone had handed her decades ago. By sharing her sometimes cringe-worthy struggle to understand racism and racial tensions, she offers a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners, and tolerance.
1. “No one alive today created this mess, but everyone alive today has the power to work on undoing it. Four hundred years since its inception, American racism is all twisted up in our cultural fabric. But there’s a loophole; people are not born racist. Racism is taught, and racism is learned. Understanding how and why our beliefs developed along racial line holds the promise of healing, liberation, and the unleashing of America’s vast human potential.” (xviii). Do you agree? Are you ready to study, ponder, discuss, and be open to ways of making this a better country?
2. “Racism wasn’t about this person or that, this upset or that, this community or that; racism is, and always has been, the way America has sorted and ranked its people in a bitterly divisive, humanity-robbing system.” (31) Share illustrations that reinforce this point.
3. “I’ve learned that the chances are high that I have more in common genetically with a darker-skinned person on the others side of the world than I do with the white woman who lives next door. Whiteness, it turns out, is but a pigment of the imagination.” (44). Why has color placed such a divisive role in the United States? What can we do to liberate us from such distortion?
4. “Skin color symbolism+favoritism+power = systemic racism.” (p.54) “The racially divisive belief barrier shows up in all American institutions: in medical policy, in emergency rooms, in education reform, in classrooms, in federal policies, and in municipal policies. Racism lives in individuals’ hearts and minds; those in power embed it into institutional policies and practices. System racism touches every aspect of every American life, and skin color determines how.” Discuss the chart and meaning as it applies in your community.
5. “The story of race is at the center of racism’s entanglement. The very idea that the world’s many peoples could be categorized by something called ‘race’ is a story, one that created a system of dominance for its storytellers.” (84) Can we start telling a different story? What could be some of the parts of a new narrative about the human family?
6. “Color-blindness, a philosophy that denies the way lives play out differently along racial lines, actually maintains the very cycle of silence, ignorance, and denial that needs to be broken for racism to be dismantled.” (102) How can we see another person if we are “color-blind”?
7. Q Have you tried to form relationships across racial lines? How have they worked out? If they didn’t get very far, how did you explain that to yourself? (123)
8. “The phrase ‘INTENT VERSES IMPACT’ had been stressed at nearly every conference and conversation about racism I’d been a part of.” (159) Can you share an illustration from your own life experience?
9. “I think about the angry-black-man stereotype and my old thought, if only they weren’t so angry! What an ignorant and inhuman mindset that was. People aren’t born angry. People don’t choose arbitrarily to be angry. People become angry for a reason, and they deserve to be heard.” (175) Tell about a time you were angry. How did you discharge and/or process your anger? Can you listen to an angry person with love and not judgement?
10. “Understanding my internal tendencies as a white person is just a start. The ultimate goal is to interrupt, advocate, and educate without doing more harm than good --- something I am in danger of doing every day. As a racial justice advocate, I need to become aware of my own racialized tendencies as well as find ways to interrupt racism when I see it in the world around me. I’ve learned that when it comes to race, there’s no such thing as neutral: either I’m intentionally and strategically working against it, or I’m aiding and abetting the system. As historian and activist Howard Zinn said, ‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train.’” (219) “The white ally role is a supporting one, not a leading one.” (221) What steps have you taken in the past and what steps will you take now to move from a bystander to an ally?
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