How to Be Less Stupid About Race
On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Book - 2018
"How to Be Less Stupid About Race is your essential guide to breaking through the half-truths and ridiculous misconceptions that have thoroughly corrupted the way race is represented in the classroom, pop culture, media, and politics. Centuries after our nation was founded on genocide, settler colonialism, and slavery, many Americans are kinda-sorta-maybe waking up to the reality that our racial politics are (still) garbage. But in the midst of this reckoning, widespread denial and misunderstandings about race persist, even as white supremacy and racial injustice are more visible than ever before. Combining no-holds-barred social critique, humorous personal anecdotes, and analysis of the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on systemic racism, sociologist Crystal M. Fleming provides a fresh, accessible, and irreverent take on everything thats wrong with our “national conversation about race.” Drawing upon critical race theory, as well as her own experiences as a queer black millennial college professor and researcher, Fleming unveils how systemic racism exposes us all to racial ignoranceand provides a road map for transforming our knowledge into concrete social change. Searing, sobering, and urgently needed, [this book] is a truth bomb and call to action for everyone who wants to challenge white supremacy and intersectional oppression. If you like Issa Rae, Justin Simien, Angela Davis, and Morgan Jerkins, then this deeply relevant, bold, and incisive book is for you"--
Publisher:
Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press, [2018]
ISBN:
9780807050774
0807050776
0807050776
Branch Call Number:
E184.A1 F576 2018
305.800973 Fleming
305.800973 Fleming
305.800973 Fleming
305.800973 Fleming
Characteristics:
230 pages ; 23 cm


Opinion
From Library Staff
List - BostonPL_While You Wait For... Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
BostonPL_KirstenD
Dec 04, 2020

A guide to breaking through the misconceptions that have corrupted the way race is represented in society, this book is a call to action for everyone who wants to challenge white supremacy, intersectional oppression, and America's racial divide.
From the critics

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Add a CommentThe author does a great job of navigating white people's hypersensitivity concerning their own racism by constantly reminding the reader that she too has been caught up in the subtle traps of implicit racism. The book is as much confession as lecture, giving white readers room to understand systemic racism as a social problem, not a personal accusation against all white people. It is her presentation style that earns high marks. Of course, why so many white readers require such a "kid gloves" treatment when assessing American racism is itself an indication of how deeply embedded it is.
Published in 2018, I'd be curious to see a 2020 afterward from the author. A really erudite look at racism from the POV of a queer black sociologist.
Ignore the tone policing in the Library Journal review above, and pick up this book immediately. A much better introduction to anti-racist work than the problematic "How to be an Anti-Racist" and the even more deeply problematic, "White Fragility" this book will help you shine a flashlight inside yourself, to help you begin to learn to "know better, so you can do better."