book review: race talk and the conspiracy of silence
28 Oct 2020
What are the main ideas?
- cultural differences between racial groups contributes to the fundamental difficulty of talking about race
- awareness of how the cultural differences conflict can allow a skilled facilitator to support a group to have meaningful race talk
- making the implicit ground rules of race talk explicit can help shift power dynamics and make race talk actually happen instead of be avoided or prematurely shut down
- only by having succcessful race talk (which will lead to internal reflection and eventually external action) can our species move beyond racism
If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?
- when attempting to engage is race talk, make explicit when different implicit ground rules (from different cultures) show up.
- remember that successful race talk is best facilitated by controlling the process of the discussion, not the content. do whatever possible to make the process easier with full awareness that difficulty, conflict, and tension are inherent to moving forward.
How would I describe the book to a friend?
this is definitely an academic book, but in one of the best ways possible. many academic texts are difficult to get through and slow to read because the language makes it hard to find the actual main points. this academic text is slow to read (though not difficult) because the insights are packed in there! every few lines i wanted to highlight so be ready to dive deep. i have facilitated many dialogues that included race talk and this book bumped up my capacity to do so well like three levels.
reminder: book review structure