"Are You Calling Me a Racist?"
Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
"Are You Calling Me a Racist?"
Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change
About this book
Winner, 2025 Canadian Sociology Book Award, given by the Canadian Sociological Association
Shows why diversity workshops fail and offers concrete solutions for a path forward
Despite decades of anti-racism workshops and diversity policies in corporations, schools, and nonprofit organizations, racial conflict has only increased in recent years. "Are You Calling Me a Racist?" reveals why these efforts have failed to effectively challenge racism and offers a new way forward.
Drawing from her own experience as an educator and activist, as well as extensive interviews and analyses of contemporary events, Sarita Srivastava shows that racial encounters among well-meaning people are ironically hindered by the emotional investment they have in being seen as good people. Diversity workshops devote energy to defending, recuperating, educating, and inwardly reflecting, with limited results, and these exercises often make things worse. These "Feel-Good politics of race," Srivastava explains, train our focus on the therapeutic and educational, rather than on concrete practices that could move us towards true racial equity. In
this type of approach to diversity training, people are more concerned about being called a racist than they are about changing racist behavior.
"Are You Calling Me a Racist?" is a much-needed challenge to the status quo of diversity training, and will serve as a valuable resource for anyone dedicated to dismantling racism in their communities, educational institutions, public or private organizations, and social movements.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Introduction: The Story of Meghan and Harry, or Why Reading about White Fragility Is Not Enough
- 1The Feel-Good Politics of Race: Why Equity and Diversity Are So Elusive
- 2“Nostalgia for a World We Never Knew”: Ambivalent Encounters between Feminism and Antiracism
- 3“Let’s Talk, Cry a Little, and Learn about Each Other”: The Failures of Dialogue, Therapy, and Education as the Antidote to Racism
- 4Cry Me a River: Antiracism as Therapy
- 5Innocence as Warfare, or “You’re So Guilt-Ridden (You Probably Think This Chapter Is about You)”
- 6 #BlackoutTuesday: Social Media as Antiracism?
- 7 Why Is Antiracism Elusive? (Try This Instead): The ACT Approach to Change
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author