This book is life altering. Debby Irving’s journey to discover how white people fit into the discussion of race and racism has never been more important than it is today. It’s the sort of book I want everyone to read so we can all talk about it.
The author is the same age that I am. She grew up in a white suburb of Boston in the 60s and 70s with a homemaker mother and Harvard educated attorney father. Her life experiences are so very similar to mine, including the jarring realization that racism comes from centuries of institutional bias, cultural bias and a ruling class of white people that do not see their role in all of this.
I highly recommend the book. It’s is not preachy or academic. It’s one woman’s story of trying to understand her life in the context of race relations. More white people need to be motivated to do that. If we had a better understanding of how we got here, we would have a much better idea of the path forward. The situation isn’t going to change until we commit to change the one thing over which we have control – ourselves. The world changes when we shift our paradigm to see it from a different perspective.
(July 2016) This book was just a great followup to Isabelle Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns.” Bryan Stevenson brings home the reality of a racially driven criminal justice system that is out of control. The headlines around mass incarceration, the executions as well as the exonerations of prisoners on death row, the investigative journalism around the blatant miscarriage of justice – it all comes together in this book. Told in the first person, it is moving beyond anything I have the ability to describe.