How to Be Less Stupid About Race

This was a challenging and very rewarding book to read. It is like listening to a friend sharing but also calling you out on your ignorance and collusion with an ugly status quo. Is is uncompromising.in its portrayal of racism in the United States as structural and pervasive.

Fleming's premise is that people are stupid about race because the society has taught them to be and because, if they are white, it benefits them in many ways to be so. Her book is an effort to provide the kind of historical background and societal analysis needed to become aware of the foundational basis of racism.

Fleming's style is easy to read but her content is demanding. She provides lots of historical context for her case of racism being institutionalized in the U.S. and is completely convincing. It is a well-researched book; I appreciated the information about what other writers and websites to turn to for more information.

This country's construction of race is part of its foundation. The first settlers from Europe built the country on the genocide of the indigenous people living here. All of the Founding Fathers practice virulent racism and often rape. Slavery was the way of life for two centuries and to make it work, an entire group of people had to be devalued and debased, considered less than human. After slavery, there was, of course, Jim Crow. There were xenophobic immigration policies long before Trump came to power.

One of the things Fleming shows is how Trump, although outstandingly deplorable, is an almost natural outgrowth of the longstanding racist attitudes and beliefs in this country. He is not an aberration but a kind of fulfillment. His base has always proclaimed, "He says what you think and are afraid to say." That is, when you buy into a racist, sexist culture.

Fleming discusses intersectionality (the positioning of a person under different axes of oppression). She puts those who have been marginalized in the center of her discourse, particularly black women whose voices have traditionally and consistently been silenced and whose pain as well as wisdom been either co-opted or ignored. She includes queer and transgender women in her call to come together to fight racism. She would like to see all oppressed groups work together--including poor and working class white people--to fight against neoliberal greed and the dismantling of the social contract.

She ends with questions that can help the reader assess their own efforts to see the racism that exists, to move beyond the desire for a color blindness that in fact, she says, is really just a desire to be blind to racism. She provides some ideas for ways in which to join the struggle.

For myself, I was particularly struck with her statement that the question "Why can't we just get past all this?" is a kind of naivete that we can't afford and that has no place in the fight. I was embarrassed to realize that I have used those very words. I am a work in progress and hopefully this book will have advanced my work, at least a little.

I intend to follow up on reading some of the writers she recommends and connecting with at least one of the groups she describes. This is not a book to read just for information; it is a call to arms, to personal commitment, to join with others and create a more just society. It will probably not happen in our lifetime but it's always time for each of us to begin or continue this journey.

I am grateful to NetGalley, Beacon Press, and Crystal M. Fleming for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.