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Top of the pile
95
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
92/100Critics
96/100Scholars
96/100Author:
Emma Dabiri
Publisher:
Harper Perennial
Date:
June 22, 2021
A guide to questioning the meaning of whiteness and creating an antiracist world from the historian and author of Don't Touch My Hair.
What The Reviewers Say
The refreshing clarity of what Dabiri is asking of us is grounding, outlined immediately on the contents page. Her chapter titles are presented almost like a manifesto.
For such a heavy subject matter, Dabiri's book is surprisingly lightweight and nonthreatening — a testament to the author's expert grasp of how divided we have all become and the desperate need for gentle guidance toward a better understanding of each other. The future that Dabiri proposes in What White People Can Do Next moves beyond a stale, centuries-old shouting match between what 'white people' have done and what 'Black people' have endured and is able to target our true common enemy — ideas of 'whiteness' that are being used to deceive all of us. What White People Can Do Next is an enlightening and practical essay that offers a new way to talk about racial justice, a new narrative where everyone benefits, and one that offers the tools to 'build on the revolutionary ideas of the past, and forge new connections'.
There is a plethora of anti-racism texts to choose from at the moment – book deals aplenty followed the Black Lives Matter resurgence in the summer of 2020 – but few pack as big a punch as this.
Both a blazing polemic against the concept of race as anything more than a means to create racism as well as a fundamental route toward active unification.
