Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Ratings24
Average rating4.4
"Originally published as The me and white supremacy workbook in 2019"--Copyright page.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is such an insightful book. It really taught me more about white supremacy and what I can do to be an active antiracist.
Layla covers the basics incisively, spelling out the beliefs, behaviours, and dynamics of white supremacy. The prompts get a bit repetitive and may not necessarily reinforce the challenge of each day's focus but they do call on self-excavation.
I appreciated that Layla's definitions were not detached and neutral and that she didn't by default present racist ideas in the phrasing of irony.
Maybe it's because I'm over-saturated on anti-racist literature at the moment, but I didn't read much here I hadn't read before, and the reflective journaling prompts felt pretty repetitive. That being said, it was still a good experience to work through the book and actually write out the responses to the prompts, as it made me face some uncomfortable truths about myself; we'll each struggle with different parts of our anti racist journeys, and after journaling through this book I realized, for me, it's mostly white silence. I struggle to call people in/out, whether they are strangers or friends or coworkers. I somehow feel like that's not my place, or just wish to avoid conflict and discomfort. I struggle to find a balance between wanting to be supportive of, and elevate, black voices/artists, and to do what I can to publicly reflect on my white privilege, white supremacy in society etc while not wanting to be performative. And tbh I have not found a balance, but I'm striving towards it and am committing to challenging my racist dialogues, in and outside my head, every day.