This book challenges white people to do the essential work of unpacking our biases, and helps us dismantle the privilege within ourselves so that we can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color. And it shows us, in turn, how to help other white people do better, too. It gives us the language to understand racism and to dismantle our own biases by walking step-by-step through the work of individually examining:BIPOC
- My own white privilege
- What allyship really means
- Anti-blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation
- How to change the way I view and respond to race
- How to continue the work to create social change
The acronym BIPOC stands for "Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color." Its aim is to emphasize historic oppression of all people of color.We have seen a massive surge of awareness of systemic. racial injustice recently. As people all over the world protest, many are also working to educate themselves about the history and persistence of systemic racism. Who's interested in reading this book with me?
POC stands for "People of Color" and is primarily used to describe any persons who are not considered white in the United States. It emphasizes common experiences of systemic racism. POC was in dictionaries as early as 1796 and, thus, is a much older term than BIPOC.
Many people prefer BIPOC over POC because they view the use of POC as lumping all people of color togther. BIPOC acknowledges that people in Black and Indigenous communities face different, and often more severe, forms of oppression and erasure, especially when it comes to the racial oppression that permeates the history of the United States.
Update: Click here, and join me on my book discussion blog.
4 comments:
I would like to read this book with you.
Do you have kindle on your computer?
Excellent! We haven't discussed a book together in years, have we?
No, I read one Kindle book on my computer with Amazon's free app, but that was because it was a children's book. On my big laptop, I could see the pictures and read the words that would have been too small on my smart-phone-sized Kindle device. If you don't have a Kindle, you can read it on your computer, or you could see if your library has already purchased and processed this 2020 book.
I have a book discussion blog named Book Buddies after the first Oprah Book Club group and after the bookstore Donna and I opened in Red Bank. I can put this book on that blog so we can comment back and forth. Okay, I stopped typing and set up a place to discuss this book on the other blog, in case you want to take a look at it. I included the Table of Contents for reference.
https://bookbuddies3.blogspot.com/2020/06/me-and-white-supremacy-by-layla-f-saad.html
I haven't started reading the book yet, so let me know when you have the book and are ready to begin.
I knew what POC and BIPOC meant, but didn't realize the reasoning behind the BIPOC, so thank you. There are so many great books out there for people to consider and I am glad you've found one to read. Well, I'm sure you've found more than one to read!
I was leading workshops for managers on racism, sexism, and EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) compliance back in the 1970s, so I've been reading books on these subjects for decades. Because we don't always recognize our own biases, I don't by any means want to imply I've got all this figured out. I'm still learning, still trying to do better and understand more. I hope you saw that Emily and I plan to discuss this book over on my Book Buddies blog, set up just for discussions. You are welcome to comment there, too, even if you don't have a chance right now to jump into the book. If you didn't already check it out, the link to Book Buddies is in my previous comment.
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