Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Speaking of Race
Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism—and How to Do It | Celeste Headlee
A Boston Globe Most Anticipated Fall Book In this urgently needed guide, the PBS host, award-winning journalist, and author of We Need to Talk teaches us how to have productive conversations about race, offering insights, advice, and support. A self-described “light-skinned Black Jew,” Celeste Headlee has been forced to speak about race—including having to defend or define her own—since childhood. In her career as a journalist for public media, she’s made it a priority to talk about race proactively. She’s discovered, however, that those exchanges have rarely been productive. While many people say they want to talk about race, the reality is, they want to talk about race with people who agree with them. The subject makes us uncomfortable; it’s often not considered polite or appropriate. To avoid these painful discussions, we stay in our bubbles, reinforcing our own sense of righteousness as well as our division. Yet we gain nothing by not engaging with those we disagree with; empathy does not develop in a vacuum and racism won’t just fade away. If we are to effect meaningful change as a society, Headlee argues, we have to be able to talk about what that change looks like without fear of losing friends and jobs, or being ostracized. In Speaking of Race, Headlee draws from her experiences as a journalist, and the latest research on bias, communication, and neuroscience to provide practical advice and insight for talking about race that will facilitate better conversations that can actually bring us closer together. This is the book for people who have tried to debate and educate and argue and got nowhere; it is the book for those who have stopped talking to a neighbor or dread Thanksgiving dinner. It is an essential and timely book for all of us.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Megabooks
post image
Pickpick

Headlee not only talks about race professionally, she also strikes up conversations casually. Here she shares a guide to talking about race with friends, family members, and people in your community. In the examples she shared about racial and political divides, I was surprised how finding just a little bit in common (liking dogs or the same TV shows) can help spark a connection that can lead to bigger conversations.

TrishB The police where I live reported that Islamic hate crimes went down 50% when Muslim players started playing for the local football team. Shocking that it happens- but I think the point about bridging gaps etc is borne out here. 3y
Megabooks @TrishB exactly! One of the real-life examples in the book was a neo-Nazi appointed to the same local school committee as a black woman and how that helped him change his beliefs. It‘s amazing how things like these work. 3y
75 likes2 stack adds2 comments