Racial Justice Book Discussion: White Women

Join SURJ Marin facilitators for a discussion of the book, White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. We will meet on Zoom on Fri, March 24, 4:00-5:30pm PT.  We are thrilled to announce that one of the authors, Regina Jackson, will join us for part of our discussion! Join the conversation, and bring your friends.

This conversation is intended primarily for the education of white people. We welcome all who want to help move white people along in the movement for racial justice. The discussion will not be recorded.

You can get this book at your local library, or if purchasing, we recommend a local bookseller such as https://www.bookpassage.com or online at https://www.marcusbooks.com in support of a Black-owned bookstore.

The book: It’s no secret that white women are conditioned to be “nice,” but did you know that the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture? 

As the founders of Race2Dinner, an organization which facilitates conversations between white women about racism and white supremacy, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao have noticed white women’s tendency to maintain a veneer of niceness, and strive for perfection, even at the expense of anti-racism work.

In this book, Jackson and Rao pose these urgent questions: how has being “nice” helped Black women, Indigenous women and other women of color? How has being “nice” helped you in your quest to end sexism? Has being “nice” earned you economic parity with white men? Beginning with freeing white women from this oppressive need to be nice, they deconstruct and analyze nine aspects of traditional white woman behavior–from tone-policing to weaponizing tears–that uphold white supremacy society, and hurt all of us who are trying to live a freer, more equitable life.

White Women is a call to action to those of you who are looking to take the next steps in dismantling white supremacy. Your white supremacy. If you are in fact doing real anti-racism work, you will find few reasons to be nice, as other white people want to limit your membership in the club. If you are not ticking white people off on a regular basis, you are not doing it right.