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Everyone has some privileges and lacks others. Which things on this list do you have, and which do you lack?

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Privilege Checklist Sexuality Privilege

I will have immediate access to my loved one in case of accident or emergency.

I will receive public recognition and support for an intimate relationship (e.g., congratulations for an engagement).

I may express affection in most social situations and not expect hostile or violent reactions from others.

I can openly live with my partner.

When a relationship ends from death or separation, I will receive support from others.

When my partner dies, I will receive paid leave to grieve.

Neighbors, colleagues, and good friends will find me socially acceptable.

Learning about romance and relationships from fiction movies and television.

I have access to role models of my sexual orientation and accurate media images of people with whom I can identify.

I can assume I am around others of my sexuality most of the time, and I do not have to worry about being the only one of my sexuality in a class, on a job, or in a social situation.

I will not be fired from my job for my sexuality.

I can talk openly about my relationship, vacations, and family planning.

I can easily find a neighborhood in which residents will accept my household.

If I raise, adopt, or teach children, no one will assume that I will molest them or somehow force them into my sexuality.

If I work in a field not traditionally dominated by members of my gender, it will not be presumed a reflection of my sexuality.

Strangers don't ask me how I have sex.

When I do receive health care, professionals know how to provide me with needed treatments and respect.

I can love, act, speak, and dress as I choose without being treated as a representative of my sexuality or being prosecuted for breaking the law.

I have access to basic civil rights that will not be denied or outlawed because some people disapprove of my sexuality.

I will not be mistreated by the police or victimized by the criminal justice system because of my sexuality.

I have never had to conceal or reveal my sexuality to the people around me.

These checklists aren't exhaustive, but they did help our consultants to get started thinking about their privileges. We crafted these specifically for our center, so many of the items on the checklists are especially relevant because of our university's location, demographics, and politics. We encourage you to use these lists and also add items that are particularly pertinent to your center.
Class Privilege

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Privilege Checklist - Social Justice Training

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Privilege Checklist Sexuality Privilege I will have immediate access to my loved one in case of accident or emergency. I will receive public recognition and support for an intimate relationship (e.g., congratulations for an engagement). I may express affection in most social situations and not expect hostile or violent reactions from others.

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People experiencing discrimination can't wait for institutions to move at their own pace and comfort level.

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What people do when they're uncomfortable with dealing with discrimination.

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What people do when they're uncomfortable with dealing with discrimination.

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Explore your unconscious, kneejerk associations; we've all got 'em!

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Preliminary Information

On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

We ask these questions because the IAT can be more valuable if you also describe your own self-understanding of the attitude or stereotype that the IAT measures. We would also like to compare differences between people and groups.

On the IAT, you may find it easier to pair certain attributes with one group of people compared to another. Your IAT results may depart from your personal beliefs.

Note: This site is designed for adults, aged 18 or older.

Data Privacy: Data exchanged with this site are protected by SSL encryption. Project Implicit uses the same secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) that banks use to securely transfer credit card information. This provides strong security for data transfer to and from our website. IP addresses are routinely recorded, but are completely confidential. For research purposes, data without directly identifying information is made publicly available. You can find more information on our Data Privacy page.

Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT test that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done (at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University) with these tests. However, these Universities, as well as the individual researchers who have contributed to this site, make no claim for the validity of these suggested interpretations. If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further. You may prefer to examine general information about the IAT before deciding whether or not to proceed.

If you have questions about the study, please contact Project Implicit at questions@projectimplicit.net. To obtain more information about the study, ask questions about the research procedures, express concerns about your participation, or report illness, injury or other problems, please contact:

Tonya R. Moon, Ph.D.
Chair, Institutional Review Board for the Social and Behavioral Sciences
One Morton Dr Suite 500
University of Virginia, P.O. Box 800392
Charlottesville, VA 22908-0392
Email: irbsbshelp@virginia.edu
Website: https://research.virginia.edu/irb-sbs
Website for Research Participants: https://research.virginia.edu/research-participants

I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed using a touchscreen OR using a keyboard.

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On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

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Watch a video about how racism cuts us all off from our humanity.

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Watch a video about how racism cuts us all off from our humanity.

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"Facing the Truths that Keep us from Love”: A Conversation between Tara and Rev Angel Kyodo Williams

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This document outlines the cycle of socialization along with a graphic. Learn about the process of socialization and it's implications for how you understand yourself in relation to others and your environment.

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Use this worksheet to reflect on the concept of social identity. This is useful for personal reflection, as well as in community with others as part of larger conversations around how social identity intersects directly with social justice work.

If you are looking to facilitate this activity and would like step-by-step instructions on how to explain, please email Kevin Pajaro-Mariñez: kpajaro02@gmail.com.

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Hear from folks about when they first realized they were Black.

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Hear from folks about when they first realized they were Black.

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Lead video producer: Tawanda Scott Sambou

Craft editor: Janelle Gonzalez

Graphics: Melody Shih, Shane Csontos-Popko, Rob Chriqui, Padraic Driscoll, Jonathan Reyes

Video producers: Claudia Morales, Gabe Ramirez, Jeremy Moorhead, Bryce Urbany, Deb Brunswick, Tsering Bista, Jacqueline Rose

Voice over: Larry Meriweather

Senior video producer: Jacque Smith

Web development: Sean O'Key

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In "The Souls of Black Folk," W.E.B. Du Bois talks about the first time he realized his skin color made him different. We asked celebrities, CNN anchors and reporters, and others to tell us when they first realized that being black affected how people treated them.

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Why we're all suffering from racial trauma (even white people)

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Why we're all suffering from racial trauma (even white people)

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It's easy to think of racism as a virus that lives in your head. But my guest today makes a compelling case that it also lives, in very profound and often unseen ways, in your body. Resmaa Menakem is a therapist and trauma specialist based in Minneapolis. He's also the author of an excellent book called My Grandmother's Hands, which people in my life have been recommending to me for years. Resmaa's work is all about healing our bodies -- and, by extension, our nation -- from racialized trauma. And in Resmaa's philosophy, racial trauma lives on in bodies of all colors, including white bodies such as mine. Resmaa gives voice to a new lexicon -- terms like "white body supremacy" and "somatic abolitionism" -- and don't worry, he'll explain it all as the interview progresses. He will also share practices that bring you into your body. And he has very provocative thoughts about how white people can do their part way beyond the current news cycle.
Where to find Resmaa Menakem online:
Website: https://www.resmaa.com/

Social Media:

Book Mentioned:

Check our our new, free collection of meditations called Relating to Race in the Ten Percent Happier app: https://10percenthappier.app.link/RelatingToRace
Other Resources Mentioned: Additional Resources:

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#262 Why We're All Suffering from Racial Trauma (Even White People) -- and How to Handle It | Resmaa Menakem - Ten Percent Happier

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It's easy to think of racism as a virus that lives in your head. But my guest today makes a compelling case that it also lives, in very profound and often unseen ways, in your body. Resmaa Menakem is a therapist and trauma specialist based in Minneapolis.

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Watch this eye-opening documentary about the history of racism and white supremacy in America.

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Watch this eye-opening documentary about the history of racism and white supremacy in America.

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Can be watched through multiple streaming services such as Netflix, Prime Video & more!

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Directed by: Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler

Written by: Jeffery Robinson

Selections: SXSW Film Festival

Synopsis: Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in WHO WE ARE - A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

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WHO WE ARE: A Chronicle of Racism in America | Sony Pictures Classics

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Directed by: Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler Written by: Jeffery Robinson Selections: SXSW Film Festival Synopsis: Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in WHO WE ARE - A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

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Read about how and why the white racial identity was created in the United States (Volume I).

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Read about how and why the white racial identity was created in the United States (Volume I).

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When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no “white” people there. Nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. In this seminal two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen tells the story of how America’s ruling classes created the category of the “white race” as a means of social control.

Volume I draws lessons from Irish history, comparing British rule in Ireland with the “white” oppression of Native Americans and African Americans. Allen details how Irish immigrants fleeing persecution learned to spread racial oppression in their adoptive country as part of white America.

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The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1 Racial Oppression and Social Control by Theodore W. Allen, Jeffrey B. Perry (z-lib.org).epub

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Continue reading "The Invention of the White Race" (Volume II).

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Continue reading "The Invention of the White Race" (Volume II).

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In Volume II of The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen explores the transformation that turned African bond-laborers into slaves and segregated them from their fellow proletarians of European origin. In response to labor unrest, where solidarities were not determined by skin color, the plantation bourgeoisie sought to construct a buffer of poor whites, whose new racial identity would protect them from the enslavement visited upon African Americans. This was the invention of the white race, an act of cruel ingenuity that haunts America to this day.

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The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2 The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America by Theodore W. Allen, Jeffrey B. Perry (z-lib.org).epub

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White Dominant Culture & Something Different

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White Dominant Culture & Something Different

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The way whiteness operates can be hard to pinpoint; however, this process can be so insidious that we don't even realize that whiteness helps to shape the very environments that we navigate.

Take a look at the characteristics of white dominant culture in the left hand column ('Norms of White Dominant Culture') and think about how they might apply to you as an individual or play out in your organization. Then, take a look at the right hand column that list alternatives (or 'Something Different') and ask yourself how you could apply those to yourself, your work, or your organization?

**Tip: white dominant group norms can affect everyone, not just white people; with this, it's also encouraged that BIPOC folx work through this worksheet as well!

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This document is a helpful tool in defining white fragility, describing elements that trigger fragility, and the factors that insulate whiteness and white fragility in our society.

For more information about white fragility, please read "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo.

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The Privileged Identity Exploration (PIE) Model Resource Document

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The Privileged Identity Exploration (PIE) Model Resource Document

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This document outlines the (8) defense mechanisms that occur when someone's privileged identity is confronted or made uncomfortable.

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Privileged Identity Model (PIE) Resource

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Whiteness as a Racial Discourse Resource Document

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Whiteness as a Racial Discourse Resource Document

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This document defines the concept of "whiteness" and how this social construction operates within and helps to shape or societal and structural norms around race.

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Whiteness as a Racial Discourse Resource

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The central theme of this article is that American law has historically played a vital role in constructing white supremacy. While America has eliminated overt race-conscious laws that favor whites, the law continues to play a critical role in maintaining white supremacy today.

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The Legal Foundations of White Supremacy

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Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Read this beautiful memoir by a Black woman who grew up in NH.

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Read this beautiful memoir by a Black woman who grew up in NH.

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We have copies at our libraries if you don't want to buy it yourself!

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Chapter One One
"I'm gonna put chocolate chips in mine," I chirped, scrambling to gather up a handful of small dark pebbles to mix into my mud pie. The mucky mound was fast losing its shape inside the long, narrow tire grooves of our dirt driveway, still wet from rain the day before. The sky was a faint azure blue, and the sweet, powdery fragrance of milkweed wafted in the distance. "And some sprinkles," I said, adding a few strands of freshly tugged grass from the lawn nearby, cool in my hand on a warm summer morning.

Leah, my best friend, barely looked up, so intently absorbed in the creation of her own mud pie, rounding it with her fingers to perfection. Even at four years old, she was detail-oriented and meticulous, a budding artist who took her work very seriously, while I at four had more of a collagist approach to things: the more elements and textures and ingredients, the better. When Leah was finished with her pie, she found a thin twig to outline a pattern on the top-not as simple as a plain lattice like the apple piecrusts Mom made, but tiny squares and triangles and circles interconnected, similar to a design in the pages of one of the thick art books lying around our house, and hers, too.

Leah's mom, Hannah, was a good friend of Mom and Dad. She had come over with Leah in the morning and visited with Mom for a little while as we played before doing some tai chi in the front yard. After a couple of hours, it was time to go. Leah and I hugged our goodbyes, her soft white wisp of a body fixed inside my bare brown arms, as the sun started to stretch high into the afternoon above the trees and beyond our wide-eyed, handmade world. "Bye!" we simultaneously trilled into each other's ears. "OK, girls," Hannah said, smiling at the closeness we'd nurtured from when we were babies lying on a blanket together, reaching for each other's fingertips. "We'll get together again soon, OK? Bye, Laurette!" Mom waved goodbye to Hannah and Leah from where she stood, leaning against the worn wooden doorjamb of our country farmhouse.

Warner, the New Hampshire town where we lived, had a population of approximately 1400 when we moved there in 1969, and I became its sole black resident. We rented our farmhouse from longtime Warner residents who owned a lot of land and property in town. The house sat on the top of a dirt road called Pumpkin Hill, which was lined up and down by a dilapidated stone wall of various-sized rocks and stones, leading into different parts of town on either side. There was a shed connected off the right of our house, and a giant freestanding barn to the left, separated from the house by the wide driveway where Leah and I had played that morning. An apple tree with rugged, splayed branches good for climbing stood planted squarely in the front yard. Not another house in sight, nor a neighbor within earshot.

After Leah went home, my sister, Riana, who at seven years old had already developed such a keen love for horses that it was almost all consuming, decided it was time to play her very favorite game, the "horse game." We made our horses out of chairs and used curtain sashes for reins. The solitary quiet of our house wrapped itself around our make-believe landscape so thoroughly that the damp dirt-and-honey scent of our horses filled the room. We heard the gallop of their hooves, and felt the pace of their gait, posting to the trot, up and down in the smooth, hard dip of our saddles.

Born with two freckles above each nostril of her nose, Riana wore her shoulder-length hair tucked behind her ears as she led us along a winding outdoor trail. Our horses bucked and neighed as we gave their pretend bellies soft little heel kicks. Her posture was straight, almost rigid, as she sat high and proud in her saddle.

"Time to set up camp!" Riana said, her joy palpable as she pushed the walls beyond her old sisterless imagination into a reality with room for me inside.

We pulled the reins to a halt, hopped down and roped the horses to a tree, fed them hay, gave them water, and brushed out their manes.

"Let's build a fire here," she said, pointing to a small patch of rug near a standing jade plant tall enough to pose as a short tree, and then began to gather kindling from nearby.

I shadowed her movements and tried to match her focus.

Riana pretended to struggle to open a can of soup because we'd forgotten the can opener, so she had to use her Swiss Army knife instead, and finally managed to cut through the top of the can without hurting herself. She emptied the contents into the pot while I held it over the fire so we could get our dinner started. We ate our canned soup out of mugs, and then rolled out our imaginary sleeping bags. Riana pet the horses one last time before bed. "Good night, horses," she said, her hand so slight and careful, her voice an aria of innocence.

Our brother, Sean, older than Riana by just two years, had been playing outside all morning with his friend Charlie, building and crafting and exploring and climbing. Charlie was kind and funny, skinny and curious, with buck teeth and brown hair. He rode over on his bike from town, where he lived with his reputable, middle-class family in a decorous house on Main Street. He loved to climb the apple tree in our front yard and sit among the limbs looking out at the world around him, but came down to join Sean in working on his latest invention, a go-cart with coffee-can headlights and a dish-towel cover nailed to four pieces of balsa wood somehow affixed with duct tape to an old Radio Flyer wagon.

"You're welcome to stay for dinner," Mom said as Charlie hopped back onto his red ten-speed bike to head home not too long after he'd arrived.

"That's OK, I'll be back!" he said, with a wide grin, still high from his time in the apple tree. "The Carrolls'...," he sang over his shoulder as his bike wheels turned over the dirt and pointed him down the hill toward town, "Where Kids are King!"

At three or four o'clock in the afternoon, we all broke from play to gather at the dining room table, covered with a turquoise-blue-and-white gingham tablecloth, set with four delicate matching teacups and saucers. Riana, Sean, and I waited for Mom to come in from the kitchen with a white ceramic teapot filled with piping-hot mint tea, and a plate of freshly baked hermit cookies, our favorite, with their buttery, chewy molasses-and-clove-sweetened goodness. The smell of them filled the room, and it felt like we were floating in an airy confection. I reached for a second hermit and then a third, my little brown fingers sticky from plucking out the soft, warm raisins and popping them into my mouth. Riana had just one, which she ate slowly and relished, and Sean had four, one right after the other.

"Tell me about your day," Mom said, sipping her tea, her long black hair pulled into a low ponytail folded up and pinned with a barrette at the back of her head. Slight of frame, modest by nature, Mom was buoyant and tireless when it came to mothering us as young kids. While Dad taught art all day at a nearby private college, Mom stayed home with us, ever present, always with unwavering interest in our stories and questions, packing us into snowsuits in the winter, letting me and Riana run around topless in the summer, one creamy white chest, the other toasty brown.

She looped her fingers through the thin handle of her teacup and set it in its saucer to rest, smiling and ready to hear our stories.

"We made mud pies!" I squawked.

"And we played horses, too," Riana said, with gentle consternation, like the big sister she was, reminding me of the importance of our shared game, the game that she had herself devised and chose to include me in.

Sean was often quiet, until he wasn't. He teased me relentlessly starting when I was about six, and he began calling me a "hyper scale cow"-the name he came up with mainly because my skin was constantly dry and scaly. It looked like chalk dust in the winter, and could get silt-like in the summer. Nobody else in the family had need for daily use of moisturizing lotion, so there was never any in the house until I saw a commercial for Vaseline Intensive Care lotion in my early teens and bought myself a giant bottle from Cricenti's Market in town. When I first started to use it, I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to discover this magical cream that disappeared the dust and silt. The "hyper" and "cow" parts of the name were added because Sean thought I was too hyperactive and ate too much.

On this day, though, when we were still small and tender, Sean was quiet as we finished our hermits, and a tall standing lamp in the corner of the room carved a tiny patch of light as the day's natural light began to fade. "Thanks, Mom!" we said, nearly in unison, before leaping from the table to resume our play. Knowing our stations, easy with one another's company, sewing a fragile thread of siblinghood that we never imagined would fall apart.

At dinnertime, Dad and Mom carried the dining room table out the back door into the yard just outside the house. The table's four heavy wooden legs dug into the grass as Mom and Dad pushed them down farther into the pliant soil to keep the surface steady. With the vegetable garden at our backs, and the rusty but still functioning swing set off to the far side of the yard, we sat in mismatched chairs much less steady than the table, a family of five, together at the crowning moment of most summer days during our years on Pumpkin Hill, gloriously ravenous after a long day of play.

I had changed out of my play clothes and put on an olive green dress with black trim and white buttons down the front, one of a few frilly dresses that were handed down from friends, and which I alternated with the jumpers and tops that Mom made for me herself. Knees pulled up to my chest, I sat with bare feet, toes curled at the edge of my high chair, afro thick and wild, a coarse bunch of small snarls knotted and mangled like the yarn of a fumbled crochet project.

Riana sat to my left in a regular, grown-up chair, wearing a striped short-sleeve T-shirt and long pants. Shoulders slightly hunched now, not like when she was riding her pretend horse, and elbows on the table. Riana's facial expressions were always dreamy-eyed, a bit goofy, some mix of wistful and whimsical, as if she and she alone had just seen a monkey wearing diamond-studded sunglasses pull into the driveway behind the wheel of a regular old yellow school bus, and wasn't that kind of great? Maybe that monkey wanted to come play horses or hopscotch. Or maybe he was lost and didn't know how to find his way home.

Sean sat opposite Riana, facing the fields, with his straight brown hair in a bowl cut, cream-colored collared shirt from the thrift shop, and high-water corduroy pants. Not as hunched as Riana, but almost as dreamy-eyed, Sean looked beyond all of us into the early night, toward the border of the woods, yearning, I imagine, for the next time when he could pack up his tent, sleeping bag, canteen, and Sterno stove for another solo camping adventure.

Quiet but for our laughter and conversation, the field stretched behind us in a slow incline out and up where it crested to form a steep hill spread over with tall wheat stocks and patches of wild strawberries and wildflowers, a bouquet of which Mom had picked this morning and placed in a vase at the center of the dinner table. Mom served us steamed summer squash, fresh tomatoes with purple basil, and steamed pigweed, also known as lambsquarters, all from the garden, while Dad drank a tall glass mug of amber-colored Ballantine ale at the head of the table. Glints of peach-colored sunset bounced off our silverware, and the air was still enough for the flames of two long taper candles to grow brighter.

Cambrick, Riana's orange tabby she'd had since he was a kitten, sauntered up to the table from around the other side of the house, rubbed up against her legs dangling under the table, and then moved on. We had started out with two cats, Max and Sophie, and then Sophie had kittens, and her kittens grew up and had kittens, and at one point we had fourteen cats that all lived outside roaming the grounds, monitoring for field mice like slinky little feline sentinels. We gave most of them away, but were allowed to keep four or five, whom we gave names like Ocean Eyes and Butterscotch, Tiger and Teddy. Riana picked Cambrick early on as her own, and the two were constant companions, inasmuch as a cat is willing to be a companion.

Dad, at the head of the table, held up his glass of ale to make a toast, his bare arm pale and fleshy in a worn white cotton T-shirt, thick auburn hair past his ears and parted to one side, like a composer from the German Romantic era, and held down by a red terry cloth headband to keep it out of his eyes. I cupped my glass of milk with two hands; Riana and Sean held their glasses with one. Mom's skin shone warm in the last slivers of sunlight as she raised her glass, too, and we all clinked and some of my milk spilled, and our chairs wobbled in the grass, and we laughed.

"Look how lucky we all are," Dad said, his eyes ablaze with satisfaction. He looked at the garden, its tall stocks of corn to one end, neatly lined rows of tomato plants and green beans, thick, sprawling zucchini and summer squash vines, and then out toward the broad fields beyond. "Laurette, can you believe this?" Dad said, as if he couldn't believe it himself, that he'd really pulled it off and created a life that looked exactly the way he wanted it to look. Mom smiled, her face darling and spare, soft and unweathered.

"I know, Dave," she said. "It's beautiful. Just beautiful."

It was beautiful, and we were lucky. But beauty is subjective, and luck doesn't care about the choices other people make.

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Chapter One One "I'm gonna put chocolate chips in mine," I chirped, scrambling to gather up a handful of small dark pebbles to mix into my mud pie. The mucky mound was fast losing its shape inside the long, narrow tire grooves of our dirt driveway, still wet from rain the day before.

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The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee: 9780525509585 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that…

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Longlist, National Book Awards 2020 for Nonfiction

From the publisher:
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people-including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others-she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents - National Book Foundation

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In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

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This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 5, 2019. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Description

A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences - even for the white voters they promise to help.

In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as physician Jonathan M. Metzl shows in Dying of Whiteness, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death. Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. He shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates.

Now updated with a new afterword, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation rather than chasing false promises of supremacy.

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
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"Provocative...brings a unique blend of psychiatric insight and data analysis-as well as some nifty philosophical insights into what people mean by concepts of risk, cost, and community-to a problem that will no doubt persist even beyond our current presidency."-Boston Globe

"Malcolm X began by adoring whiteness, grew to hate white people and, ultimately, despised the false concept of white superiority--a killer of people of color. And not only them: low- and middle-income white people too, as Metzl's timely book shows, with its look at Trump-era policies that have unraveled the Affordable Care Act and contributed to rising gun suicide rates and lowered life expectancies."-Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review

"Traveling through the American heartland, a physician deconstructs how right-wing policies have fatal consequences, even for the voters they purport to help. Metzl paints a blistering portrait of a subculture so in thrall to racist ideology that they willingly invite rising gun suicides, poor healthcare, and falling life expectancies."-Esquire

"Jonathan Metzl chillingly shows how white identity permeates present-day policymaking outside of Washington."-Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post

"It is the rare book that has the potential to transform thinking so thoroughly that it offers to change a paradigm. Jonathan Metzl has written such a book with Dying of Whiteness. The conventional understanding of health disparities must take a different shape because of this groundbreaking work."-American Journal of Public Health

There is a propulsive force to this account that is hard to shake. That's because of the data Metzl assembles: compelling, grim, and arresting data, presented in clear prose and heartbreaking charts and tables...In the end, it is Metzl's shocking conclusions that keep ringing in your head long after you put his book down."-Public Books

"Remarkable...Through field interviews, research and public-health data, Metzl shows that whites are harming themselves along with everyone else, and in drastic ways...A weighty but smooth read, devoid of polemics or jargon."-Minneapolis Star Tribune

"There is a propulsive force to this account that is hard to shake. That's because of the data Metzl assembles: compelling, grim, and arresting data, presented in clear prose and heartbreaking charts and tables...In the end, it is Metzl's shocking conclusions that keep ringing in your head long after you put his book down."-Christian Century

"Groundbreaking...Metzl methodically and adeptly marshals statistical evidence that policies promising to bolster white Americans' status have instead made life 'sicker, harder, and shorter' for all..."-Publishers Weekly

"A provocative, instructive contribution to the literature of public health as well as of contemporary politics."-Kirkus Reviews

"Insightful and original."-National Book Review

"Metzl details social changes in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas, where white Americans backed changes that, ironically, dramatically harmed them with gun suicides, school dropouts, worse healthcare, and shorter life spans...A rich, nuanced and complex book...A major contributin to public health, sociology, and American studies."-LitMed

"Metzl allows citizens to speak for themselves, adding authenticity to his project...As the tragedies that Metzl illustrates become more widely known, perhaps reason and humility will regain their place in American political discourse."-Chapter 16

"Here is the diagnosis, America, and it's not reassuring: failing health, falling graduation rates, guns everywhere. Our fantasies are driving us to an early grave, and Jonathan M. Metzl is lucid and careful and mercifully clinical in telling us exactly how this public health disaster came to be. Read it today: there's still time before the autopsy."-Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter With Kansas? and Listen, Liberal

"Dying of Whiteness unveils how the very policies marketed to white people as 'making America great again' end up harming the well-being of whites as a demographic group. This is must reading for anyone interested in understanding the current racial landscape of the United States."-Jelani Cobb, Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalism School

"Dying of Whiteness brilliantly demonstrates the tremendous impediment that white racism and backlash politics pose to our society's wellbeing, at a time when many white Americans quite literally would rather die than support policies they see as benefiting people of color. Jonathan M. Metzl issues an urgently needed call to acknowledge the deadly toll of investing in whiteness-and to work collectively toward a just society that would be healthier for everyone."-Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body

"Copious data have long shown us the deadly effects of racist health policies on African Americans. But in Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan M. Metzl powerfully shows us this coin's reverse: the deadly effects on white populations of contemporary policies promulgated by vengeful politicians to 'restore' an imaginary white superiority, and embraced by resentful, marginalized whites. Dying of Whiteness illuminates the dual devastation wrought by policies that limit access to care for the poor of every race."-Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid

"In his pathbreaking and provocative book, Jonathan M. Metzl draws on his dual acuity as physician and social scientist to help make sense of the urgent issue of our time: how individuals not only act against their self-interests, but also support policies that contribute to their own early demise. A threadbare social safety net, further unraveled by virulent racism, has given way to an ailing body politic. Empathetic and poignant, this vital work exposes how an investment in whiteness works to the deficit of us all."-Alondra Nelson, Columbia University and Social Science Research Council

"In this paradigm-shifting tour de force, Jonathan M. Metzl brilliantly illuminates the shocking ways that white supremacy, through backlash governance, kills white people too. Moving deftly between mountains of data and compelling storytelling, Dying of Whiteness makes a vital contribution to our national conversation about racism and its discontents. Metzl uncovers the contemporary paradox of whiteness: a struggle to preserve white privilege in the midst of the declining value of whiteness. This is a must-read if you want to understand how race and the color line operate in twenty-first-century America."-Dorian Warren, president, Community Change, and co-chair, Economic Security Project

"As a progressive Missouri state legislator, I applaud Jonathan M. Metzl's dive into policies and agendas which are destructive to those most in need. He is correct in that racial resentment is the primary reason Medicaid expansion was not allowed to be debated on the House floor the past eight years. He is also correct in exposing racism as a primary reason why my home state of Missouri has loosened gun restrictions even though suicides, accidental, and domestic shootings have skyrocketed in every zip code-including in predominantly white areas. Racial overtones also color healthcare and gun legislation debates in the Capitol, as well as many lobbying efforts. Dying of Whiteness boldly exposes the devastating consequences of these politics for everyone, and calls on us to push back against racial resentment for the benefit of all."-Hon. Stacey Newman, Missouri House of Representatives, 2010-2018

"Policy makers, scholars, and the public at large need to read Jonathan M. Metzl's Dying of Whiteness. He forcefully but with empathy demonstrates how poor and working class whites are literally killing themselves by supporting policies on guns, health care, and taxes framed as defending white authority but which, in truth, benefit the white elite."-Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, James B. Duke Professor of Sociology, Duke University

"Jonathan M. Metzl goes to Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas to understand why people support gun, health,
and school policies they will suffer from. An informative snapshot of how 'the other half' live and die."-Dr. Alfredo Morabia, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Public Health

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A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing ...

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‘…from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.’ John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst
The Irish came to America in th…

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Some history to meditate on every day.

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On September 19, 1868, as Black politicians and supporters held a peaceful political rally, mobs of white people in Camilla, Georgia, led by the sheriff, opened fire, killing at least seven Black people, including a Black mother and her infant child, in a mass lynching, and assaulting and wounding at least 30 others. The political rally, which started in Albany, Georgia, and culminated in Camilla, Georgia, was held to protest the expulsion of Black elected officials from the Georgia Assembly. In an effort to terrorize Black communities further, over the weeks following the massacre, white men from Camilla and the surrounding areas intimidated and assaulted Black people throughout the Georgia countryside, threatening to kill any Black person who dared to vote in the next election.

In the period after the Civil War, Black men seized new opportunities for political power by exercising their right to vote, running for office, and holding political positions. In an effort to uphold racial hierarchy, white state legislators devised a strategy to purge the Georgia Assembly of the 33 Black and mixed race men who had been democratically elected. On September 3, ignoring the results of the democratic process, the white majority successfully voted to expel all Black and mixed race lawmakers from the Assembly.

On the morning of September 19, one of the expelled Black lawmakers named Philip Joiner organized a 25-mile peaceful march from Albany, Georgia, to the town of Camilla, Georgia. The group, composed of a few hundred people, marched with a plan to deliver political speeches in Camilla. An armed white man and the sheriff met them outside town and warned them that white residents were prepared to respond with violence if they honored their speaking engagement. When the men refused to be intimidated, the sheriff informed them that "the people would not allow Radical[s] to speak at Camilla."

By the time the group reached the courthouse square in Camilla, they were met by the sheriff who, instead of protecting their constitutional right to assembly, had mobilized white men in Camilla to ambush the group. Stationed outside of storefronts and surrounding the courthouse square, armed white men shot at the lawmakers and their supporters, and then pursued them with bloodhounds, horses, and shotguns for 10 miles outside of Camilla. Eyewitness accounts later recounted that Black people were shot repeatedly as they lay dead or wounded on the ground and ran for cover in the surrounding wooded areas outside of the town.

By the end of this mass lynching, at least seven Black people lay dead. At least 30 more people were wounded. One 20-year-old Black man reported that after being pursued by a group of armed white men into a ditch, he was struck on the head with a gun and forced to go back to Camilla to pick up the bodies before he escaped.

The Camilla Massacre not only took the lives of Black people on September 19, but traumatized Black communities and served as a deterrent to those who dared to exercise their political rights. Learn more about more episodes of racial violence during the Reconstruction era by reading EJI's Reconstruction in America report.

About EJI

The Equal Justice Initiative works to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality.

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Until we confront our history of racial injustice and its legacy, we cannot overcome the racial bias that exists today.

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Sep. 19, 1868 | White Mobs Ambush Black People in Georgia in Mass Lynching

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On September 19, 1868, as Black politicians and supporters held a peaceful political rally, mobs of white people in Camilla, Georgia, led by the sheriff, opened fire, killing at least seven Black people, including a Black mother and her infant child, in a mass lynching, and assaulting and wounding at least 30 others.