In an effort to hold myself accountable to better anti-racism theory and practice, I’ve started hosting an anti-racism reading group in the Seattle area. In this series, I’d like to share both these readings and some of the discussion. You can read summaries of previous discussions by following these links: one, two, three, four.
For the fifth anti-racism reading group, we listened to Seeing White, an excellent podcast hosted by John Biewen at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In it, Biewen and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika explore the history and consequences of White racial identity in a way that is both extremely accessible and intellectually rigorous.
This was a particularly ambitious project because the podcast series is fourteen episodes long, meaning there were many hours of material to discuss. For the purposes of our discussion group, we focused on the first three episodes which cover the history of Whiteness and the last two episodes on anti-racist action. However, I encouraged the group (as I encourage you) to listen to the full series, because every episode is worth your time.
Given the expanse of the source material and the conversation, I don’t have a thorough summary of the discussion, but rather three items of conversation that I found particularly interesting. Continue reading “Anti-Racism Reading Group #5: Seeing White”
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