The anticipated debut by a biracial community leader and citizen
activist, exploring his lived experience of systemic racism in North
America and the paths forward.
My race duality has given me a unique perspective on both the Black and
white experience in Canada..... What became most evident to me - most
universal - was an important need for building bridges of understanding
between Black and white Canadians. A need to inform and educate so that
hopefully, in due time, we can achieve real change.
As a bilingual, biracial man, straddling Black and white, English and
French Canada, Stephen Dorsey lives in a world of dualities. In his
deeply personal and insightful debut, he offers readers intimate and
unfiltered access to his lived experience of anti-Black racism around
the world, including Canada, the United States, and Europe, focusing on
his formative years growing up in 1970s Montreal as a Black child in a
white family headed by a racist stepfather, and details his personal
awakening inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
A powerful blend of autobiography and social analysis, Black & White
is an intimate excavation of systemic racism in North America -- from
our health-care and education systems, to policing and law, to a deep
analysis of the uniquely intersectional discrimination faced by
minorities in Dorsey's home province of Quebec. With an inclusive and
accessible approach, aimed at community connection and education, Dorsey
delves deep into Canada's history of racial discrimination and, by
contrasting it with that of our American neighbours, debunks our
nation's mythological narrative, providing necessary context on white
privilege, which he calls "white advantage", and offers concrete
pathways to lasting societal change.
Holding readers gently to account, Black & White is the book for the
ally in all of us.
