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.
