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Getting Smart about Race: An American Conversation
Racial tension in America has become a recurring topic of conversation in politics, the media, and everyday life. There are numerous explanations as to why this has become a predominant subject in today’s news and who is to blame. As Americans prepare once again to cast their Presidential ballots, it’s more important than ever to have a smart and thoughtful conversation about race. In Getting Smart About Race, expert Margaret Andersen discusses why racial healing should be an integral element of our everyday discussions surrounding race and how to move the conversation in a positive direction. Getting Smart About Race is a clear, accessible introduction to understanding racial inequality and how we can and need to make a difference.
200 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2020
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February 22, 2020
Getting Smart about Race by Margaret L. Andersen is a solid book that distills much of the recent scholarship into an introduction to a huge and complex topic. How we talk about race has changed in the last 50 years, so that readers need to know the language and the concepts. Thinking about race as a social construction can be hard if you learned to think about it as a biological fact.
Andersen does a great job at talking with the reader, broaching complex topics that get beyond individual attitudes and prejudices, which is still how race is pictured in many films. We learn about institutional racism, a new topic in the 1960s and how ideologies of inequality are structured into the major institutions that shape our lives: housing, schools, the workplace and our social policies. While systemic racism came with the shaping of major institutions like slavery, the government, and policies that favor White male Protestants, it was not recognized. Instead people were taught to think about the country as a free society in which people could compete. Thus, those European immigrants struggled to “get in,” not thinking about the barriers they had to overcome and how others faced exclusion.
Andersen provides historical treatments of different groups, that makes White privileges apparent as well as how a legacy of injustice is reflected in the social realities we see today, with huge gaps in earnings, living conditions, and health outcomes. People are not taught the complex history of our nation, where the labor of people of color was used to create wealth for a few. Instead, the ideology of racism, which sees people as inferior, is more likely to blame victims for their circumstances, because of the omissions in learning and biased presentations. There is much to absorb here, but hopefully in reading this book, people will be more comfortable talking about the hard stuff rather than pretending we have overcome.
Andersen is also good at identifying the costs of racial oppression for people of different groups, which is why a conversation is necessary. If we do not know the realities of people’s lives how can we interact with them as equals. This is a great introduction, since Andersen shared the findings of many of the scholars who have reshaped the field of race relations and gives readers directions for further study as well as question to open discussion.
Andersen does a great job at talking with the reader, broaching complex topics that get beyond individual attitudes and prejudices, which is still how race is pictured in many films. We learn about institutional racism, a new topic in the 1960s and how ideologies of inequality are structured into the major institutions that shape our lives: housing, schools, the workplace and our social policies. While systemic racism came with the shaping of major institutions like slavery, the government, and policies that favor White male Protestants, it was not recognized. Instead people were taught to think about the country as a free society in which people could compete. Thus, those European immigrants struggled to “get in,” not thinking about the barriers they had to overcome and how others faced exclusion.
Andersen provides historical treatments of different groups, that makes White privileges apparent as well as how a legacy of injustice is reflected in the social realities we see today, with huge gaps in earnings, living conditions, and health outcomes. People are not taught the complex history of our nation, where the labor of people of color was used to create wealth for a few. Instead, the ideology of racism, which sees people as inferior, is more likely to blame victims for their circumstances, because of the omissions in learning and biased presentations. There is much to absorb here, but hopefully in reading this book, people will be more comfortable talking about the hard stuff rather than pretending we have overcome.
Andersen is also good at identifying the costs of racial oppression for people of different groups, which is why a conversation is necessary. If we do not know the realities of people’s lives how can we interact with them as equals. This is a great introduction, since Andersen shared the findings of many of the scholars who have reshaped the field of race relations and gives readers directions for further study as well as question to open discussion.
Displaying 1 of 1 review