1st Edition
Tactics for Racial Justice Building an Antiracist Organization and Community
This is not a book of antiracist theory but antiracist tactics – tactics that anyone, of any race, can use to strike a blow against injustice. Antiracism is not about what we feel but what we do, and there are specific techniques we can use to create a just world.
Antiracist strategies are skills that can be learned just as we learn skills for public speaking or hitting a baseball. In these pages, you – whether a person of color or white – will find a playbook for leading your workplace, organization, or community through transformative change in the wake of an act of explicit racism. You’ll learn to play antiracist rhetorical chess, and to anticipate and effectively respond to the discursive moves of people who don’t understand bigotry, aren’t aware of it, are in denial of it, or even actively uphold it – so that you can advance justice goals. You’ll get a blueprint of how to dismantle systemic racism community by community, workplace by workplace, and organization by organization – and examples of what not to do.
This book is aimed at people who are conscious of the reality of racism and want to end it but may not know how. It clearly shows how anyone can make an effective, significant, and measurable impact on racism through strategic action.
Introduction – the antiracist journey: moving from feeling to fighting; 1 Leading in the wake of an act of explicit racism; 2 Antiracism rhetorical chess: how to discuss and debate racism effectively; 3 Unweaving systemic racism; 4 Reckoning with the past; 5 Making powerful change when you lack political, institutional, or… any power; Epilogue – ancestors and avatars: becoming what the future requires
Biography
Shannon Joyce Prince earned her doctorate in African and African American Studies and her master’s in English from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, her law degree from Yale Law School, and her bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Dartmouth College. She practices law at Boies Schiller Flexner.
"Prince's book takes us the next step, beyond How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Di Angelo, to share actual tactics for how to fix the problems those books address. Read Tactics for Racial Justice, and give a copy to someone you know who is seeking leadership, good sense, and guidelines for real change."
Susan Neiman, Director, Einstein Forum
