Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 17
Should white people profit off of anti-racist books?
Happy Friday! I hope the week treated you well, and you get the chance to dive into some of these articles this weekend.
I loathe reading or watching Fox News, but I think it’s important to see what narratives (often rooted in lies) those on the right are pushing. This Fox News piece highlights a kids’ book titled ‘Not My Idea,’ on racism and white supremacy written by a white woman named Anastasia Higginbotham. The Fox News piece focuses on one particular page in the book, which depicts a contract with a “devilish figure.” (You can watch a reading of Not My Idea here). Anastasia also did an in-depth interview with a writer at The Atlantic earlier this year that is worth reading. Today’s Hot Takes section gives a review of ‘Not My Idea’ and ponders whether white authors should be profiting off of anti-racist books. Here is Ibram Kendi’s recommendation of books to teach kids about race and racism.
McKinsey released a report on the economic state of Black America. It’s worth listening to his interview with the Harvard Business Review on it.
WBUR did a piece focusing on the statistic that found the median net worth for Black families in Greater Boston was just 8 dollars compared to $250,000 for white households.
Our first interview will be published next week and will feature Rachelle Zola, the 73-year-old white woman who went on hunger strike to bring attention to reparations for Black Americans.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
The Conversation: Why reparations are always about more than money
Episcopal News Service: VTS reparations fund makes first cash payments to descendants of seminary’s Black slaves, laborers
NBC News: New report reveals specifics of racial wealth gap in America
Harvard Business Review: McKinsey Institute’s Shelley Stewart: Black Americans and Economic Mobility
McKinsey: The economic state of Black America: What is and what could be
Washington Post: Nikole Hannah-Jones just proved the correctness of critical race theory
The Atlantic: Critical Race Theory Is Making Both Parties Flip-Flop
Education Week: Do America’s Public Schools Owe Black People Reparations? (September 2020)
Education Week: Four Things Schools Won’t Be Able to Do Under ‘Critical Race Theory’ Laws
Forbes: Nearly $3 Billion Of Student Loans Cancelled, Racial Wealth Gap Could Be Closing
Penn Today: In These Times: Race and repair
Bloomberg: What a National Guaranteed Income Could Look Like
Regional News
WBUR: The Complicated Story Behind One Of The Most Repeated Statistics About Boston
Bloomberg: NYC, Connecticut Start ‘Baby Bond’ Programs to Shrink Inequality
Hot Takes
Should white people profit off of anti-racism work? This is something that I’ve thought about over the past few years. A few times in grad school, a white woman would be brought in to talk about the DEI consulting work they engaged in. When the topic of racism in the workplace inevitably came up, it would always make me feel uneasy. Not because I am one to shy away from these topics, but because it felt odd to me that white people were profiting (sometimes handsomely) to deconstruct a system that they have played a large role in creating.
Paying white people to do anti-racism work feels like paying Exxon to clean up its own oil spill. Of course, they should absolutely clean up the mess they have made, but in no way, shape, or form should they profit off of it — to me, that perpetuates racism, not deconstructing it.
This brings us to Anastasia Higginbotham, a white woman, who in 2018 wrote a book titled ‘Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness,’ which the New York Times describes as “an honest explanation about how power and privilege factor into the lives of white children, at the expense of other groups, and how they can help seek justice.”
Overall, I think books like these are needed, and I understand the sentiment that white writers are better positioned to write to white audiences about race, racism, and whiteness. I am currently reading ‘Nice Racism,’ by Robin DiAngelo, whose ‘White Fragility’ rose to prominence in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, where she dedicates the full introduction as to why she as a white author is suited to white progressives about racism and whiteness.
My issues are two-fold:
This is work that white people should be doing in their everyday lives, and therefore, I think the anti-racist approach to this work would not be collecting any profit from it.
Sometimes they get it wrong, and the blowback from the right is not directed at them but Black people as a whole, or lumped in under catch-all phrases like ‘BLM,’ or ‘Critical Race Theory,’
I won’t say much more about white people profiting from this work. However, Robin DiAngelo has published an “accountability statement,” She engages in the form of credentialing (the same thing she says white people do too much of to establish their not racist). She also states that she donates 15 percent of her income quarterly and is transparent about her speaking and engagement fees. I don’t think it’s an easy question to grapple with, but I applaud DiAngelo for at least being transparent and answering these questions head-on.
The same cannot be said for Higginbotham; though she does not have nearly the notoriety of DiAngelo, I still think it’s vitally important for her to address this question head-on. Moreover, as more conservative pundits from the right attack critical race theory and use her book as an example of it (though it is not), she will also have to answer the financial question.
Now, to the focus of the Fox News article. Near the end of the book, Higgenbotham displays a picture of a contract “binding you to whiteness,” where there are hooves, a devil tail, and a hundred dollar bill on fire, seemingly attached to it.
Conservatives are using this picture to drive the narrative that kids are being taught that “whiteness is the devil” or that they “should hate themselves because they are white.” While we know that white kids aren’t actually being taught to hate themselves, I don’t think the picture helps our cause.
I love Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, they are personal idols of mine, but I disagree with their statements back in the 1970s that the “white man is the devil.” Have white people built a wealthy country off of stolen land and stolen people? Absolutely. But, personally, I don't particularly appreciate equating humans with any animalistic, spiritual, or omnipresent being. Humans are humans, but for too long, the humans in control (white men) have hoarded wealth and power while demonizing Black people. A stereotype from slavery that still lingers today is that the Black man has supernatural strength. We saw it used in the Derek Chauvin trail just this year.
We will not achieve racial justice by stooping to white supremacist tactics. While Higgenbotham had good intentions, I do not think that this depiction was appropriate, let alone for kids, and I think she frankly got this part of the book wrong.
Conservatives now have ammunition to say that kids are being taught “whiteness” is devilish when they should be taught that whiteness and white supremacy are rooted in anti-Blackness. Instead, they should be introduced to powerful stories about Black people other than MLK and Jackie Robinson that uplift Black people while also learning an accurate account of our nation’s founding and the atrocities committed on Black and Native communities.
Higgenbotham’s book gets to some of this, but unfortunately, conservatives will distill the book's entire message to the one page featuring the ‘contract binding you to whiteness.’
I’ll be interested to see if she publishes another book for kids on race after this.