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About the book
Introduction
Table of contents
A selection of quotes
What people have said about the book
How people are using the book
FAQs
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About "And don't call me a racist!"
This book represents a desire to make a significant contribution toward
understanding and resolving the "problems" of prejudice and racism.
It has been distributed without charge to non-profit organizations and institutions
whose work involves
- multiculturalism
- diversity
- equal opportunity
- affirmative action
- race and gender issues
- minority studies
- any other anti-racist program or activity
Since publication in November 1998, it has crossed many lines:
- ethnic -- with requests not only from black or white
organizations, but from many dealing with other minority populations
- religious -- with virtually every denomination
represented, from local church to diocesan headquarters, as well as
interfaith groups
- educational -- from universities and teacher training
programs to high schools and middle schools, and even staff use in
elementary schools
- class -- from community groups in affluent suburbs to
inner-city social agencies.
For more detail on who is using
"And don't call me a racist!"
and the many ways they are using it, see:
What's between the covers
In this treasury of over 1,000 quotes, you will find -- in the voices
of Langston Hughes and the Delany sisters, for example -- some of the
bitter-sweet humor that has helped sustain blacks in this country
through their long, oppressive history.
But, in the words of both blacks and whites, you will also find the stark
contrast between the "incalculable" advantages of being born white and the
"all-consuming" burden of being born black.
In these pages:
- Apologists for slavery extol the social and economic "harmony and
good will" that they claim the system made possible -- and Frederick
Douglass cries out about its "crimes against God and man."
- Lillian Smith describes how, growing up white in the South, she
learned "the twisting turning dance of segregation" -- and Arthur Ashe
explains why for him race was "a more onerous burden than AIDS."
- James Baldwin and others convey in brilliant prose the pain and
despair of being black in white America -- and "ordinary" people
discuss with Studs Terkel their feelings about race in more simple, but
nonetheless eloquent, language.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., lays the moral foundation for the Civil
Rights Movement -- and Cornel West articulates the "passionate
pessimism regarding America's will to justice" that exists among many
blacks today.
- Melba Patillo Beals -- almost forty years after she risked death as a
teenager to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 --
writes in her heart-wrenching memoir of that experience: "The task that
remains is to cope with our interdependence -- to see ourselves
reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our
differences."
For more detail about the contents of
"And don't call me a racist!"
see:
For further information, see:
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