This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work

This Book Is Anti-Racist is a 2020 non-fiction book aimed at younger readers. It was written by Tiffany Jewell, an American author and anti-racist educator. As a Black biracial woman, Jewell draws extensively on her own experiences of race and racism to create an anti-racist primer for young readers. Jewell notes that the book is for everyone, as everyone can benefit from anti-racism. She explores the history of racism, how racial categories are constructed and upheld, and how racism is bound up with other systems of oppression like misogyny, anti-LGBTQ bias, ableism, and more. The book provides readers with opportunities to write journal entries about their own experiences and offers suggestions for anti-racist work that readers can do in their own lives.

This guide uses the e-book edition of the text published by Quarto Publishing. 

Content Warning: This book and this guide discuss the impacts of racism and police brutality extensively.

Summary

In her author’s note, Jewell explains her reasoning behind some of the terminology she uses in This Book Is Anti-Racist. She notes that her book is for everyone and that she writes in memory of the many Black people who have been murdered in acts of racist violence. This book is just a starting point for many people: Anti-racist work is a lifelong undertaking. In the book’s first section, Jewell asks readers to consider who they are and where they fit into contemporary society. Each individual is made up of many identities, some of which can change and some of which cannot. Some identities are considered more acceptable, making them part of the “dominant culture”; identities that do not fit into the dominant culture are part of the “subordinate culture” (20). For many people, some aspects of their identity will fit into the dominant culture, while other aspects will be part of the subordinate culture. 

Jewell encourages readers to take stock of their own identities to better understand how these structural frameworks impact them. She defines the concepts of privilege and intersectionality. Jewell explains the difference between race, a set of socially constructed categories based on appearance, ancestry, and ethnicity, another set of categories based on culture and family history. She examines how racial categories were first created and shows how racial categories differ from one country or region to another.

Racism is both personal and institutional. Personal prejudices and biases can lead individuals to uphold racist ideas. That might mean upholding Eurocentric beauty standards, treating stereotypes as true, and even internalizing these ideas. At the same time, racism is upheld by institutions. Students often learn incomplete history that prioritizes the experiences of white people and ignores the contributions of Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color from around the world. Businesses can uphold institutional racism through discriminatory hiring policies and dress codes. Governments uphold racism when they offer better services to white people while ignoring the needs of people of color. Even medical systems can perpetuate racist ideas, like the idea that Black people have a higher tolerance to pain than white people do.

In the second section, Jewell talks about one of her elementary school teachers, who was openly racist toward some of her students. Jewell did nothing to stand up to this teacher, as she was only nine years old, but she wishes she had done more, and she laments that the other adults did nothing. This section explains what a microaggression is and how personal and institutional racism uphold and reinforce each other. Jewell uses the example of George Zimmerman’s 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, to explore personal racism. Personal and institutional racism are the contemporary expressions of a long history of racism. 

Jewell gives examples of how racism has harmed people around the world, including chattel slavery in American, British, and French colonialism; the residential school systems in North America and Oceania; the segregation of schools in America; and the prevalence of police violence against Black people. While all of these historical and current events are part of everyone’s collective history, anti-racist activist efforts are also an important part of that history. Jewell lists some notable activists and anti-racist movements and encourages readers to align themselves with anti-racist activist history.

The third section of the book provides readers with some actions they can take to combat racism in their own lives. Actions may include questioning established narratives or standing up to people who express racist beliefs and ideas, like Jewell’s childhood teacher. They could also include filming or otherwise disrupting situations where police are arresting or harassing people of color. Some of these actions, Jewell notes, involve taking risks. Jewell gives examples of her own activism, from reading a poem in class to working with anti-racist organizations. Readers are encouraged to examine their own actions and determine what they plan to do next. They might choose to call people out for their racism, which means discussing the situation with them in a public space where other people can hear. Alternatively, they might choose to call people in, which means discussing the situation in private. Each option has its benefits and drawbacks.

The final section of the book is about maintaining solidarity in anti-racist work. People who hold any degree of privilege in society due to “their proximity to the dominant culture” (151) can share that privilege with others, lifting people up. There are many ways that people can be good allies to each other, regardless of their position in society, from learning more about anti-racism, to centering the stories and experiences of people of color, to attending protests against police brutality. Finding other people who are invested in anti-racist work is crucial to helping the work of anti-racism continue. Recognizing one’s own privileges is also important, as is being one’s whole, authentic self without apology. There is always room for more growth, and everyone will sometimes make mistakes, but anti-racism is ultimately crucial for everyone’s freedom. The text ends with a glossary of terms, a list of sources, and options for further reading.