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Letters to My White Male Friends

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Letters to My White Male Friends

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Overview

In Letters to My White Male Friends, Dax-Devlon Ross speaks directly to the millions of middle-aged white men who are suddenly awakening to race and racism.

White men are finally realizing that simply not being racist isn’t enough to end racism. These men want deeper insight not only into how racism has harmed Black people, but, for the first time, into how it has harmed them. They are beginning to see that racism warps us all. Letters to My White Male Friends promises to help men who have said they are committed to change and to develop the capacity to see, feel and sustain that commitment so they can help secure racial justice for us all.

Ross helps readers understand what it meant to be America’s first generation raised after the civil rights era. He explains how we were all educated with colorblind narratives and symbols that typically, albeit implicitly, privileged whiteness and denigrated Blackness. He provides the context and color of his own experiences in white schools so that white men can revisit moments in their lives where racism was in the room even when they didn’t see it enter. Ross shows how learning to see the harm that racism did to him, and forgiving himself, gave him the empathy to see the harm it does to white people as well.

Ultimately, Ross offers white men direction so that they can take just action in their workplace, community, family, and, most importantly, in themselves, especially in the future when race is no longer in the spotlight.

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250276841
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	835,603
File size:	572 KB

About the Author

DAX-DEVLON ROSS is the author of several books (including The Nightmare and the Dream and Make Me Believe), and his journalism has been featured in Time, The Guardian, The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post Magazine, and other national publications. He won the National Association of Black Journalists’ Investigative Reporting Award for his coverage of jury exclusion in North Carolina courts and is currently a reporting fellow at Type Media Center.

A New York City teaching fellow turned nonprofit executive, Dax is now a principal at the social-impact consultancies Dax-Dev and Third Settlements, both of which focus on designing disruptive strategies to generate equity in workplaces and education spaces alike.

Dax received his Juris Doctor from George Washington University. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Alana, and their young daughter, Ella.

DAX-DEVLON ROSS is the author of several books (including The Nightmare and the Dream and Make Me Believe) and his journalism has been featured in Time, The Guardian, The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post Magazine, and other national publications. He won the National Association of Black Journalists’ Investigative Reporting Award for his coverage of jury exclusion in North Carolina courts and is currently a reporting fellow at Type Media Center.

A New York City teaching fellow turned nonprofit executive, Dax is now a principal at the social-impact consultancies Dax-Dev and Third Settlements, both of which focus on designing disruptive strategies to generate equity in workplaces and education spaces alike.

Dax received his Juris Doctor from George Washington University. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Alana, and their young daughter, Ella.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

04/05/2021
Journalist and educator Ross (Make Me Believe) discusses in this astute and accessible account the challenges and double standards he faces as a Black man in America and what white people can do to help bring about change. Ross documents his “socialization inside white-dominant institutions,” beginning with his enrollment at age 12 in a Washington, D.C., private school, where “you were rewarded for pontificating even if you didn’t know what you were talking about.” At Rutgers University in the 1990s, Ross and two other Black males were the only students (out of hundreds) charged with reckless endangerment for participating in a protest that shut down traffic on a local highway. The summer before his third year of law school, Ross was standing on a D.C. street corner when he was arrested, beaten, and charged with assaulting a police officer (the charges were later dropped). Ross folds analyses of Supreme Court rulings, gentrification, the “war on drugs,” and income disparities into his candid personal reflections, and offers a useful framework for how white men, in particular, can “shift culture and advance equity” by paying attention to how they receive feedback and by drawing on their own feelings of powerlessness to empathize with marginalized groups. This commonsense guide tackles a pressing social issue head-on. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Letters To My White Male Friends is an urgent appeal to confront systemic racism. Dax-Devlon Ross combines deeply personal experiences with our country’s painful history to call upon us all to work towards real justice. This book forces us to question what we think we know about inequality - and challenges us to act."
—Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of Lean In and Option B

"A compelling blend of memoir and call to action, Dax-Devlon Ross invites readers to reflect on their own racial socialization as he reflects on his and challenges them not to turn away from the reality of systemic racism but to listen, learn and take action for meaningful social change in their spheres of influence. Not one of those “White Male Friends”? Read it anyway. You’ll be glad you did."—Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race

“In this deeply intimate and often searing account, Ross upends the narrative well intentioned White people often tell themselves about the Black experience. It’s a must read coming-of-age story for our times."—Elsa Walsh, journalist and bestselling author of Divided Lives

"A sweeping deep dive into decades of American social history and politics that is at once personal, compelling, and damning. A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"[An] astute and accessible account.Ross folds analyses of Supreme Court rulings, gentrification, the “war on drugs,” and income disparities into his candid personal reflections, and offers a useful framework for how white men, in particular, can “shift culture and advance equity” by paying attention to how they receive feedback and by drawing on their own feelings of powerlessness to empathize with marginalized groups. This commonsense guide tackles a pressing social issue head-on."—Publishers Weekly

“Ross models the vulnerability and openness that sustained anti-racism work seems to require."—Boston Globe

"I thought I knew about the racial injustice that exists in this country, but this book blew my preconceived notions and truly opened my eyes. To live in America today this book should be required reading."—Fisher Stevens, director, actor, producer, and activist

"Dax-Devlon Ross manages to tackle the extraordinarily difficult issues of race with kindness, compassion and cogency. His story is profoundly personal and deeply compelling. This is required reading for anyone who is prepared to face these sensitive issues with openness and honesty. I loved this book.”—Jon Bernthal, actor and director

From the Publisher

Narrating this powerful audiobook about how everyone is damaged by racism, social equity consultant and author Dax-Devlon Ross radiates the equanimity needed for listeners to absorb his healing perspectives. His performance is adroit and appealing, and has the added benefit of palpable commitment to his insights and engagement with his personal stories. He says that officials who perpetuate biases in our criminal justice, banking, or medical establishments are not trying to be racist any more than are white people who dislike Black music. There is not an ounce of shame or blame in this entire audiobook. He is merely asking that we make corrections when we notice that Black people are denied rights and privileges that the rest of us take for granted. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Narrating this powerful audiobook about how everyone is damaged by racism, social equity consultant and author Dax-Devlon Ross radiates the equanimity needed for listeners to absorb his healing perspectives. His performance is adroit and appealing, and has the added benefit of palpable commitment to his insights and engagement with his personal stories. He says that officials who perpetuate biases in our criminal justice, banking, or medical establishments are not trying to be racist any more than are white people who dislike Black music. There is not an ounce of shame or blame in this entire audiobook. He is merely asking that we make corrections when we notice that Black people are denied rights and privileges that the rest of us take for granted. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

★ 2021-04-03
A Black man speaks hard truths to White men about their failure to dismantle systemic racism.
A “child of the Black bourgeoisie,” journalist Ross first learned “the shadow history of Black revolutionary struggle” in college. He accepted that he “directly benefited from the struggle that generations of Black folks had died in the name of, yet I wasn’t doing anything to help those who hadn’t benefited.” The author calls the White men of his generation, Gen X, to also recognize their complicity and miseducation. “We were fed cherry-picked narratives that confirmed the worthlessness of Black life,” he writes, “The euphemistic ‘culture of poverty,’ not systemic oppression, was to blame for the conditions in which so many Black people lived.” The story that White people have been told about Black people is “missing a major chapter,” and Ross thoroughly elucidates that chapter with a sweeping deep dive into decades of American social history and politics that is at once personal, compelling, and damning. Through a series of well-crafted personal letters, the author advises White men to check their motivations and “interrogate the allegedly self-evident, ‘commonsense’ values and beliefs” that perpetuate inequality and allow them to remain blissfully unaware of the insidiousness of racism and the ways they benefit from it. Ross condemns the “pathological unwillingness to connect the past with the present” and boldly avoids the comfortable “both sides” rhetoric that makes anti-racism work more palatable to White people. “It is on you,” he writes, “to challenge the color-blind narratives your parents peddle.” The letters are consistently compelling, covering wide ground that includes the broken criminal justice system, gentrification, and the problem with framing equity work as “charity.” Finally, Ross offers practical guidance and solutions for White men to employ at work, in their communities, and within themselves. Pair this one with Emmanuel Acho’s Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man.
A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.

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