From the Publisher
Digging up the Seeds is that rare, original work based on years of study and experience that will change forever the way we see antiracism. It is right up there with Kendi's How to be an Antiracist and Harrison and D'Angelo's Do the Right Thing, for courage, passion, and compassion. Dr Rita's powerful work is compelling as a memoir and towering as an antiracism manual. It will be a valuable book for all serious workers against cultural and social injustice. Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University Professor, author of Radical Insurgencies and Revolutionary Pedagogy, and ninety other books.
This book needs to be read by every American. As a black man living in America, this work was psychologically healing in a way that cannot be explained, it must be experienced. Andrae Alexander, GRAMMY WINNER, Professor at University of Southern California
I have gained immense insight about what led to the current corrupt tree of white supremacy in America. Fear drives this system. I have become more proactive opening up conversations with others. Johannah Chung, US student
Kirkus Reviews
2022-06-15
An independent scholar and consultant explores the roots of White supremacy in the United States.
As a White woman with “a relatively comfortable life,” Fierro notes that this survey of racist ideology “wasn’t an easy book to write” and that she doesn’t “expect it to be an easy read” for other middle-class White people. Taking the advice of Black activists since the 1960s, she focuses on challenging White people’s beliefs, and her intended audience is specifically progressive young people who are at a loss for how to address systemic racism. The bulk of the book provides a historical overview of the roots of White supremacy, covering major events from 1492 through 2020, from Pope Alexander VI’s institutionalization of the “Doctrine of Discovery” and Europe’s embrace of race-based slavery to Jim Crow and the racist persecution of the war on drugs. The figures most often associated with American racism certainly make appearances, including enslavers, the Ku Klux Klan, and Southern sheriffs. However, the book also emphasizes the ways in which some White activists have historically perpetuated White supremacy. Helen Parrish, a White woman from Philadelphia whose activism centered on housing reform, for instance, has traditionally been portrayed as a hero of the nascent progressive movement in the late 19th century. Yet, in Fierro’s convincing analysis, Parrish’s career is defined by her “condescending saviorism,” as seen in her private diaries, which are rife with examples of her belief in her superiority to non-White tenants and her judgmental intrusion into their lives. The book’s retellings of the stories of such icons are the book’s strong suit, as is Fierro’s emphasis on the historic phenomenon of “White Women Myopia,” demonstrating how “systems of ‘help’ established by white women didn’t produce equality for people of color.”Fierro, who has a doctorate in African American studies from Temple University, has a firm command of this history, and she supports her work with more than 500 citations. Although academic historians won’t find much that’s new in the book’s analysis, which does not fully and methodologically engage with archival research, it more than accomplishes the author’s goal of providing an accessible history for general readers. This effort toward engagement is accompanied by a down-to-earth writing style and an ample assortment of full-color original art by Fierro and illustrator Sgueglia as well as diagrams, charts, and other visual aids. The book will likely show many White readers the ways in which America’s racist history resonates in their present-day lives. Along the way, it provides actionable agendas for change, which tracks well with Fierro’s career as a consultant whose work centers on ethics, leadership, and social justice and with her own willingness to address her own “internalized racism.” Oddly, though, the book accepts a common right-wing trope that overstates the prevalence of leftist “cancel culture” that allegedly targets the nonwoke and, in doing so, uses some of the same talking points that people opposed to anti-racist work often use.
An often nuanced analysis of the prevalence of American racism.
