The Right Kind of White: A Memoir

by Garrett Bucks Narrated by Garrett Bucks

Overview

A “deeply revealing and vulnerable memoir” (Kate Schatz, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Do the Work) that earnestly reckons with whiteness and explores how understanding one's own white identity can create the racial accountability needed in the national discourse.

As the product of progressive parents and a liberal upbringing, Garrett Bucks prided himself on the pursuit of being a “good white person.”

The kind of white person who treats their privilege as a responsibility and not a burden; the kind of white person who people of color see as the peak example of racial allyship; the kind of white person who other white people might model their own aspirations of being “better” after.

But it's Buck's obsession with “goodness” that prevents him from building meaningful relationships, particularly those who look like him. The Right Kind of White charts Buck's intellectual and emotional odyssey in his pursuit of this ideal whiteness, the price of its admission, and the work he's doing to bridge the divide from those he once sought distance from.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

I am so grateful to Garrett Bucks for his words, his wisdom, his wit, and most of all his willingness to thoroughly excavate his whiteness, his male-ness, and his good-ness. The Right Kind of White is a deeply revealing and vulnerable memoir that manages to be the opposite of navel-gazing—it's personal narrative for the greater good, self-knowledge-as-activism, and a compelling critique of the holier-than-thou mindset that us "good" white people engage in. I rarely read or recommend books by straight white dudes, but this one is a truly exceptional exception. Thank you, Garrett.” –KATE SCHATZ, New York Times bestselling co-author of Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book and the Rad Women book series

“The Right Kind of White is a brilliant, unsparing memoir about the dreamworld of white American liberalism, where good intentions often mask the origins and consequences of white supremacy. Garrett Bucks has been to all every stop on the tour—liberal arts colleges, Methodist church basements, even Teach for America—and he’s here to tell us how hard, and necessary, it is for "good white people" to confront hard truths about themselves.” –JESS ROW, author of White Flights

“Things get tricky when someone wants to do good—and also be celebrated for it. Garrett Bucks offers a fascinating, immersive account of what it means to be white and progressive in a time of social and political reckoning. The Right Kind of White is unforgettable. It's an elegant testament to the pitfalls of ego and the desire for absolution.” –WENDY S. WALTERS, author of Multiply/Divide

“Garrett Bucks' The Right Kind Of White is a clear-eyed, deeply felt call for connection and community rather than individual saviorism. Bucks invites us to follow his path from a progressive childhood into a commitment to social justice work that hinged on exalting his separation from other white people. Recognizing this tendency writ large in white activist circles, Buck argues that the only way to reckon with whiteness and its harms is to give up trying to stand outside them, but to do the work for change together with other white people in a spirit of love rather condemnation.” –MAUD NEWTON, author of Ancestor Trouble

“It's easy to mistake self-flagellation for introspection. And it's much easier to perform that self-flagellation for others — and mistake that performance for actually doing the work of dismantling white privilege. Garrett Bucks has done both, and he knows it. But he also knows that there can be a different way forward: a way of grappling with whiteness in which the primary concern is not self-absolution. That's the beating heart of The Right Kind of White, a must-read for anyone who's ready to actually do the work.” –ANNE HELEN PETERSON, author of Can’t Even

“The Right Kind of White is a funny, honest, beautiful, and necessary hard look at race, community, and belonging in America. Beginning with his own sense of self and identity, Garrett Bucks flips around notions of do-gooder liberalism and asks hard questions about community race and belonging in America. This book is important reading for all well-meaning White people who want to do better and build better communities. Garrett has written an indispensable manual to understanding ourselves and our communities and how we belong and how we can make them better.” –LYZ LENZ, author of This American Ex-Wife

“The Right Kind of Whiteness could be called The Right Kind of Masculinity or The Right Kind of Middle Class Progressive, which is to say, it's a sneak attack examination on the ways in which we often play to our roles rather than living into our deepest, least constructed knowing about love and justice. Garrett tells a familiar story—White, do-gooder dude coming-of-age—in a completely fresh and surprising way. Dude sees the way that his choices have been led by exceptionalism fantasy and tries to come back down to the messy, beautiful earth. Full of tenderness, humor, and aching towards a collective mindset, this book is sure to lead so many others down a path of joyful, self-examination.” —COURTNEY E. MARTIN, author of Learning in Public and The New Better Off

Kirkus Reviews

2024-02-03
An activist unpacks “good” whiteness.

Bucks is the founder of the Barnraisers Project, which equips “White organizers from across the country to mobilize their own communities for racial justice.” As he explains in the introduction, his debut book is his attempt to tell “the story of White people’s obsession not just with who we are in relation to Black and Brown people, but who we are in relation to each other.” (Bucks capitalizes White because to not do so when capitalizing Black and Brown makes whiteness seem like the default category.) While the author set out to write a “sociohistorical analysis,” he decided that he couldn’t execute that project properly without first interrogating the ways in which he has tried to differentiate himself from other white people throughout his life. Consequently, he chose to write a memoir. Bucks has set himself an extremely difficult task: making himself the central figure in a narrative that is, essentially, the story of a white person learning to decenter himself in the cause of justice. The author is nothing if not self-effacing. He gently pokes fun at the painful sincerity of his younger self, a peace and global studies major at Earlham College, “a Quaker school…that primarily attracted self-consciously earnest do-gooders,” and he recounts his nervousness at being perceived as a white savior while working on a Navajo reservation. However, the anecdotes about the ways in which he identifies, rejects, and uses various kinds of whiteness aren’t terribly revelatory. What we learn, ultimately, is what we knew at the beginning: Bucks is a sincere guy doing his best to do good. “It’s a gift,” he writes, “to share my story of ‘the right kind of being White.’ It will be an even more profound gift if my doing so encourages others to share theirs as well.”

An earnest but mostly unenlightening work.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160120300
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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