Debby Irving grew up in a suburb of Boston, as WASPy as you can get and was totally clueless about race. As she began work on racial equity, she quickly found out she had much to learn. In her own words:
"Not so long ago, if someone had called me a racist, I would have kicked and screamed in protest. "But I'm a good person!" I would have insisted. "I don't see color! I don't have a racist bone in my body!" … I thought being a racist meant not liking people of color or being a name-calling bigot."Debby Irving is now a racial justice educator. Her hope is that by sharing her own sometimes cringe-worthy struggles, she can offer a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, and tolerance. It's a fascinating book and well worth reading for anyone who is interested in exploring issues of race, racism and white privilege.
"It turns out, stumbling block number 1 was that I didn't think I had a race, so I never thought to look within myself for answers. The way I understood it, race was for other people, brown and black-skinned people."
"Waking up white has been an unexpected journey that's required me to dig back into childhood memories to recall when, how and why I developed such distorted ideas about race, racism and the dominant culture in which I soaked."