The impact of racism on
African-Americans is an issue that has been publicly examined for some time now
–– but the impact of that same racism on whites has rarely been explored, and
never, to my knowledge, at book length. Now comes COMBINED DESTINIES: Whites Sharing Grief About Racism.
“By beginning a conversation that encourages
self-examination and compassion,” writes publisher Potomac Books, “Combined Destinies invites its readers
to look at how white Americans have been hurt by the very ideology that their
ancestors created.”
Edited by psychotherapists Ann Todd
Jealous, an African-American, and Caroline T. Haskell, who is white, the book
is built on the personal stories of a diverse group of contributors. The issues
of guilt, silence, shame, resistance and freedom, among others, are broken into
chapters. The stories are compelling, intimate and persuasive.
Among them is one of the landmark
civil rights cases, the 1960 court-ordered integration of New Orleans public schools. Two elementary
schools were selected to be the first mixed-race schools. White parents angrily
boycotted the schools, and blacks were afraid to send their children. On the first
day of integration, only one black girl, Ruby Bridges, attended. Only two white
children, escorted by police past shouting mobs, joined Ruby at the Wiilliam J.
Frantz Schoo.
My fiancé Yolanda was one of those two
white girls, and in an interview in Combined Destinies, she explains its impact
on her –– and the courageous decision by her mother, Daisy, a Costa Rican by
birth, to challenge the vitriol and racism.
A review of the book, which I recommend,
is here:
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