Regina Jackson - White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better

Its no secret that American society encourages women to be nice, polite, and conflict-avoidant. These might be good rules for casual conversation, but when it comes to addressing racism, they only serve to uphold the status quo: white supremacy.

As the founders of Race2Dinner, an organization that facilitates conversations between white women about racism and white supremacy, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao have noticed white womens tendency to maintain a veneer of niceness and strive for perfection, even at the expense of antiracist work. Whats the way through this? Confronting and deconstructing nicenessfrom tone-policing to weaponizing tearsand posing tough questions along the way. After all, has being nice actually helped Black, Indigenous, and other women of color to overcome the barriers of racism? Has being nice helped white women in their quest to end sexism, or to gain economic parity with white men?

White Women is a call to action to those of you who are looking to take the next steps in dismantling white supremacyyour white supremacy. Your capacity to handle conflict is the only thing that will bring about real equity. It may be uncomfortable, but without discomfort, we have no chance.

White Women is not an easy read but is essential if you are dedicated to liberation for all and confronting white supremacy in all the parts of our lives where it hides so easily. This book is not an attack but an extraordinary gift, and I invite you to set your ego aside and approach it with humility and an open heart.

Anna Paquin , actress and producer

More Praise for White Women

Deconstructing white women and white supremacy has never been more necessary than it is right now, and I am always looking for ways to learn, grow, shut the F up, and listen. This book gives you the tools to do just that.

Chelsea Handler

I am excited for what this book means for us all. In a world where critical race theory is banned in classrooms across the USA, because the white people were not properly taught to think critically about their complicity in systemic oppression, this book is timely. We tend to tiptoe around whiteness, and this book rips the bandage off. This is the book many BIWOC have been needing to give to the white women in our lives; from our white coworkers to our white mother-in-laws, this book is no-holds-barred. This is the answer to many of our prayers.

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodrguez, author of For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color

Delivering clear and deliberate messaging, White Women enables white women to understand how our overt civility and desire to be nice above all else directly equates to racial avoidance and upholds white supremacy. It is the invitation you didnt realize you needed: accept it!

Jo Lorenz, writer and cofounder of The Progressivists social media network

The rawness and realness of these dinners and experiences, the wisdom, and quite frankly the courage Saira and Regina have, has the potential to be some of the most transformational work we have seen in this space in the last few years. The setting is genius, a perfect way to set the stage for the intimacy and radical honesty needed for this work. I felt every story. As a Black woman who facilitates similar conversations in my work with organizations, I know its necessary to have these frank conversations. But the way Saira and Regina approach it, there is little room for the participants to hide from the truth. Even with all the heaviness, its an easy and entertaining read. I believe anyone and everyone interested in this work should read this book.

Michelle Saahene, speaker, coach, and community leader

This book is a sharply defined lens through which white women who consider themselves allies need to see themselves, especially if they have any hope of stopping their patterns of harmful behavior toward Black and brown and Indigenous folx of color, truly divesting from whiteness, and actually taking action in the fight against racism and white supremacy. I hate how necessary and important this book is, but for the white women who are willing to read with open hearts and ears, Saira and Regina tell it exactly like it is. If and when white women are ready to commit to racial justice, they need to move quickly beyond performative wokeness and graduate from fragility, and this book is a foundational text for that master class.

Tina Strawn, author and activist

White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better is the book that will change the narrative. Regina and Saira approach the topic in a way that is not meant to placate the reader, but to challenge them to change. This is different than most who choose a warm and fluffy tone. They deconstruct the narrative that racism is normal and put accountability back in the hands of those who uphold the systems that cause harm.

Madison Butler, founder, Blue Haired Unicorn

Rao and Jackson use poignant and sharp observations with moments of hilarity to highlight the institutional barriers we have to overcome to become a better society as a whole.

Abby Govindan, comedian

penguin books

Regina Jackson was born in Chicago in 1950 and remembers an America where everything was in Black and white. Burned into her memory are the beatings and horrific treatment of civil rights workers throughout the South; the Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner murders; the murder of Viola Liuzzo; the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.; the murder of Medgar Evers; and the murder of President John Kennedy. The violence perpetrated on innocent people going about their lives, by white people. It is these memories that drive Regina to push for real change in America. Which is why she co-founded Race2Dinner.

Saira (NOT Sara) Rao grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of Indian immigrants. For forty years, she wasted her precious time aspiring to be white and accepted by dominant white society, a futile task for anyone not born with white skin. Several years ago, Saira began the painful process of dismantling her own internalized oppression. Saira is a lawyer by training, a former congressional candidate, a published novelist, and an entrepreneur.

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Copyright 2022 by Race2Dinner

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Jackson, Regina, 1950 author. | Rao, Saira, author.

Title: White women : everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better / Regina Jackson and Saira Rao.

Description: [New York] : Penguin Books, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022018964 (print) | LCCN 2022018965 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143136439 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525507970 (ebook)