Stay Woke. Candis Watts Smith
in the back of the book, where most glossaries are relegated) so that we can all be on the same page about some basic (and advanced) racial terminology. You can read each entry one by one as they appear or out of order; you can refer to them when they come up in the book (we boldface these concepts as they appear throughout the text) or when the pundits on the news bring them up; but ultimately, it is a toolkit we have built for folks who want to know more so they can do more.
There are also some commonsense notions that we aim to reexamine here. In chapter 3, “The Politics of Racial Progress,” we evaluate the extent to which US society is on a steady march toward a postracial reality. We make clear that although Americans love the idea of racial progress, it is not inevitable. Racial progress is the product of resistance, demands, and vigilance. In chapter 4, “Are You Upholding White Supremacy?,” we consider how difficult it is to see what is right in front of us: our own behavior. Here, we highlight how average Americans—progressives and conservatives across racial lines—talk around race. We bring attention to this issue in order to show how even well-meaning patterns of behavior can serve to the detriment of the most vulnerable people in society.
Afterward, in chapter 5, “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way,” we elucidate the fact that the policies that cause the most problems are drawn up and implemented at the state and local levels of governance. What this means is that we don’t need to have the ear of someone on Capitol Hill; instead, we each can take on leadership positions and advocate for the changes we need most in our own city halls and state legislatures. As the civil rights and human rights activist Ella Baker explained, we are better off with ten thousand candles rather than a single spotlight.3 You’ll find that in chapters 3 through 5, taken together, we cover what we believe are essential points of information for those who want to dig in to learn more as well as resources for political action.
At the time of this writing, justice-minded Americans are protesting a lot because there is a lot to protest—neo-Nazis and the so-called alt-right have been emboldened to come out of the shadows of the internet, migrant families are being separated, water rights and environmental regulations are being scaled back, and white citizens are calling the police on Black people for napping while Black, grilling in the park while Black, or waiting for their friends at Starbucks while Black. We want this book to inspire political novices to action and to reinvigorate those activists who are in the streets, so in chapter 6, “Twenty-One Affirmations for the Twenty-First Century,” we provide bite-sized food for thought to nourish the racial egalitarian in us all.
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One Last Thing
We are both mothers, wives, and daughters. We are both political scientists and experts in our fields. One of us was motivated to earn her PhD because she wanted other people to know that Black women are perfect . . . ly able to produce knowledge, inspire students, and interrogate some of society’s most difficult questions. The other was motivated to receive her doctorate, in part, because Black mentors told her that was something she could and should do and modeled how to use that platform to advocate for social change. One of us is a Millennial. The other is a member of Generation X. Together, the two of us have a combined twenty years of classroom experience at seven universities and colleges in six states.
We have spoken to some unknown large number of students, faculty members, rooms full of college administrators, and social justice activists about matters of race and racism. And we have both noticed many of the same patterns of thinking and speaking about race, racism, and potential solutions to eradicate racial inequity. What we find is that an overwhelming proportion of people we talk to genuinely value the idea of a racially equitable society, but they are uneasy about talking about racism. Some have never had the opportunity to talk about racism, and they do not want to use the wrong words. Some are unsure about whether the United States is inches or miles from officially being declared a racism-free country. Some want to make sure that they are doing everything to not be a racist, but they are not yet aware that more is required of them if they actually want to work for racial justice.
We wrote this book because there are many people who want to help bring about racial equality and have been looking for help to take steps in the right direction; these people bring us hope. We wrote this book because we love Black people. We also wrote this book because we fear for the lives of our children, our husbands, our extended families, and our students who have a higher probability of being victims of state violence or of a vigilante who is suspicious of their presence and doubtful of their humanity. As mentioned, we hope to convince and encourage more people to live out their lives in a way that pushes us closer to living in a society where all Black lives matter. We use our expertise to do so, but we know that we are not above critique. We write from a posture of intellectual humility, which means that we are well aware that we don’t know it all. In fact, sometimes we disagree with each other, but through our friendship and respect for each other, we are able to offer fresh perspectives, persuade each other, or teach the other something new. We invite our readers to challenge us, share their perspectives, and teach us.
On the Matter of Black Lives
Let’s imagine a street lined with high-rise buildings. One of them is burning. What do you do? All of the buildings matter, but the one on fire matters most at that moment.1 The thing is, if you don’t put out the fire in the burning building, you risk all of the surrounding buildings burning down as well. This is the message of the Black Lives Matter movement: Black lives are under attack, and we all ought to galvanize a sense of urgency to address the direct, structural, and cultural violence that Black people face.2 It’s not only the right thing to do, but the fate of the entire neighborhood depends on it. We, as a society, cannot say we are all free and equal until those who are at the bottom of various domains of our society—political, economic, social—are also free and equal.
Needless to say, this message of mattering sounds differently to different people. This is perhaps best illustrated by the competing hashtags in response to #BlackLivesMatter, such as #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter. These rejoinders, or at least the motivation behind these alternative hashtags, we believe, can best be understood with the help of social science research, which tells us that Americans across different racial groups see the world differently. This is one of the few facts that social scientists actually agree on.3 On matters related to race and racism, white Americans and Black Americans, on the whole, have almost diametric perceptions about the way the world works. Latinx4 and Asian American attitudes often fall somewhere in between these viewpoints, sometimes closer to Blacks’, other times closer to whites’.5
There are many reasons for this divide, but one that strikes us as particularly noteworthy is the tendency for Americans to surround themselves with (or be surrounded by) people who are very similar to them. For example, one study showed that if the average Black American had one hundred friends, eighty-three of them would be Black, eight would be white, two would be Latinx, and the rest would be of some other race. If the average white person had the same number of friends, he or she would have one Black friend, one Latinx friend, one Asian American friend, a few friends of other races, and ninety-one white friends. Perhaps more striking is the finding that nearly 75 percent of whites do not have any nonwhite friends.6
Intuitively, this makes sense. We live in a racially segregated society. We tend to live in neighborhoods with people of similar racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. We go to schools with people who are demographically similar to us. And at eleven o’clock in the morning on Sundays, when many Americans go to church to worship, their communion with one another still initiates the most segregated hour of the week.7 As we will explain, this reality is the outcome of historical and contemporary public policies, but it is also due to the choices of individuals, some of whom have more choices and greater latitude to pick and choose than others. Ubiquitous racial segregation across several domains of American life means that whites, Blacks, Latinxs, Asians, and American Indians live very different social, political, and economic realities.
People across racial groups also have different relationships