Me and White Supremacy

In a June 2020 perspective for the Washington Post, Tre Johnson, a Black Philadelphian, charged that white people “tend to take a slow route to meaningful activism.” When things get real, Johnson suggested, white people read a book.

Events of 2020 – police killings of unarmed Black people, nationwide protests in response – suggested that many white people have developed an eagerness to create real change. That summer and fall, would-be allies sent an armful of antiracism books to the top of bestseller lists and brought new celebrity to thinkers such as Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates.