Do Better: Can A White Reviewer Steer Clear of White Supremacy?

 Black author Rachel Ricketts believes that whites are too enmired in systematic white supremacy to steer clear of it.  Maybe I can't, but I'm going to try my best in my review of  Do Better by Rachel Ricketts.

               

When Rachel Ricketts was a child, she tried out for the role of Snow White because it was the school play.  Instead they gave her the role of the Witch's black cat which was a racist thing to do.  She was also condemned for running while black.  I had the experience of being chased off the track in high school because the track team needed it for practice.  This was in the early 1970's.  There was no girls' track team.  So I was running on the track while female. Such a scandal!  The boys' track team thought I was trespassing on their territory.  I never ran again. 

The kind of friendship commitment problems that Ricketts had with some of her white friends, were issues that I also had with some of my friends.  I decided that they must define friendship differently than I did.  I believe that people in my life who think friendship doesn't involve commitments, must be considered acquaintances instead of friends.   

Ricketts points out that I and other white readers haven't been victims of white supremacy.  True, but I have experienced anti-semitism. The first time I was six years old.  The younger sister of a friend told me I killed Jesus.  I ran home in tears.  

In Ricketts' definition of racial justice she says that it requires getting rid of white supremacy.  So it seems to me that she considers racial justice an ideal that has never been achieved.  I would say that when you consider the centuries of harm that white people have perpetrated, it would probably take centuries of positive acts to balance the scale.

When I look back at 2021, I expect to consider Do Better to be the best book I've read this year.  My criterion for non-fiction is how much I've learned from the book and I think I've learned more from this book than any other.  It  caused me to reflect a great deal about racism, and how I personally could have caused harm unknowingly.