Being White Today

Shelly Tochluk is a professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University–Los Angeles. She is the author of Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk About Race and How to Do It and Living in the Tension: The Quest for a Spiritualized Racial Justice. Free, downloadable workshop agendas and handouts aligned with each book are available at ShellyTochluk.com. Shelly volunteers with AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere-Los Angeles). For over a decade, she has co-produced AWARE-LA’s 4-day summer institute titled, Unmasking Whiteness, which leads white people into a deeper understanding of their personal relationship to race, white privilege, and systemic racism.Christine Saxman founded Saxman Consulting in the spring of 2020 where she provides racial and social justice training, facilitation, and coaching for educational, corporate, not-for-profit, and government organizations. She is a co-author of Western State Center’s toolkit, Confronting Conspiracy Theories and Organized Bigotry at Home: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers. She also works on staff for the National SEED Project (Seeking Education Equity and Diversity). Prior to spending two years as an equity transformation specialist at Courageous Conversations About Race, Christine was an educator and equity leader at a suburban school district in Illinois. In 2016, she received recognition as an Illinois Golden Apple Finalist and Teacher of Distinction.

• AcknowledgementsChapter One: Deciding on a Direction: Which Way Do We Go?Chapter Two: Mapping the Road Ahead: Toward a Positive, Antiracist White IdentityChapter Three: Encountering the Other: ContactChapter Four: Moral Dilemmas: DisintegrationChapter Five: Defending Whiteness: DisintegrationChapter Six: Toward Antiracism: DisintegrationChapter Seven: Retreating into Whiteness: ReintegrationChapter Eight: Emerging Antiracism: ReintegrationChapter Nine:False Confidence: Pseudo-IndependenceChapter Ten: Transformation: Immersion/EmersionChapter Eleven: Positive Antiracist White Identity: AutonomyChapter Twelve: It’s Okay to Be White: Autonomy

Tochluk and Saxman provide an enlightening guide for white people navigating their own racialized, white identity journeys. The authors utilize Janet Helms’s model of white identity development, which includes various roles white people experience on their personal identity journey: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independence, immersion/emersion, and autonomy.… By illustrating how common far-right and anti-racist messaging can hinder a person’s white identity development, the authors provide ideas for disarming tactics that typically shut down conversations about race. They offer suggested approaches adapted to different roles, such as building relationships, offering perspective, cultivating curiosity, engaging in critical thinking, practicing self-care, and many others. Although the focus is on developing a healthful, positive, anti-racist white identity, the book also untangles ideologies leading to the rise in white nationalism. Being White Today is a must read for white educators and racial justice facilitators committed to sustaining their white identity journeys. Highly recommended. Faculty; professionals; general readers.