Book Review: Little Brown Me, and Other Reflections on Identity

Are we as adults prepared to help the children we care about make sense of their own race-related observations?

This is a book review of  Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum. The review was written by Brandie Williams. 

In this thought-provoking work, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, Beverly Daniel Tatum weaves together a conscious-jolting web of understanding surrounding privilege, racial identity, and how we come to understand who we are as individuals. In the very beginning of her book, she challenges us with a simple exercise: “think back to your earliest race-related memory.”

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Interview: Dr. Rashawn Ray on Why Police Compliance Does Not Save Black Lives

Interview with Dr. Rashawn Ray, interview conducted by Brandie Reeder Williams.

Dr. Ray will be giving a lecture on the 25th of October in Hoff Theatre, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland. To find out more and to RSVP visit the website of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace.

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Book Review: Unforgiveness is an Option?

Book Review of “Trauma and Forgiveness: Consequences and Communities” by C. Fred Alford. The review was written by Brandie Reeder Williams.

Having grown up in what is affectionately known as the “bible belt” of rural North Carolina, the virtue of “forgiveness,” was always a taken-for-granted concept, one cloaked in the easy black-and-white morality of “right and wrong.” My orientation to, and understanding of forgiveness, was espoused through both myth (“forgive others or God will not forgive you in heaven,”) but also through folklore and narrative; through cautionary tales told about people who just “couldn’t forgive…got sick, and died.” Forgiveness then, was in every situation both a moral obligation and beneficial to one’s own “healing,” physically and emotionally. Continue reading