admin reviewed Racism Explained to My Daughter by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Review of 'Racism Explained to My Daughter' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
It's ironic how out of all the essays, Bill's bored me the most. I initially dismissed him as another white man with weirdly "non-White" sounding names for his sons. I looked him up and he is actually quite an activist. It's interesting how his addition in this book could be interpreted differently. In Mura's essay, where would he lie in the contradictory perspectives? White people obviously do benefit institutionalised racism but can they talk about it? Does that make all white people racists? Racism is made to be simple in Jelloun's original book but the essayists argue otherwise. Racism is not simple. Even though I am a person of colour myself, I find myself falling into certain thought patterns. And racism in France vs America seems fundamentally different. It's interesting to see these American point of views versus Jelloun's French-Morrocan view. If I ever have kids, I wonder what life …
It's ironic how out of all the essays, Bill's bored me the most. I initially dismissed him as another white man with weirdly "non-White" sounding names for his sons. I looked him up and he is actually quite an activist. It's interesting how his addition in this book could be interpreted differently. In Mura's essay, where would he lie in the contradictory perspectives? White people obviously do benefit institutionalised racism but can they talk about it? Does that make all white people racists? Racism is made to be simple in Jelloun's original book but the essayists argue otherwise. Racism is not simple. Even though I am a person of colour myself, I find myself falling into certain thought patterns. And racism in France vs America seems fundamentally different. It's interesting to see these American point of views versus Jelloun's French-Morrocan view. If I ever have kids, I wonder what life would be like for them in this landscape. Would my future possible child even be fully Asian like myself? Even the thought of marrying/having kids outside one's race is a touchy and political subject. This book gave me a lot of food for thought.
First sentence: In the early 1900s, the great African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois predicted that the problem of the color line would turn out to be the twentieth century's critical challenge.
Last sentence: The images we take in every day no longer depict the supposed purity of the white male, domineering and self-assured.