I made this account as an alt because I'm deeply ashamed of the feelings and biases that could be considered reactionary. I know they're stemming from living in a country that subscribes to the delusion of white supremacy, and other views that ultimately support capitalism, but I want to take responsibility for the work I have to do.
To give some context to the post title, I don't think I'm virulently racist. I'm nonwhite, and I'm trying to address internalized racism and beliefs around white supremacy. I've read about and believe systemic racism is a thing, so I don't think it's a matter of me being convinced. I believe these are shitty and wrong things to feel, and I've done my best to consciously counter it, but I want to be better.
I'm trying to use things like Google to find resources, but it's been so bad lately, and I don't want to sink energy and resources into something like White Fragility when that's not the kind of work I'm trying to do. Does that make sense?
I want to be better about self-crit, but I want to make sure I'm doing it the right way. Are there recommended books, resources, audiobooks, ways of approaching personal biases and maybe getting to the root of an issue around race? Is this just something that will click as I continue to actively confronting myself?
If there's a more appropriate place to have discussions like this, I'm okay with this post/account getting removed. I don't want to stir shit, and if this is a thing I need to work on with a therapist or on my own, I'm willing to continue doing that.
I don't know if it's quite what you're after, given it's a slightly dense ~300 page science book rather than a guide or primer for personal growth, but The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, a Marxist biologist, was pretty important in my personal journey. It describes the origins of 'intelligence' pseudoscience and its tight binding to 'race' pseudoscience, and shows how 'race', especially the mental components of 'race', were invented by a few handfuls of academics and that those academics were, essentially, absolute fuckwits. How the history of justification for racist beliefs is the history of being continuously proven wrong, then turning on a dime to explain how actually the new information that destroyed your whole system explains the real way that 'race' and 'intelligence' work, always
back to the same hierarchy regardless of the facts.
Once you can contextualize 'race' as a material process in the world with a specific historical beginning, you can imagine its specific end - you can conceive of it as a material object you can grasp in your hands and crush out of existence. You can imagine the faces of the men who invented this way of thinking, a mind virus you had to be infected with for the benefit of capitalism, and then slap them away. The main thing is the boiling rage you'll be left with, which I personally found was a crucial component of not just being 'not racist' but trying to become actively anti-racist. I stopped being angry at myself and became angry at the beliefs, which I could then burn out of my brain whenever they appeared, and instead felt love and solidarity with my racialized comrades and anger on their behalf.