The latest book from Jemar Tisby on confronting America’s original — and originating — sin
How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice is Jemar Tisby’s second published work. In his first book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Tisby takes us through the 400 or so years of American history, bringing to light the ways in which racism is deeply built into and widely spread through American life, focusing on the religious basis of American racism. That book is an eye-opening read, and has provoked many thoughtful people to begin to ask themselves “but what then do we do to confront racism and work to break it?”
In this book, Tisby responds. “You want some ideas? Here are some ideas.” Tisby brings his careful, precise, and experiential wisdom into the discussion, giving us concrete methods and actions that we can take to confront American racism, whether it is through the acquisition of information and experience to gain the notional understanding of racism as it is today, the creation of relationships and networks to help us see people as they are, or the direct examples of actions that we can take to bring to light current manifestations of personal and systemic racism and then apply behaviors and techniques to not only halt it from spreading but to roll it back into the shadows.
Tisby breaks down the path to fighting racism using the acronym ARC: Awareness, Relationships, Commitment. These are tools that anyone can use, at any time, at any level, and iteratively returning and deepening the actions that are already underway. There is no pre-work required before we start the process, says Tisby. We just start where we are, with what we are and the tools and resources we can find — and then we dig in and do the work, step by step.
This book is helpful, positive, hopeful, and direct: You wanted to know how to help? Here are some ways. It is oriented towards the Christian community, and uses Christian, biblical concepts to help Christians use their vocabulary, but it is still accessible to the wider community that wants to know what to do about healing America’s original moral failures of racism and the dehumanizing of its own people.
Ultimately, the book is not just about the work to be done, or even the wider sphere of inspiration to do what’s right. Working to bring our fellow human beings up to their full dignity as people who are endowed with full human, civil rights is a good thing for all of us, of course — this is unstated because it is obvious.
But we are asked to do so — perhaps by the necessity of our being human — for our own selves as well. As Tisby puts it, “Fighting racism is not just about how it changes the world; it’s also about how it changes you.”
Are you ready to come join the work? Then come, let’s get started.