Betsy Leondar-Wright opens a civil dialog about Racism & Sexism

Is It Racist? Is It Sexist? Why Red and Blue White People Disagree, and How to Decide in the Gray Areas

            by sociologists Betsy Leondar-Wright (and Jessi Streib)

Racism and sexism often seem like optical illusions, with some people sure they see them and others sure they're not there, but the lines that most consistently divide our decisions might surprise you. By asking white people—Southerners and Northerners, Republicans and Democrats, working-class and professional-middle-class, men and women—to decide whether specific interactions and institutions are racist, sexist, or not, Leondar-Wright and Streib take us on a journey through the decision-making processes of white Americans. By presenting them with a variety of scenarios, the authors are able to distinguish the responses as being characteristic of different patterns of reasoning. They produce a framework for understanding these patterns that not only offer new tools for making more accurate and productive judgment calls, but that invite us all to engage with each other in a new way—even on topics that have come to divide us. Best of all, they don't treat us as bad if we disagree.