Book Review: Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficut Dialogues on Race

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race by Derald Wing Sue
Publisher: Wiley
Release Date: January 20, 2015
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Unspoken social rules determine much of what we say and do at home, at school, and at work with clients and coworkers. Often, these rules are good for society—they allow us to get along with one another in the world. But occasionally, these hidden rules have a detrimental impact, and in those situations the rules must be brought to light and eliminated. In avoiding this emotionally charged topic, we usually have good intentions—a concern for politeness, a desire not to offend—but Dr. Derald Wing Sue’s research has shown that we do far more harm than good when we stay silent about race.

This book does an excellent job of explaining why being “color-blind” is actually harmful to improving race relations. Sue also breaks down the concept of white privilege and why it’s important for white people to be aware of their privilege. However, the book is so repetitive that reading it becomes tedious. He cites his sources within the text instead of using footnotes or endnotes and this interferes with the flow of reading the book.

I didn’t agree with his section on communication styles. His source for the basis of his analysis was from 1985. I think more recent research into communication styles of different races would have been more accurate.

The last thing that bothered me about this book was the overuse of the phrase” brothers and sisters”. For instance, “Persons of color, more than their White brothers and sisters, are aware of the frightening implications of this expectation.” He used this phrase dozens, maybe hundreds of times. To me, it’s too touchy -feely or just plain weird for this type of book. A small quibble but one that really irritated me as I was reading.

This book has some great information but it’s overshadowed by its flaws. If it were paired down by cutting out all of the repetitive pieces., it would be a great in-depth magazine article. I think there are better books out there that make the same points as Sue.

(I received this book courtesy of Amazon Vine.)