UofL News: Tell us a little about what you’ve written. Many white people have legitimate questions about race, but they are afraid to ask those questions for fear of being ridiculed or labeled racist. Historically speaking, many white people have had neither need nor incentive to learn about what people of color experience so, they simply don’t know, or their understanding may be shallow at best. Unless someone steps forward to answer those questions, good people will remain hopelessly ignorant, which gets society nowhere. I’d like to see the needle really move in a positive direction on race relations in this country. This book is my tiny contribution to that effort. Teresa Reed: My intended audience is white people who want calm, honest answers to their questions about race in a nonjudgmental space. UofL News: What do you hope to communicate through the book’s title?
Recent events – in particular, the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd – inspired me to formulate these reflections into a book that I hope will dispel some of the ignorance and dismantle some of the fears that fuel racial intolerance and keep people apart. I concluded that it was not simply racism, but rather widespread ignorance at the root of what many white people feared about Black people and other people of color. This, in turn, has continued to fuel the frustration that many people of color feel about being unheard and misunderstood. Teresa Reed: About 12 years ago, I started writing, in bits and pieces, reflections on what I considered to be a big gap in the discourse about race relations in this country. It seemed clear to me that many white Americans were genuinely unlearned and confused about race and racial difference, which seemed especially evident throughout the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
UofL News: What inspired you to write this book? UofL News had the chance to catch up with Reed about the book and what she hopes people will gain from reading it. Teresa Reed, dean of UofL’s School of Music, has published a new book titled, You’re Likely Not a Racist: Answers for Curious White People.
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