Rethinking Race: A Memoir Kimberly A. Barrett Author

Rethinking Race: A Memoir was written as an act of compassionate antiracism. The book invites people to better understand their role in fighting racism by calling them into the struggle rather than calling them out. It is the true story of everyday challenges and triumphs that an African-American mother and her husband, who is identified by most as white but is a citizen of an Indigenous tribal nation, encounter as they try to help their son develop a positive multiethnic identity. Rethinking Race illustrates how one person's thinking evolved from taking race for granted, as an immutable part of our identity, to seeing it as a very impactful illusion. It is a story of how we can move beyond the false dichotomies of black and white, shaming and blaming to better articulate our rich individual uniqueness while acknowledging our common humanity. The book raises the possibility of becoming aracial, not through colorblindness, but rather by examining racism more closely and coming to understand how each of us creates race every day.