As I sit down to write this article, a complicated knot of feelings settles in my stomach: anxiety, procrastination, fear of saying too little, fear of saying too much, and worry about just getting it completely wrong. Thanks to Layla F. Saad’s book Me & White Supremacy, I can put names to these feelings. White fragility. White apathy. White exceptionalism.

The simple act of naming goes a long way towards untangling this knot of feelings and pushing back against it to engage in conscious and reflective anti-racism work rather than superficial optical allyship.

“Sometimes you have a gut feeling that a situation or dynamic is wrong, but Me & White Supremacy gives you the ability to articulate exactly why.”

- Bristol Girl Book Group member

Me & White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World began as a 28-day Instagram challenge that set out to hammer home the disturbing truth about how white privilege contributes to and upholds systems of racial oppression. It demonstrated how people with this privilege bear responsibility in breaking down these systems.

The book retains the structure of a 28-day challenge, with a different section to work through each day. Saad includes an explanation of the day’s topic alongside tangible ways it can feature in our everyday lives. Each day also features reflective questions that encourage you to think deeply about your relationship with white supremacy in all its distorted forms.

“Reading this book made me realise that I didn’t know how much I didn’t know!”

- Bristol Girl Book Group member

As part of the City Girl Network #BlackLivesMatter book club takeover, Bristol Girl Book Group read Me & White Supremacy as our July pick. We found that it helped to have group support and accountability while doing uncomfortable work such as uncovering your own racist bias and the extent of your silent complicity.

It is all too easy to step away and fall back into the comfortable apathy of white privilege, telling yourself that you can’t be racist – racist people look like xenophobic senoirs or white supremacist thugs sporting balaclavas. 

Knowing that your experience is, to some extent, a shared one helps motivate you to put your ego and discomfort to one side and truly interrogate your relationship with racism.

Saad refuses to pander to the white ego in Me & White Supremacy, writing that as the reader works through the 28-day journey, they “will want to close the book, run away, and pretend [they] never heard of me”. 

With these words in mind, Bristol Girl readers braced ourselves for a deeply unpleasant experience. Yet we all agreed that as we moved through the work, we didn’t dread what was to come as much as we expected. There was something cathartic about bringing out the darker parts of our subconscious self so we could have a serious reckoning. 

For most book club picks, we follow the same routine – read it, discuss it, then choose the next one. The process is enjoyable, but short-lived. However, Me & White Supremacy demands a different type of engagement. Reading it marks just the first step in a lifelong anti-racism journey.

“Me & White Supremacy is definitely a book that you can keep returning to year after year”

- Bristol Girl Book Group member

“This book makes you realise how much we are all a work in progress”

- Bristol Girl Book Group member

We have made a commitment as a book group to consciously read more diversely and are looking forward to our Fiction by Black Women theme next month. 

Read Me & White Supremacy even if, or especially if, you’re convinced of your own non-racist credentials. Read it with friends, colleagues or family. Pass your copy around and share it on social media. If you’re someone who holds white privilege, I cannot encourage you enough to get stuck into this no-holds-barred, eye-opening anti-racism journey.

Find out more at www.meandwhitesupremacybook.com that also includes links to purchase the book in physical, e-book or audiobook formats. You can also find more information about the author at www.laylafsaad.com and follow the hashtag #meandwhitesupremacy on Instagram here.

Written by Florence Edwards