How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

A unique and irreverent take on everything that's wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about it

How to Be Less Stupid About Race is your essential guide to breaking through the half-truths and ridiculous misconceptions that have thoroughly corrupted the way race is represented in the classroom, pop culture, media, and politics. Centuries after our nation was founded on genocide, settler colonialism, and slavery, many Americans are kinda-sorta-maybe waking up to the reality that our racial politics are (still) garbage. But in the midst of this reckoning, widespread denial and misunderstandings about race persist, even as white supremacy and racial injustice are more visible than ever before.

Combining no-holds-barred social critique, humorous personal anecdotes, and analysis of the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on systemic racism, sociologist Crystal M. Fleming provides a fresh, accessible, and irreverent take on everything that’s wrong with our “national conversation about race.” Drawing upon critical race theory, as well as her own experiences as a queer black millennial college professor and researcher, Fleming unveils how systemic racism exposes us all to racial ignorance—and provides a road map for transforming our knowledge into concrete social change.

Searing, sobering, and urgently needed, How to Be Less Stupid About Race is a truth bomb for your racist relative, friend, or boss, and a call to action for everyone who wants to challenge white supremacy and intersectional oppression. If you like Issa Rae, Justin Simien, Angela Davis, and Morgan Jerkins, then this deeply relevant, bold, and incisive book is for you.

• So You Want to Talk About Race
• White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
• White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
• How to Be an Antiracist
• Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race
• How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance
• Thick: And Other Essays
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (National Book Award Winner)
• White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (Critical Perspectives on Youth)
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race