Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

Although the book is marketed as a 28-day challenge aimed at dismantling the participant’s complicity in white supremacy, Saad makes it clear throughout the book that antiracist education and work is a life-long practice. The decision to posit antiracism as a “practice” rather than a journey, odyssey, or other comparable term is important because “practice” does not imply a destination or endpoint for the work. Just as racism is deep-seated in white-dominated societies, so it is deep-seated in people with white privilege. Rather than aiming for never being racist again and achieving perfection, Saad poses the idea of antiracism as a practice—like yoga or any other skillset—in which one can always learn something new or uncover something in the present they were not able to before.

Untangling one’s own complicity in white supremacy cannot be done, as Saad explains, by “confessions” or admissions of guilt and shame. Framing antiracism as a practice asks participants to become more resilient during conversations about race and social justice and cultivate grit so that when they do inevitably fail or make a mistake, they can brush themselves off and try again. Given that the book was published in 2020, and the decades-long conversations surrounding racism, colonialism, police brutality, and social justice movements, it makes sense that Saad would see the 28-day challenge as a start to lifelong change rather than a singular transformation.