Quackery: A Book That Will Leave You Writhing

Quackery book cover
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen

I bought Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything on a whim. It was on sale, and I loves me some sneering at snake oil. I figured it would be enjoyable.

Friends. It far surpassed expectations. Lydia and Nate’s style is easy, breezy, and delightfully snarky. They give a wonderful amount of detail: not enough to get bogged down, plenty to really relish the quackery. They do their best to explain why rational people fall for irrational nonsense, and while the medical shysters preying on vulnerable people get no quarter from them, the victims get empathy. It’s so great!

Continue reading “Quackery: A Book That Will Leave You Writhing”

Quackery: A Book That Will Leave You Writhing
{advertisement}

Me and White Supremacy: “How Have You Managed Not to Know?”

We’re beginning Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. If you’re a white person watching news of protests, seeing that yes, there’s a serious problem with racism, and wondering what you can do to help, this is a place to begin. This is a book you should read before charging off to change the world.

cover of Me and White Supremacy

It’s also a book you might want to share with well-meaning white people in your life who want things to improve for people of color, but don’t yet understand that they need to remove the white supremacist plank from their own eye first.

White supremacy is a problem white people caused, perpetuate, and now need to fix. But most of us aren’t sure where to begin. Even if we have some idea of what to do, we risk going about it in a counterproductive way if we rush forward without listening to the POC who are telling us what they need from us. And if we haven’t done the work in ourselves first, we might storm off in an angry huff the moment we realize this work is difficult, dangerous, and humbling, and that we’re not going to be hailed as heroes for doing the shit white people should have been doing all along.

The Foreward is written by Robin DiAngelo, one white person talking to her fellow white people. She sugarcoats nothing. She’s seen a lot of shit from well-meaning white folks who would just love to help end racism – as long as it’s easy, people of color tell them exactly what to do, and their feelings aren’t hurt. She tells us exactly where we need to start if we want to avoid flaming out at the first small hurdle:

[quote Building racial….]

That discomfort was a definite stumbling block to me in the past. One of the hardest things to learn has been how to sit with the discomfort instead of runaway from it. It’s massively not fun. But retreating back into a comfy white shell is unconscienable.

Robin talks about how we get when “our self-image as open-minded progressive individuals, free of all racial conditioning” gets challenged. This is something we need to learn to watch for in ourselves: the urge to deny, dismiss, and retreat.

She says that she’s begun asking a counter question when white folks ask her what to do: “How have you managed not to know?” She points out that the information is out there and easy to find, and people of color “have been telling us what they need for a very long time.” So why haven’t we Googled, researched, made the effort to find out? Why haven’t we listened when we’ve been told?

In my case, it was because I was raised to believe most problems with racism had already been solved. We did that Civil Rights thing in the 60’s and then it was all pretty much good. Any problems left was mostly due to old racists who would eventually die off. I was raised to be “color blind.” I couldn’t be racist, because I didn’t like racism and called my grandparents out for saying blatantly racist stuff. My, wasn’t I shocked when I finally unclogged my ears, took off my color blinders, and realized that yeah, my POC friends were highly upset with white folks- including me – for a damned good reason.

But it was desperately uncomfortable getting to that point. Often, it still is. And I’m reading this book now because I know I still have a long way to go before I can be an effective anti-racist. I’m often dispirited by the scale of social change needed, and unsure how to play an effective part in helping to bring about that change.

[quote about book]

I’m so grateful Layla has done this work. I’m looking forward to listening to her and following her recommendations. At the end, I’m hoping it will make me a better listener, and allow me to find an effective role in the fight to end White Supremacy.

This Foreward is something of a litmus test. It should, along with King’s musings on the White Moderate, be required reading for every white person who tuts about how awful things are and says they wish they could do more. If they aren’t willing to at least read Robin’s Foreward without getting offended and defensive and stomping off in a huff, they probably aren’t ready to do anything useful. That’s fine as long as they stay out of the way.

For the rest of us, it’s time to press on and do the work this woman of color is advising us to do.

What did you get out of this section? Was it hard to stomach? If so, were you able to accept your discomfort and push on? What were your answers to the title question?

Me and White Supremacy: “How Have You Managed Not to Know?”

Rosetta Stones Has a New Home!

For those who have been missing Rosetta Stones since the sad demise of the Scientific American Blogs network, I have fantastic news! We’ve moved into a sweet summer cottage while our custom forever home is being built. Bookmark this site, and come join us for a summer full of fun, phenomenal, and sometimes fearsome geology!

Image shows Rosetta Stones title superimposed over a photo of the sea and serpentinite rocks. Below is the headline

It’s got comments!

I’ll notify you here when new posts are available. You can also check in on our official Facebook page for regular updates and extras. And you can get early access to blog posts, exclusive content, and all sorts of extras on Patreon, so please do consider becoming a Patron. There are many levels to choose from, starting at just $1 per month.

To see what’s in store for this new Rosetta Stones epoch, check out this post. Raise your geologic hammers, and let’s get rocking!

Rosetta Stones Has a New Home!

Ready to Do Something About White Supremacy?

It’s long past time we stomped white supremacy out. And when I say “we,” I mean me and my fellow white folks.

White supremacy is our societal ill to fix. It’s not up to people of color to do this work. We’re the ones who benefit from the assumption that pale skin is best. We’re the ones whose subconscious racism, whose insistence on being “colorblind,” whose apathy and inaction allow systems set up by unapologetic racists to continue on virtually unchanged. We’re the ones who too often can ignore what’s wrong because it doesn’t affect us, or even benefits us.

What can we do? March in protests. Donate to causes. Listen to non-white voices and amplify them. All of these things are important. But there’s more to it than that, and many of us haven’t done the work we need to do within ourselves.

So for a start, I’m going to ask you to buy or borrow this book.

Image shows book cover
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F Saad

It’s on sale for Kindle today for $2.99. you can read it on any device with the Kindle app.

We’re going to be working through this book together over the next several weeks. I think it’s going to be deeply uncomfortable, even painful at times – growth often is. I doubt it will be easy or fun. But it’s necessary.

I know you’re not a white supremacist yourself. You’re probably not overtly racist, either, or you wouldn’t be here. But most of us were raised in societies that were created by white people, for white people, on the backs of brown people. We had, and still have, racist family members, coworkers, and friends. We’re not able to see a lot of the ways our societies are built to benefit white people, because it’s not something that adversely impacts us. We may even think white privilege isn’t a thing, because we personally may not think we’re particularly privileged. But just as society is still mostly set up to benefit men at the expense of women, straight people at the expense of LGBTQ people, and religious people at the expense of the non-religious, it still benefits white people at the expense of non-white people. And it will keep harming them until we dismantle those structures and rebuild them fairly.

We can’t confront what we can’t see. We can’t change things we don’t even realize exist. That’s why books like this are important, and why we’re going to spend quite a bit of time working through this one.

I’m hoping that by the time we’re done, we’ll be better equipped to confront our own biases, stand against racism in our social circles, and create a far more equitable society.

There is no better time than now. Let’s do this.

Ready to Do Something About White Supremacy?