Waking Up White: "I'm a Good Person! Isn't that Enough?"
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race tells the story of how
Debby Irving went from well-meaning to well-doing and how she unpacked
her own long-held beliefs about colorblindness, being a good person, and
wanting to help people of color. In what NPR's Robin Young on "Here and
Now" called "a provocative read … about what it means to be in the white
race," Irving reveals how each of these well-intentioned mindsets actually
perpetuated her ill-conceived ideas about race. Irving's Erie appearance,
co-hosted with Wayside Presbyterian Church and Presbyterian Women of the
Presbytery of Lake Erie, also features lectures at Wayside, located at 1208
Asbury Road, at 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. For more information regarding
those events and Wayside's Fall Convocation, visit Wayside-Erie.org or call
814.833.7653.
– Debby Irving, M.B.A., Racial Justice Educator and Award-Winning Author
Debby Irving, M.B.A., brings to racial justice the
perspective of working as a community organizer and
classroom teacher for 25 years without understanding racism
as a systemic issue or her own whiteness as an obstacle to
grappling with it. As general manager of Boston’s Dance
Umbrella and First Night, and later as a classroom teacher
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she struggled to make sense
of tensions she could feel but not explain in racially mixed
settings. In 2009, a graduate school course, Racial and
Cultural Identities, gave her the answers she’d been looking
for and launched her on a journey of discovery. Debby now
devotes herself to working with white people exploring the impact white skin can have
on perception, problem-solving, and engaging in racial justice work. A graduate of
the Winsor School in Boston, she holds a BA from Kenyon College and an MBA from
Simmons College.
