522. The Person You Mean to Be
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by: Darla Scheuth and Sue Deans
Author: Dolly Chugh
Genre: Non Fiction, Public Policy, Sociology
325 pages, published September 4, 2018
Reading Format: Audiobook on Hoopla
Summary
In The Person You Mean to Be, social psychologist Dolly Chugh discusses her approach to confronting difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice in an attempt to make the world (and yourself) better. Dolly also discusses the causes of inequality and her research findings in unconscious bias.
Quotes
“Equality says we treat everyone the same, regardless of headwinds or tailwinds. Equity says we give people what they need to have the same access and opportunities as others, taking into account the headwinds they face, which may mean differential treatment for some groups.”
“Challenge yourself to hear their experience without questioning its expression. Avoid being the tone police.”
“We redefine what it means to be a good person as someone who is trying to be better, as opposed to someone who is allowing themselves to believe in the illusion that they are always a good person.”
“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.” —
“If you are in the sun and I am in the rain, why is it divisive for me to point out this difference? What is really divisive is telling someone who is standing in the rain that it is not raining.”
“Antiracist educator and author Debby Irving uses an often-cited headwinds and tailwinds metaphor to explain the invisibility of these systemic, group-level differences. Headwinds are the challenges — some big, some small, some visible, some invisible — that make life harder for some people, but not for all people. When you run against a headwind, your speed slows down and you have to push harder. You can feel the headwind. When you have a tailwind pushing you, it is a force that propels you forward. It is consequential but easily unnoticed or forgotten. In fact, if you are like me when I jog with a tailwind, you may glow with pride at your great running time that day, as if it were your own athletic prowess. When you have the tailwind, you will not notice that some runners are running into headwinds. They may be running as hard as, or even harder than, you, but they will appear lazier and slower to you. When some of them grow tired and stop trying, they will appear self-destructive to you.”
“Loving America is the most American of things to do. Why does loving America preclude an honest understanding of our history and its influence in our lives?”
“When we feel sorry for someone, we inadvertently put ourselves in the high-power position.”
“The more we care about something, the more likely we are to willfully ignore negative relevant information about it. The more we care about something, the less we want to know.”
My Take
A lot of woke perspective in this book. The author makes some good points, but applying “equity of result” rather than “equality of opportunity” is likely to have a lot of unintended, negative consequences.
