Sharon H Chang

This is *not* a parenting book. 7 chapters out of 8 are about racism. It is a painful, yet transformative read if you manage to plow through.
I felt personally challenged by the book. The book made me realize that being simply « colorblind » is insufficient. I learned a lot about how racism is pervasive.
I also learned that kids become race-aware somewhere around 3-4 years old.

A few things turned me off though:

Zero joy. This book is all about pain, fighting and resistance, even though the topics could have led to a few joyful realizations.

US-specific. This book is focused on the US. The author defends, in Chapter 7, that it is universal. Yes, racism is universel, but *this book* describes the situation in the US. If you are raising a mixed Asian child in Japan, at least 80% of this book is not applicable.

Simplistic theory. The author tried to link everything back to a unifying theory of racism orchestrated by “the whites”. It threw me off at every turn by its oversimplification. Moreover, the device is completely unnecessary. The book is supported by a wealth of personal experiences, it would have worked fine without trying to explain everything by a unifying theory.

Faulty logic. The most memorable example of faulty logic is when the book describes tensions between the black and Asians twitter communities that culminate into a hashtag war. The author reminds us that the rich owner and executive of Twitter is white and he made bunch of money from that hashtag war by selling ads... yet another example of racial exploitation by “the whites”... see!? Hold on, Twitter makes money selling ads regardless of the subject its users are bickering about. This insinuation is far fetched.… (meer)