A More Just Future
Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change
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2.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of Think Again and Do Better, a revolutionary, “welcome, and urgent invitation” (Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author) to explore the emotional relationship we have with our country’s complicated and whitewashed history so that we can build a better future.
As we grapple with news stories about our country’s racial fault lines, our challenge is not just to learn about the past, but also to cope with the “belief grief” that unlearning requires. If you are on the emotional journey of reckoning with the past, such as the massacre of Black Americans in Tulsa, the killing of Native American children in compulsory “residential schools” designed to destroy their culture, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans, you are not alone. The seeds of today’s inequalities were sown in past events like these. The time to unlearn the whitewashed history we believed was true is now.
As historians share these truths, we will need psychologists to help us navigate the shame, guilt, disbelief, and despair many of us feel. In A More Just Future, Dolly Chugh, award-winning professor, social psychologist, and author of the acclaimed The Person You Mean to Be, invites us to dismantle the systems built by our forebearers and work toward a more just future.
Through heartrending personal histories and practical advice, Chugh gives us the psychological tools we need to grapple with the truth of our country with “one of the most moving and important behavioral science books of the last decade” (Katy Milkman, author of How to Change).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Social psychologist Chugh (The Person You Mean to Be) offers a frank yet ingratiating guide to "embracing the paradox" that America is "a country of egalitarian ideals founded on slavery." Noting that George Floyd's killing by a Minneapolis police officer has pushed many Americans to search for a fuller, more accurate version of the country's history, Chugh interweaves lessons on structural racism and settler colonialism; discussions about binary bias, system justification theory, and other social psychology concepts, along with personal anecdotes of her own efforts—as the daughter of Indian immigrants—to "unlearn" the myths of American greatness. She also draws helpful comparisons to other countries, noting, for example, that Germany teaches citizens beginning in childhood to confront the horror of the Holocaust, while Texas and other states politicize school curriculum, resulting in significant gaps of knowledge. Throughout, Chugh cites the work of Black writers and scholars including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones, and offers practical advice focused on acknowledging "ugly" truths with nondefensive reactions; she cites Anderson Cooper's response to learning that his ancestor was a slave holder who was killed by one of the people he enslaved as an example of this. Marked by its authenticity and sense of encouragement, this is a welcome look at how the average person can help fulfill America's promise.
Customer Reviews
Not good
Would not recommend. Many of the ideas and concepts are recycled watered down takes from other books that are much better and in depth. Read any of the countless books it passingly mentions and you will have a better more insightful experience.