No, It's Never Been a Level Playing Field
Four years ago, once the pandemic arrived (March 2020), I sat down to write a book
that at first was just as much for my own discovery and education about our troubled history on race (in the U.S.) as it was for public consumption. Four arduous years later, it’s ready for a prime-time reading audience!
As I publish It’s Never Been a Level Playing Field: Eight Race Myths We Still Believe & Strategies to Even the Field (officially out today!), I have come to realize that writing the book should only be the first step along this journey.
So, today I am also launching my new Substack newsletter, ‘Leveling the Field (finally!)’ to share my research, deepen the mutual understanding about systemic racism, and engage in an ongoing conversation with people interested and/or troubled by these topics – and what do we actually do to change where we are for the better.
As a white man, I have struggled for decades to understand why our nation is still in a problematic state about race and why we have created a playing field that continues to result in profound racial inequities.
I have also been raising, with my ex-wife, two biracial children (now 16 and 21) who must live in a society where it is not always a safe and welcoming space for them and their friends of color in our nation as they shift into young adulthood.
The book has been a way of not just making sense of our appalling racist history that continues in more subtle ways since the days of enslavement and Jim Crow but also why improvements in many of our policy areas have resulted in relatively minimal progress in the last six decades. And to explore a systemic roadmap for change and to issue a “compelling call to action for all of us to take part in building a more just and equitable society,” as my friend and colleague State Delegate Jazz Lewis says on the back cover of my book.
The book’s cover (above), I think, does an amazing job depicting where America is right now regarding race, inequality, and inequity due to a level playing field we love to believe is even when in fact it remains profoundly unlevel. In fact, the image I fashioned below, gives a snapshot of the history of our national playing field in 3 quick parts. See image to the right.
If you’re not a subscriber to my newsletter, please subscribe.
If you want to purchase the book, you can order the:
The book and this newsletter are my effort to share my learnings, help us rethink critical parts of our history …. and start a fruitful conversation about how to more effectively reckon with that history, with our current state … end even more importantly how to muster the collective courage to push for transformative change. Change that makes the playing field FAR more level.
I am aware of the many “conversations” from the past aiming to do something comparable. Yet, I don’t believe it is an impossible dream either.
So join me in our collective learning, probing, reckoning, and, imagining.
Steve
Image of man at desk is courtesy of Chat GPG 4.0
