A Conversation with Author & Organizer Garrett Bucks

You’re invited to attend: A Conversation With Garrett Bucks on Thursday, May 23rd at 7pm at Minneapolis Friends Meetinghouse. Light refreshments will be served.

How do we learn to care more about community and less about self-righteousness?

In his memoir, Garrett Bucks describes his pursuit of being a “good white person.” The kind of white person who treats their privilege as a responsibility and not a burden; the kind of white person who people of color see as the peak example of racial allyship; the kind of white person who other white people might model their own aspirations of being “better” after. But it’s Bucks’ obsession with “goodness” that prevents him from building meaningful relationships, particularly with those who look like him.

The Right Kind of White charts Garrett’s intellectual and emotional odyssey in his pursuit of this ideal whiteness, the price of its admission, and the work he’s doing to bridge the divide from those he once sought distance from.

Part book talk, part workshop, this interactive, intellectually rich event will leave participants with an understanding of what inspires people to work together–and why it’s essential to turn toward each other instead of away.

About the Author:

Garrett Bucks is a practicing Quaker and the founder of The Barnraisers Project, which has trained nearly one thousand participants to organize majority-white communities for racial and social justice. He is also the author of the popular newsletter The White Pages. Originally from Montana, he is a graduate of Earlham College and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and two children. The Right Kind of White is his first book.

Praise for the Book:

“'The Right Kind of White' could be called The Right Kind of Masculinity or The Right Kind of Middle Class Progressive, which is to say, it's a sneak attack examination on the ways in which we often play to our roles rather than living into our deepest, least constructed knowing about love and justice. Garrett tells a familiar story—White, do-gooder dude coming-of-age—in a completely fresh and surprising way. Dude sees the way that his choices have been led by exceptionalism fantasy and tries to come back down to the messy, beautiful earth. Full of tenderness, humor, and aching towards a collective mindset, this book is sure to lead so many others down a path of joyful self-examination.”—COURTNEY E. MARTIN, author of Learning in Public and The New Better Off

Hosted in partnership with Southwest Alliance for Equity, Minneapolis Friends Meeting, Friends for a Nonviolent World, and Comma, a bookshop.