Reviews

I was really torn about how to rate this book. My therapist recommended it to me, so I really wanted to like it, and that definitely clouded my view of it.
Things I hated:
-i hated the author’s use of “yellow bodies” to describe Asians and “red bodies” to describe native Americans. He even turns around and says “native Americans would never call each other redskins, so Black people should not call each other the n-word”
-This is not the only inconsistency in his logic.
-The book is poorly organized and at times depressingly repetitive
-He uses terms like “clean and dirty pain” but never really explains or defines them very clearly
-He is a police apologist. And he trains the Minneapolis Police Department, the department that killed George Floyd. Clearly his training has not been at all effective. So that makes me not want to trust his book, because I have proof that his tactics are ineffective.
-he suggested that people wash the feet of police officers and invite them to their weddings. he does not understand how dangerous this has the potential to be.
- he only addresses the concept of police officers who signed up to protect and serve, and are not outwardly racist. The officers who unwittingly became agents of white supremacy. He does not address the officers who signed up because they are racist and because they get a gun.
-his “body work” exercises were simply intellectual/cognitive thought experiments with “how did that feel in your body” tacked on to the end. This is not body work.
-a thought experiment in which he asks you to picture him killing a puppy. With no trigger warning. I get what he was going for, but I don’t think traumatizing someone in an effort to help stop future trauma is really all that helpful.

Things I liked:
-he really made me think about policing and even change my mind about some things.
-he said some very thoughtful things about trauma
-he acknowledged that white Americans are not evil and racist by default; they are traumatized and living in a racist society.
- “the defense that I feared for my life may be valid, but it is not an excuse for murder”

All in all a thought provoking book that I almost didn’t finish. Some things about it were truly so laughably bad that I had to put the book down and text a friend about it. I think he had some good points to make, and I learned a lot, but there’s a lot that he does not understand.