A review by seawarrior
THE GOOD FIGHT: A Peaceful Stand Against Bigotry and Racism by Adam Ferris, David F. Walker, Danny Lore

challenging emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

4.0

While every story in this anthology is well written and drawn, I can't help but to feel disappointed with the proportion of stories that were written by white people about white privilege and white racists, especially those stories which refused to accept that the United States is a nation founded by racists and steeped in it to this day. Even the opening contributor pointed out that the readers only had the opportunity to hear his words instead of those from a more worthy person of color because of white privilege. I don't have any intimate knowledge of how the process of gathering contributors for this anthology went, but the aforementioned problem seems like it should have been one within the project's control. I don't say this with the purpose of finding someone to place blame with, as I'm sure everyone involved had good intentions, but this was an underlying issue I could not ignore.

It seems to me that an understanding of how white privilege functions, specifically in United States society, could have been assumed as possessed knowledge by a majority of those who were funding or would later purchase this book, making stories about the subject obsolete. I had really been hoping to read more stories by people of color who often aren't afforded an uplifting platform to tell them, instead of stories by white people trying to make a point that racism is scary and evil. Obviously, those affected by racism themselves already grasp this, at a deeper level than the white creators, or myself, or any other white person can comprehend, even when we're listening to them. I do wish I was granted opportunity to listen more in these pages. 

Thank you to the contributors of color who did provide their stories of how they empower themselves to live through hatred with hope and love for themselves and their communities. Your resilience is never to be taken lightly, and in a just world you would no longer need to possess so much of it. Hopefully with collective action we will one day see that world emerging around us all, with your storytelling remaining a gift that moved us towards it. 

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