Ryde speaks to her readers through many voices: The psychotherapist, educator, white woman, white child, global asylum seeker advocate and trauma specialist (Director for Trauma Foundation South West (TFSW), Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counseling (BCPC) and the Centre of Supervision and Team Development, Bath, UK.

Why refer to Ryde’s career? Well, in part because of her expertise in the field of cross-cultural relations but also because the whiteness aspect of her identity with the privilege that has accompanied her on her own journey remained a constant theme throughout her book with insights and testimonials from others regarding how whiteness has also impacted them. In addition to sharing its impact Ryde gives you occasional instructions, usually three to five at a time as to how to navigate your way thru your privilege and recognize its power over you. She’d like you to consider your social privilege in ways that may help you “transcend it.” (102). Now that is a tall order as transcendence {when white} may not be what you are looking for but if you like clarity regarding a sensitive timely subject then this is the book for you!

There are three parts to White Privilege Unmasked with 14 Chapters, 178 pages, 8 graphs, a Reference, Subject Index and Author Index. Each piece of work is short and has a pattern of three focal points regarding knowledge of you, of others and the impact whiteness has had on several countries. Ryde also touches base with some of the finer points and failings of diversity workshops combined with disappointment in political correctness with regard to language for both have kept the potential for racial healing in limbo rather than effective work in the field.

In the introduction Ryde expresses her hope for an understanding of whiteness and its power from her reader. Her work is an appeal to you to become self-conscious to better embrace an intersectional global reality regarding the imprint of racism and white privilege upon us as a social construct which must be deconstructed. Ryde’s appeal stresses the impact of trauma due to our privilege upon others and taps into what money/capitalism has to do with it. Colonization defines us in many ways, even in “white sports” says Ryde, as our sports were determined by Britain. For ex: football, rugby, cricket, tennis, table tennis, hockey and even baseball. White privilege is being challenged. White people are becoming more self-conscious and accountable regarding its power over others and ourselves. We are not harmless neutral bystanders. Ryde quotes Susan Sontag: “The white races are the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone – the ideologies and inventions – which eradicates autonomous civilization wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself. (Sontag, 1967:57) In essence, we are complicit or we are participating in the work that dissembles this power. Transforming the Meaning of Whiteness is inevitable. Let’s do it!

© 2019 Kaolin

Kaolin is the author of Talking About Race: A Workbook About White People Fostering Racial Equality in Their Lives. She lectures on The Deep Unspoken Pain of Racism and can be reached thru her site HTTP://WWW.LTAR.BIZ