IDAHO, USA — The Antiracist Book Club was started in 2020, partly as a reaction to the Black Lives Matter Movement, and a way for people to learn about racism in the United States. It was ended for a time, but now it's back. The founder Kimra Luna, a self-described reproductive rights activist, abortion doula and antiracist comrade, said they will stop talking about racism, when it stops being a problem.
"I began a book club where people could not only educate themselves, but also learn ways that they could be better advocates for their clients, their customers, and such. And then it turned out a lot of people who don't even own a business and who just want to do better and be a better person decided to join the book club as well," Luna said.
People can join through Luna's website, the club meets online weekly and change books every month. Luna also provides workshops, worksheets, journal prompts, resources, links, articles, books and videos. The first meeting this month is Tuesday, May 9. For information on times, or any other questions, people can go to the website.
"We like to pick books that are really relevant to the types of things that are going on in our communities. People from all walks of life have different types of biases based off of how they're raised based off of the religion they grew up in, based off of what their parents taught them, and even from what media tells us about groups of people," Luna said. "So, a lot of us have biases that we might not know are even there, and a lot of times these books will uncover things, and sometimes people are able to just get that awareness to be able to correct themselves and to be able to see it out in the world."
This month, the book is "Heal Your Way Forward: The Co-Conspirator's Guide to an Antiracist Future" by Myisha T. Hill. The author will also be involved in some of the discussions during the book club meetings.
"If we want to move forward and progress as, as a society, we absolutely need to work on antiracism, we need to teach it to our children. And we need to ensure that all communities feel safe and accepted into their communities, because the world is only becoming more mixed. The world is becoming more diverse," Luna said.
They added they felt that people are starting to realize, "if you're not standing up or saying something, you're being complacent," They hope that through education and work, people can move towards an antiracist world.
"We're still seeing that there is blatant systems of racism still in our country and these continue to need to be addressed," Luna said. "We can't just turn a blind eye to the fact that there is blatant racism happening amongst our government systems, amongst our healthcare systems, amongst all different systems, education, everything in our society. It's still something that needs to be addressed."
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