MY NAME IS TED AND I'M A RACIST - VOLUME TWO

Neill continues to explore racial bias and current political divisions in this second volume of social commentary.

Following the author’s previous installment (subtitled Racism 101), Neill here digs deeper, offering a more advanced course in racism and its manifestations across the current political spectrum. The author begins by discussing the left’s tendency, as he sees it, to focus on virtue signaling and policing language rather than true social and personal transformation. From there, he uses examples from his own life, alongside interviews with friends and acquaintances from diverse backgrounds, to critique models of Black, Asian, Latinx, and other “minority” identities. (“Of course there isn’t a model for us,” jokes Leina, an Indigenous American, in one of the standout transcripts.) Neill urges white allies to improve the ways in which they listen to and learn from friends who belong to minority groups, encouraging them to research on their own instead of turning interpersonal relationships into coursework on racism. Subsequent chapters expand to discuss “retrenchment” (the ebb and flow of progress in social justice and subsequent erosions of that progress) and include a vast “primer on America” and its positioning within popular imagination. (“Oh my gawd Ted, like, why is this next chapter, like, soooo long?” the author writes at the onset of the primer. “But don’t worry,” he adds in his invitingly goofy tone, “there are pictures!”) In contrast to the preceding volume, Neill’s target audience and intentions are clearer here; he writes specifically to white liberals in need of refined strategies (the text is even illustrated with a cartoon of someone holding back a white man with a “stop racism” sign and the caption “Lord, save us from the helpers…”). The author’s jokes and good intentions sometimes buckle under the weight of his ambition—the latter chapters’ summaries of complex discourses feel like material from a dense university textbook that needs unpacking in a classroom. However, that need for discussion is met by the fascinating interviews with people from Neill’s own life; they help to ground and energize his writing and show promise for the subsequent installments to come.

Despite some overreaching, this volume delivers resonant, real-world insights about racism.