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The Black Friend: On Being A Better White Person by Frederick Joseph Press Release
The Black Friend: On Being A Better White Person by Frederick Joseph Press Release
The Black Friend: On Being A Better White Person by Frederick Joseph Press Release
NAIMA COCHRANE Career music-industry executive turned music historian and writer
APRIL REIGN Diversity and inclusion advocate and founder of the #OscarsSoWhite movement
AFRICA MIRANDA Author, host, and digital personality
RABIA CHAUDRY Lawyer, author, and podcast host
XORJE OLIVARES Queer Tejano border native, social commentator, activist, and media personality
TONI ADENLE (Toni Tone) Social media content creator and public speaker
DANIELA ALVAREZ Writer, editor, and social media manager
JESSIE DANIELS Writer and professor at the City University of New York
JOEL LEON Writer, author, storyteller, rapper, spoken-word artist, and TED Talk speaker
JEMELE HILL Journalist, host, sports expert, and overall dope person
JAMIRA BURLEY Activist and social impact consultant
SAIRA RAO Racial justice activist and entrepreneur
TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY World-renowned actor, playwright, and Academy Award winner
MARKETING
• National consumer advertising • Teen Buzz title • Featured title at 2021 conferences
• Trade, school, and library • Best in Class title • Featured title in Candlewick
advertising • Discussion guide Classroom and Candlewick CIRC
• National publicity campaign • Author video e-newsletters
• Blogger outreach • Social media campaign • Select author appearances
• Extensive ARC distribution • Online giveaways • Radio tour
• YA Galley mailing • Featured title at librarian previews • Book trailer
To My Reader:
My hope is that this book will be a tool to help others see and understand
the obvious and not-so-obvious ways in which racism and white supremacy
not only have infected our society but are actually the foundation of it.
That it might spark the flame in someone who one day helps burn down the
historic oppression we have faced. . . .
As I sit here contemplating the words I might use to explain to you how
detrimental 2020 has been to the souls of Black people, I find myself unable
to write them. Not because there aren’t countless thoughts floating through
my mind that could be shared. But rather because I don’t want to give them
to you.
This isn’t an attempt to be disrespectful, as much as an attempt to explain
just how tired I am. In this book I’ve already given my readers so much—my
pain, my trauma, and my life—in hopes that maybe future Black generations
won’t have to do the same.
I don’t want to use the very little energy I have left talking to non-Black
people about this moment in time.
Instead, I would rather help Black children understand it. Children like
my eight-year-old brother.
So I will write to him, and you may take from it what you will.
********************
My Brother, Brandon:
I saw you recently in the midst of everyone trying to survive the pandemic and
protesting for social justice, and as usual you didn’t have a care in the world. As it
should be for an eight-year-old.
I wish that I could make it so that your life was always that way, but it won’t
be long before the stress of being Black in this world finds you.
I am heartbroken by this unchangeable fact.
As I write this, you are still too young to understand that to be Black in
America is to be left with two options: either you pretend oppression isn’t
Illustration © 2020 by Zharia Shinn