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Unprincipled, haphazard word salad. Her arguments would have been much, much stronger if she actually included much of the primary source from Octavia Butler that she reports considering having included.

To the extent that this is legible at all, it appears to be some random thoughts along her path from an authoritarian, self-centered “executive” director of a white male hierarchy to a slightly less authoritarian, somehow even more self-centered “executive” director of a more diverse hierarchy.

It’s often not legible, and essentially mystifies where it’s entirely unneeded to do so. It’s like a magician demonstrating bricklaying by waving a wand and then dropping a brick with a thud. Like ok, maybe let’s learn from bricklayers instead? She talks about fractals as a way to encourage non-hierarchical organizing, but why don’t we just look at the practical reality rather than some occult symbolism?

She also has quite a few quotes that sound pretty similar to “diverse oppressors,” like when she says leadership needs to be black and female. This makes sense, though, as a black female executive.

Essentially, it’s a laughably indirect, rambling, and inconsistent navel-gazing “look at me I’m so good” story about how she moved an org from being patriarchal and white to being matriarchal and nonwhite. Which, cool if that’s your bag, but it helps pretty much no one else beyond the new matriarch. It’s like hearing someone talk about their bowel movement. Good for you, but explain how that helps anyone else?

I’m torn on this one. She mentions early on that it’s meant to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive, in terms of actually ending or putting a dent in the racist status quo.

But then she offers again and again the prescription of raising awareness and/or whites accepting criticism from POC.

Her description of the phenomena of fragility is unbelievably clear-eyed; any POC will immediately recognize everything she points out. I want to give 5 stars based on this alone, but it seems like a misguided book in terms of actually addressing the problem considering the material conditions of racialized, autocratic institutions that control life in the US today.

Is simply trying to get whites to understand the substance of racism going to get them to renege their material benefits in the zero-sum game of power in these inegalitarian institutions? I feel like they’ll just revert back to overt racism. Power needs to be taken from the racist elites by force with mass, cooperative action.