Small Great Things Read online

  When I was researching this book, I asked white mothers how often they talked about racism with their children. Some said occasionally; some admitted they never discussed it. When I asked the same question of Black mothers, they all said, Every day.

  I've come to see that ignorance is a privilege, too.

  So what have I learned that is helpful? Well, if you are white, like I am, you can't get rid of the privilege you have, but you can use it for good. Don't say I don't even notice race! like it's a positive thing. Instead, recognize that differences between people make it harder for some to cross a finish line, and create fair paths to success for everyone that accommodate those differences. Educate yourself. If you think someone's voice is being ignored, tell others to listen. If your friend makes a racist joke, call him out on it, instead of just going along with it. If the two former skinheads I met can have such a complete change of heart, I feel confident that ordinary people can, too.

  I expect pushback from this book. I will have people of color challenging me for choosing a topic that doesn't belong to me. I will have white people challenging me for calling them out on their racism. Believe me, I didn't write this novel because I thought it would be fun or easy. I wrote it because I believed it was the right thing to do, and because the things that make us most uncomfortable are the things that teach us what we all need to know. As Roxana Robinson said, "A writer is like a tuning fork: we respond when we're struck by something....If we're lucky we'll transmit a strong pure note, one that isn't ours, but which passes through us." To the Black people reading Small Great Things--I hope I listened well enough to those in your community who opened their hearts to me to be able to represent your experiences with accuracy. And to the white people reading Small Great Things--we are all works in progress. Personally, I don't have the answers and I am still evolving daily.

  There is a fire raging, and we have two choices: we can turn our backs, or we can try to fight it. Yes, talking about racism is hard to do, and yes, we stumble over the words--but we who are white need to have this discussion among ourselves. Because then, even more of us will overhear, and--I hope--the conversation will spread.

  --JODI PICOULT

  MARCH 2016

  For Kevin Ferreira,

  whose ideas and actions make the world a better place,

  and who taught me that we are all works in progress.

  Welcome to the family.

  If not for a host of people and resources, this book would never have been written.

  Thanks to Peggy McIntosh for the concept of the invisible knapsack. Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum literally braved the ice storm in Atlanta to meet with me, and is one of my heroes--I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed the explanation she gave her own son about the color of his skin being something more, rather than something less. I also must thank Debby Irving for her expertise as a social justice educator, for being available all hours of the day and night to vet my words, and for so graciously letting me steal her metaphors and best lines, including the concepts of headwinds and tailwinds of privilege (as brilliantly described by Verna Myers) and ignorance having the word ignore in it. Thanks, too, to Malcolm Gladwell, who on Q&A on C-SPAN on December 8, 2009, used an example from his book Outliers examining birth-date cutoffs for young Canadian hockey players and how that translates into NHL success--the premise of which I used for Kennedy's closing argument. Thanks to the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, which ran the Undoing Racism workshop sponsored by the Haymarket People's Fund in Boston, which encouraged me to notice my own privilege--they get full credit for Kennedy's metaphor about throwing away the babies.

  I am grateful to Professor Abigail Baird, for the research on bias she provided (as well as the introduction to the remarkable Sienna Brown). To Betty Martin, the woman I'd always call first if I wanted to kill a fictional newborn. To Jennifer Twitchell of the ADL, Sindy Ravell, Hope Morris, Rebecca Thompson, Karen Bradley, and Ruth Goshen. Thanks to Bill Binnie, for his name and his donation to Families in Transition, which provides safe, affordable housing and comprehensive social services to individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in southern New Hampshire. For McDonald's advice: Natalie Hall, Rachel Daling, Rachel Patrick, Autumn Cooper, Kayla Ayling, Billie Short, Jessica Hollis, M.M., Naomi Dawson, Joy Klink, Kimberly Wright, Emily Bradt, Sukana Al-Hassani.

  Thanks to the many doctors and nurses who shared their experience, their lingo, and their best stories with me: Maureen Littlefield, Shauna Pearse, Elizabeth Joseph, Mindy Dube, Cecelia Brelsford, Meaghan Smith, Dr. Joan Barthold, Irit Librot, Dr. Dan Kelly.

  To my crackerjack legal team, who swore that race is never brought into a courtroom--I hope I've changed your mind. Lise Iwon, Lise Gescheidt, Maureen McBrien-Benjamin, and Janet Gilligan--you are all way too fun to simply be considered work colleagues. Jennifer Sargent, many thanks for coming in at the eleventh hour and vetting the court scenes for accuracy's sake.

  Thank you to Jane Picoult and Laura Gross, for being outraged and moved and humbled at all the right places when you read early drafts. Auriol Bishop gets credit for finding the title. And thanks to the best publishing team on the planet: Gina Centrello, Kara Welsh, Kim Hovey, Debbie Aroff, Sanyu Dillon, Rachel Kind, Denise Cronin, Scott Shannon, Matthew Schwartz, Anne Speyer, Porscha Burke, Theresa Zoro, Paolo Pepe, Catherine (I-secretly-run-Jodi's-life) Mikula, Christine Mykityshyn, Kaley Baron. Special thanks to the incomparable editor Jennifer Hershey, who challenged me so that every word on these pages is earned, and right. I'm also indebted to head cheerleader-road warrior-de facto non-Scandalous Chief of Staff Susan Corcoran, who has become so indispensable I truly don't know how I've survived this long without her.

  To Frank Meeink and Tim Zaal--your courage and your compassion are all the more inspiring because of how far you've come. Thank you for walking me into the world of hate, and for showing so many others how to leave it.

  To Evelyn Carrington, my Sister Friend, and Shaina--and to Sienna Brown--one of the great joys of writing this book has been getting to know you. Thank you for your honesty, your bravery, and your open hearts. To Nic Stone--who knew when I was trapped in Atlanta that I would be making a friend for life? I could not have written this book without you holding my hand and telling me not to second-guess myself. All those frantic late-night texts have led to this version. Thanks for giving me confidence, for fixing my white girl mistakes, and for believing that I could and should write this. I can't wait for your novel to hit the shelves.

  To Kyle and Kevin Ferreira van Leer--you two are what I want to grow up and be: models for social justice. Thank you for being the ones to open my eyes to those tailwinds. To Sammy: thanks for coming home from school and saying, "You know, I think I have someone you should talk to about your book." To Jake: thank you for knowing what parking lot is behind the New Haven County Courthouse and for explaining Supreme Court decisions to me; I know you will one day be the kind of lawyer who changes the world. And to Tim, thanks for serving me my coffee in the Harvard "white privilege" mug. I love you for that, and for everything else.

  The following books and articles were used as research and/or inspiration.

  Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2010.

  Coates, Ta-Nehesi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

  Colby, Tanner. Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America. Viking, 2012.

  Harris-Perry, Melissa V. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Yale University Press, 2011.

  Hurwin, Davida Wills. Freaks and Revelations. Little, Brown, 2009.

  Irving, Debby. Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race. Elephant Room Press, 2014.

  McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," Independent School 49, no. 2 (winter 1990): 31. Excerpted from "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Throug