Carolyn L. Baker, M.Ed.
Award-winning author of
An Unintentional Accomplice:
A Personal Perspective on White Responsibility
and the upcoming
DISPATCHES, From Racial Divide to a Road of Repair,
A Collection of Essays
Award-winning AN UNINTENTIONAL ACCOMPLICE follows Baker’s awakening to the realities of implicit racial bias and white privilege, and the story of her inward journey. Baker offers a non-judgmental personal narrative inviting readers of all kinds to explore the complexities of race in America. While there had been a few “aha” moments earlier in Baker's life, it was the discovery of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, in her early sixties, which caused her response to move from her head to her heart. As she looked at the photos of Emmett Till's brutalized body, she felt the immediate and universal anguish every mother feels at the sight of such cruelty to a child. In that moment Baker realized, and felt, the reality and depth of her previous complacency. This awareness launched a review of the decades of her life and in An Unintentional Accomplice Baker puts the puzzle pieces together. Read more...
Baker's upcoming book DISPATCHES, From Racial Divide to the Road of Repair is a collection of 15 eye-opening essays written to help White Americans better understand America's problems with race. In the wake of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and police brutality, many Americans are taking steps to educate themselves about racism in the U.S. Baker’s dispatches is a follow-up to her award-winning biographical odyssey, AN UNINTENTIONAL ACCOMPLICE in which she explored her personal reckoning with race. In DISPATCHES, Baker covers topics such as settler colonialism, heteropatriarcy, the divide between Black and White women, and the complicity of the education system. Throughout this volume, Baker suggests that Americans should shift the responsibility for repairing the racial divide out of the hands of the system and into the hands of the diverse community where many multicultural conversations and collaborations can occur. Baker’s goal in DISPATCHES, From Racial Divide to a Road of Repair, a Collection of Essays is to challenge, inspire, and uplift readers who, like herself, want to create a bottom-up paradigm for building communities that work for everyone and drive authentic social change.
DISPATCHES, From Racial Divide to a Road of Repair, A Collection of Essays with Introduction by Mark R. Warren, Ph.D., is available now for pre-order at https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo126589567.html and will be released May 2023.