Do You Know that You Have Black Friends?

Conveys the experiential realities of those racialized as Black and, in turn, demonstrates that biological distinctions are only surface-level cues by which a racialized system assigned real lived experiences."I have Black friends" is a common defense invoked by White Americans when accused of anti-Black racism or simple racial ignorance. The individuals who rely on Black proximity as a defense only use Blackness to exonerate themselves but likely have no knowledge of the experiences imposed on Black people in a racialized system. Do You Know that You Have Black Friends? facilitates a reeducation to White America by posing a series of direct questions to the reader in each chapter about the racial reality of Black Americans. Each chapter then answers the query using a unique combination of historiographies, public opinion data, and peer-reviewed literature—making this book more than a survey of the Black experience but an instruction on the inherently discriminatory system of race. At the center of the book is an exclusive set of interviews of transgenerational Black Americans—individuals whose lives span multiple generations and legal racial systems in the United States. Their unfiltered, lifelong narratives ground this book, proving it to be more than an academic exercise but a legitimate reeducation on race and the Black experience.

Timothy Elijah Lewis is the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities at Harris-Stowe State University. His scholarship examines race, systemic racism, and racial inequality in the United States and has received institutional and public recognition, including a Missouri House Resolution. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.