top of page
How to Move Through Racism in the Wake of DEI
Drawing from her experience running "Interrupting Privilege," a racial dialogue program, Ralina Joseph blends personal narrative, real-world dialogue, and critical race scholarship to explore how we communicate race today—and how we can do better. Through practices of deep listening, embracing discomfort, and interrupting microaggressions, this book guides readers in transforming everyday interactions into opportunities for anti-racist change.
Racial Exhaustion challenges us to recognize and address the fatigue that racial discourse brings while offering practical strategies to foster more equitable and productive conversations.
Forbes
"Racial Exhaustion offers an invitation to be present and to show up with honesty, curiosity, and resilience. For Joseph, exhaustion is not failure. It is proof that we have been in the struggle."
David N. Myers, University of California, Los Angeles
"Mixing her own life story, pioneering research, and broad institutional experience, Ralina Joseph makes a compelling case that radical listening and radical speaking can position us for true reparative dialogue... Racial Exhaution is essential reading for all—those who continue to suffer from racism and those who, unwittingly or not, perpetuate it."
Tanja Dreher, University of New South Wales
"A highly recommended, urgent read in the interdisciplinary field of ‘listening’ scholarship and practice, communication, race and racism and more."
E. Patrick Johnson, Dean of the School of Communication, Northwestern University
"Racial Exhaustion urgently confronts the toll of systemic racism and offers a bold, actionable blueprint for transforming fatigue into communicative power and lasting change. With clarity, empathy, and hope, Joseph charts a path from fatigue to forward motion. This book is a balm for our times!"
Sarah Banet-Weiser, University of Pennsylvania
"In a world structured by multiple forms of racism, many people of color feel exhausted—by inequities, discrimination, being misunderstood, being ignored, of being done with it all. In this brilliant book, Joseph not only names these feelings as 'racial exhaustion' but also offers readers a crucial map through which to move through and navigate these feelings without giving up."
Robin R. Means Coleman, University of Virginia
"Ralina Joseph's unique assemblage of scholarship-pedagogy-practice proficiency sets Racial Exhaustion apart... Groundbreaking and impactful, Racial Exhaustion is desperately needed now more than ever."
bottom of page