The Racism of People Who Love You

Essays on Mixed Race Belonging

By: Samira Mehta

Narrated by: Fareeda Pasha

Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

An unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their varying cultural backgrounds

In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and essayist Samira Mehta reflects on many facets of being multiracial.

Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, Mehta grew up feeling more comfortable with her mother’s family than her father’s—they never carried on conversations in languages she couldn’t understand or blamed her for finding the food was too spicy. In adulthood, she realized that some of her Indian family’s assumptions about the world had become an indelible part of her—and that her well-intentioned parents had not known how to prepare her for a world that would see her as a person of color.

Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at home in more than one culture, but the flipside shows you can feel just as alienated in those spaces. In 7 essays that dissect her own experiences with a frankness tempered by generosity, Mehta confronts questions about:

• authenticity and belonging;
• conscious and unconscious cultural inheritance;
• appropriate mentorship;
• the racism of people who love you.

The Racism of People Who Love You invites people of mixed race into the conversation on race in America and the melding of found and inherited cultures of hybrid identity.

©2023 Samira Mehta (P)2023 Beacon Press

Critic reviews

“Thoughtful meditations on identity.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Throughout, Mehta pulls off an impressive set of balancing acts, weaving theory through stories, knitting personal memories, public histories, family dynamics, and cultural norms together with brutal honesty and no small amount of tenderness as she attempts to understand hurtful behavior without excusing it.”—Cannonball Read

“Samira Mehta interweaves laugh-out-loud personal vignettes with piercing reflections on life as a biracial person. Drawing also on her multireligious upbringing, she conveys moments of joy and pain in ways that let us all in on the experience. The Racism of People Who Love You is relatable for all kinds of readers, with especially important insights for all of us who have people of mixed racial and religious backgrounds in our families and social circles.”—Khyati Y. Joshi, author of White Christian Privilege

very compelling set of essays

I really enjoyed this book. There were many points where my experience differed from the author's, and that gave me a lot of food for thought as well.

Thoughtful, clear, and compelling essays that move deftly between anecdote and analysis

The Racism of People Who Love You is a very good book, and you should read it. In seven thoughtful, compelling, and sometimes (frequently) devastating essays, author Samira Mehta examines the broad concept of what she refers to as “mixedness” through the lens of her particular lived experience as the daughter of a South Asian immigrant father and a white American mother. The essays are about her and her family and about race, culture, and belonging both within and beyond her family. They are also about gender, friendship, work, and class, among other things. Mehta touches on a lot in this fairly brief book, but it all comes up organically because Mehta’s identity and experiences are touched by all of it. Throughout, Mehta pulls off an impressive set of balancing acts, weaving theory through stories, knitting personal memories, public histories, family dynamics, and cultural norms together with brutal honesty and no small amount of tenderness as she attempts to understand hurtful behavior without excusing it.

A must read!

This is a fantastic book: enlightening work on racism as lived and perceived by someone who is mixed race and, as such, has often confronted loved ones who cannot fully grasp, see, and acknowledge all aspects of her true essence.

A great format, with academic research seeping through the author’s life story. What an intimate journey of self-awareness and what a gift to all of us who are trying to do our best to see and celebrate diversity.

The narration does an excellent job at keeping the reader’s attention high and emphasizing key passages.

Powerful and eye-opening

Samira Mehta masterfully blends personal stories and academic scholarship, offering brilliant insights into the challenges of growing up and living as a mixed race person in the US.

As the White mother of mixed race children, the book was an eye-opener and made me think about how, in spite of my best intentions and efforts, I am unable to understand much of my children’s experience. But it also gave me hope that I can be better at it. I especially appreciated the way in which the author was able to give voice to the unique pain that the children of mixed families feel when they encounter racism from some of the people who love them most in the world, something I have seen in my own family, like when an older White family member challenges my Brown daughter, “why do you say that you are Brown? Is it because you want to get some kind of special benefit?”

Required reading (or listening) for anyone with any kind of a mixed family (the book speaks specifically about race but I think many of its insights would also be very pertinent to other types of mixed families, such as religious or ethnic) and strongly recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about the nuances of racism in the United States, especially as it applies to the rapidly growing number of mixed race people in this country.

Thought provoking and intimate

Great narrator, vivid writing, theory and the everyday mixing together. This book is such a wonder!

Did not love.

I was struck by the fact that the author sounds angry and bitter at…well…everyone. White people don’t understand, Asian people don’t understand, relatives don’t understand, etc. Her experience, fortunately, is not the only one. Many come as immigrants, as my husband did, and treasure their American experience, enjoying the diversity and difference they bring to the world. I’m just sorry that Samira’s experience has been so very hard. But there are a lot of emotions at play here. Expectations have been the death and disappointment of dreams for this author. That is the overriding feel from the book for me.