Making It Plain: Deconstructing a Fictitious and Vicious Story About Racism

Making It Plain: Deconstructing a Fictitious and Vicious Story About Racism interrogates the teaching methods to establish the dominant white supremacist pedagogy. Making It Plain demonstrates how Elliott Eisner's formula for cultural construction, Gordon Allport's definition of prejudice, and Howard Thurman's definition of capitulation to imagined sovereignty contributed to the sustainability of racism. Making It Plain educates learners and activists to question normative racist narratives, examine white supremacy's faulty premises, and identify cultural and individual contributions to racism and white supremacy's evolution and sustainability. Making It Plain empowers and encourages learners and activists to use their agency to deconstruct our white racist and supremacist thought (WRST pronounced worst) narratives.

Ronald Bonner has been an activist for several decades. He served in human resources for AT&T, as the assistant to the president of the United Church of Christ for Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity, and as manager for multicultural resources for Augsburg Fortress Publishers. He has served as an ordained minister in both the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for nearly thirty years. In 2022, he earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and an online master's certificate in public leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Making It Plain combines Dr. Bonner's dissertation on the deconstruction of divisive narratives with an earlier work on ending bigotry. A passionate public speaker, he is available to lead workshops or deliver keynote speeches. Learn more via his website ronaldbonner.com.