Former NAACP Leader Reveals Three Big Lies That Blacks, Whites Need To Know To End Racism

Ben Jealous, decades-long civil rights leader, activist and former President and CEO of NAACP, is one of America’s modern-day advocates for human rights and justice.

The son of a White father and a Black mother whose ancestors include Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, Jealous draws on lessons from his life, his family, and his work in a deeply personal and timely new book, releasing just in time for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month, entitled Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing (Amistad, an Imprint of HarperCollins; January 10, 2023; $27.99 Hardcover; ISBN: 9780062961747). 

Hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders,” Jealous writes with a mission to restore our country’s strength and unity by using stories of his ancestors and insights from his pathbreaking partnerships with diverse leaders— from Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Stacy Abrams to conservative leaders and Republican governors, including Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Bob McDonnell, and his distant cousin Dick Cheney, to name a few. 

As Jealous shares, his book’s title was inspired by a truth instilled by his maternal grandmother, Mamie Todd Bland, the family griot, who recently died at the age of 105. Her belief in the inherent freedom and value of every human being was instilled by her maternal grandfather, Edward David Bland. An African-American child enslaved by his White uncle, Edward Bland was a free man at the end of the Civil War and became an itinerant preacher of freedom—economic and political. He went on to help lead a movement that culminated in the creation of HBCU Virginia State University and secured the future of free public education for every child in the state, as well as serve in the state legislature. As Jealous also shares, his commitment to human rights and healing was inspired by his White father. Abused as a child and later disowned by his own father for marrying a Black woman in 1966, Ben’s dad created a 12-step program to help abusive, often violent men break the cycle of domestic abuse.  

Throughout Never Forget Our People Were Always Free, Ben Jealous interweaves vivid anecdotes of family, friends, mentors, colleagues, and strangers who have shaped his life’s mission and his faith in humanity. The book features his informed, thought-provoking, and consciousness-raising views on racial profiling, the connection between social isolation and suicide, the toll of mass incarceration on our nation, and race and racism. 

Among his powerful takeaways, the book highlights Ben’s three big lies about race:  

Lie #1: It has always been this way

“To end racism, we must agree there is nothing permanent about it,” Jealous stresses. As he shows, the meaning of race has evolved from its roots as a synonym for tribe or nation to a label used to separate people into a caste system, with a chosen “super human” group at the top. Comparing politics to physics, where something in motion returns to its original state, he has hope that America will return to a state where we recognize and celebrate our diversity.

Lie #2: Only White people have paid the price for desegregation

While, as Jealous acknowledges, it is true that some White men lost jobs when people of color were no longer barred from consideration, it is also true that Black Americans lost thousands of businesses—as well as safe places to raise their children—when the walls of segregation fell.

Lie #3: Racism only hurts Black people and people of color

Racism has created a national delusion that poverty, gun violence, and drug addiction are exclusively Black problems—despite staggering facts to the contrary. “The hidden victim of American racism is that it makes White suffering invisible,” says Jealous.   

“The ultimate antidote for the insanity that is racism is to deepen our knowledge of self and understand our national and ethnic origins,” Jealous asserts. 

About the Author

Ben Jealous is a scholar, journalist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. Jealous is the Sierra Club new Executive Director, Professor of Practice, University of PA; and Former National President of NAACP. From 2008 to 2013, Ben led the NAACP as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization with more than 2,400 chapters. As a decades-long activist, an experienced civil rights leader, and a coalition builder who has always brought together people, he was formerly Director of the Human Rights Program at Amnesty International USA and Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He is also the New York Times bestselling author of REACH: 40 Black Men Speak on Living, Leading, and Succeeding. A Rhodes Scholar and a past Democratic nominee for Governor of Maryland, he lives on the Chesapeake Bay with his children, Morgan and Jack, and their dog, Charlie.