What Might Be offers stories and strategies to buttress hope and support people in becoming change agents equipped to address racism and promote full participation in their institutions and communities.

What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. Drawing on Professor Sturm’s decades of experience researching, teaching, and working with institutions, it describes how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. What Might Be identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work (the paradox of racialized power, the paradox of racial salience, and the paradox of racialized institutions) and shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddles these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change.

Testimonials

  • "What does anti-racist institutional change work look like in real life? It's messy, nonlinear, and requires sustained long-term commitments to persist in the face of predictable baklash. It helps to have both a scaffolding framework and inspiring real-life examples as a guide. In "What Might Be," Susan Sturm offers both in her thoughtful and wise book, a text especially useful for institutional leaders seeking to use their power to facilitate lasting change."

    Beverly Daniel Tatum, President Emerita, Spelman College, and author of “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race”

  • "Susan Sturm's unflinching and poignant narrative urges white leaders and collaborators to think more critically about anti-racist praxis without coopting it. Crucial for our times, "What Might Be" is an orienting and intimate guide."

    Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, University of California, Irvine, author of “Accidental Feminism”

  • "Susan Sturm works hard to convince folks to be their best, to use their power and privilege for good, to collaborate across racial lines, and to do the work to confront racism in the academy and elsewhere. The beauty of this book is how Sturm uses her own experiences, presenting an authentic perspective."

    Marybeth Gasman, Rutgers University, author of “Doing the Right Thing”

  • "As a white man leading an institution whose origins epitomize white male privilege, I wish I had this book years ago when embraking on an intentional and ongoing participatory process of institutional transformation towards anti-racism and anti-sexism. Susan Sturm has provided an inspiring and practical guide to the deep work of multiracial collaboration that fuses theory, reflection, and practice to powerfully advance equity and justice."

    Stephen Heintz, President and CEO, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

  • During a time of division and conflict, Susan Sturm offers powerful stories linked to instructive analysis of bridge-building in pursuit of equality, excellence, and effective collaborations against racism. What makes this work so essential is its honesty and clarity about the dilemmas that arise when people use their power and privilege to try to alter the patterns affording them authority."

    Martha Minow, author of “When Should Law Forgive?”

  • "Utterly remarkable book with candid stories about the real life challenges of changing our institutions for the better right now. The author offers tools and concepts to illuminate what makes anti-racist work so hard — and to help figure out how to do it well, one step (or one mistake and recovery) at a time. And the stories make it come alive — personal stories from the author and from the leaders she interviewed. One big takeaway for me is the realization that what makes this work hard is inherent to the work. The insights of this book make it much more possible to keep coming back to this work."

    Anonymous