Reckoning with Wicked Problems

Drawing upon four recently published books, one booklet, and a dialogue guide, this review aims to deepen understanding of both scholars and practitioners about how to reckon with racism in the midst of overlapping and intersecting crises. The works reviewed here extend calls made within deliberative democracy scholarship and activist practice to disrupt harmful patterns of dialogic engagement. Several of these works also challenge reductionist conceptions of civility that perpetuate systemic inequality, even as they uphold deliberative democracy’s long-held commitment to honor the human dignity of participants across dialogic contexts. By putting the community organizers, activists, clergy, scholars, and professors who author these works in conversation with one another, this review promotes potentially transformative approaches to dialogue and deliberation about racial injustice. In the end, this review urges readers to imagine how these potentially transformative approaches can be adapted to virtual settings given the legacies of physical distancing measures wrought by the global health pandemic.