Debby Irving

Debby Irving is an author and racial justice advocate who began a long journey of learning about systemic racism when she was in her 50s after taking a class called Racial and Cultural Identity at Wheelock College in Massachusetts. Irving grew up in the affluent, almost exclusively white town of Winchester, Massachusetts. After college, she moved to Cambridge, where she lived with her husband Bruce and worked in arts administration. She took part in several diversity initiatives which involved bringing young people from majority-black neighborhoods to majority-white neighborhoods to watch cultural performances, but never truly understood what the life of a person of color was actually like, so her efforts were largely unsuccessful.

After having her first child, Irving began volunteering and teaching at a school, where she observed that many students of color fell behind their white peers and developed behavioral issues, though she did...