Mary Nelson is a retired physician who has lived in the La Crosse community for over 35 years. She has been motivated to join forces with people who are trying to make a change in this community and the world in part by the reading of Waking Up White. These are her words:

"I consider myself a good person and therefore thought I could not be racist. Because I live in a mostly segregated space, a sea of whiteness, my white-centered ideas of "normalcy" are continually reinforced, and they were the bedrock of my values and judgments. I could not appreciate how blind I was to the lived realities of others. This I think makes me the poster child for the statement that "there are none so blind as those who can not see." Reading Debby Irving's book Waking Up White helped me to realize that I view the world through a white frame and that the ramifications of my ignorance of white culture and history are not benign. I have learned that "not knowing," and its associated passivity, perpetrates the status quo, locking in institutional systemic racism.

This book has brought about a change in how I think, and it has propelled me into acting. It is why I have become involved in both the 2020 Waking Up White Regional Community Learning Collaborative and the Creating a Healthier Multicultural Community Project."