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paulsnelling's review
3.0
An angry book, but there’s much to be angry about. It never loses the feel of a polemic and it’s disappointing that there’s so little discussion about what should be done. White allyship is summarily dismissed in favour of inevitable revolution which might be lost in environmental catastrophe. Powerful
daveyk's review
4.0
This book shook me to my core, depressed me to no end. It should be required reading throughout the world but also only be approached with something warm and kind in hand, perhaps a blanket or plushie or a cup of tea brewed by someone you love. Then again, those same products likely would not be in your household were it not for the suffering of a poor group exploited somewhere along the supply chain. So even reaching for comfort, you would be reminded of Kehinde Andrews' central premise herein: today's global economic and political system is only superficially different from that which came before. It is an apparatus that came to dominate through the terrible realities of racism, slavery, colonialism and genocide, the after-effects of which can be seen wherever one turns.
The anger in this book is palpable and infectious, with Andrews bombarding the reader with scathing critiques of the West's past and present, the damaging ideas and mythologies that continue to result in and amplify rampant inequality worldwide, and much more - too much to summarise in this mini-review. I am glad I read this, though I feel I closed its back cover a more pessimistic person. I would have liked to hear more proposals for solving the many problems that plague modern society, but that is a tall order for anyone. The book may also have benefited from a little more editing as there was some unnecessary repetition.
The anger in this book is palpable and infectious, with Andrews bombarding the reader with scathing critiques of the West's past and present, the damaging ideas and mythologies that continue to result in and amplify rampant inequality worldwide, and much more - too much to summarise in this mini-review. I am glad I read this, though I feel I closed its back cover a more pessimistic person. I would have liked to hear more proposals for solving the many problems that plague modern society, but that is a tall order for anyone. The book may also have benefited from a little more editing as there was some unnecessary repetition.
breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
madhamster's review
5.0
Nothing sugar-coated. No punches pulled.
This is an urgent call for the complete upheaval of the current Western imperialist and racist system.
This is an urgent call for the complete upheaval of the current Western imperialist and racist system.
filuipa's review against another edition
5.0
The best review I can write for this book is that this should be a mandatory reading to all white people in the world. Especially the ones who just at the sight of the cover would start to roll their eyes and shout. But it's not also just those, it's also every white person who might feel like they don't act in a racist way, that they still feel a little pride over their west country or dream of moving to the culture of another coloniser country. It's for those who like me, are so emotionally drained from the topic so they have been trying to avoid it the past year.
Before reading this I thought I had a solid understanding of these themes and it's relation with everything around us, but that wasn't true and with every chapter I was more in shock with how much I was learning and how much evil has always existed.
Before reading this I thought I had a solid understanding of these themes and it's relation with everything around us, but that wasn't true and with every chapter I was more in shock with how much I was learning and how much evil has always existed.
nela's review
5.0
"...the ballot or the bullet, liberty or death, freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody."
"Racial science was not some marginal concern at the corners of European philosophy, it was an integral component of its intellectual framework."
"The simple ‘never again’ rhetoric misses the mark so widely because it presents the West as the solution, when in fact it was the system that was the problem all along."
"We think of slavery as belonging to the distant past, but the world we live in remains created in its image."
"If the slave owners were compensated at the end of slavery there can be no justifiable reason for denying reparations to those suffering the legacies of the system."
"Not being White has never automatically meant being opposed to the colonial logic of White supremacy."
"The West can never be the solution to global poverty because it is the cause of it. The places in the underdeveloped world that have made the biggest strides forward since the dawn of the new age of empire are those that have had the least support from the West."
"Whereas we may have accepted that killing and enslaving the natives is wrong, we have normalized poverty for the Black and Brown because in the new world order our lives matter, just a lot less."
"Knowledge did not spread out of Europe to bring light to the uncivilized parts of the world. In fact, it was the very opposite: Europe took knowledge produced around the globe and Whitewashed it, pretending it was theirs."
"A narrow focus on full humanity for workers in the West, and merely the right to life for the those in the Rest, prevents any serious reckoning with the scale of injustice upon which global wealth disparities are built."
"Racial science was not some marginal concern at the corners of European philosophy, it was an integral component of its intellectual framework."
"The simple ‘never again’ rhetoric misses the mark so widely because it presents the West as the solution, when in fact it was the system that was the problem all along."
"We think of slavery as belonging to the distant past, but the world we live in remains created in its image."
"If the slave owners were compensated at the end of slavery there can be no justifiable reason for denying reparations to those suffering the legacies of the system."
"Not being White has never automatically meant being opposed to the colonial logic of White supremacy."
"The West can never be the solution to global poverty because it is the cause of it. The places in the underdeveloped world that have made the biggest strides forward since the dawn of the new age of empire are those that have had the least support from the West."
"Whereas we may have accepted that killing and enslaving the natives is wrong, we have normalized poverty for the Black and Brown because in the new world order our lives matter, just a lot less."
"Knowledge did not spread out of Europe to bring light to the uncivilized parts of the world. In fact, it was the very opposite: Europe took knowledge produced around the globe and Whitewashed it, pretending it was theirs."
"A narrow focus on full humanity for workers in the West, and merely the right to life for the those in the Rest, prevents any serious reckoning with the scale of injustice upon which global wealth disparities are built."