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thepermageek's review
5.0
A brilliant book! A [b:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?|211888|Where Do We Go from Here Chaos or Community?|Martin Luther King Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358780869l/211888._SX50_.jpg|2686535] for the 21st century!
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Breaking Out of the Cage
They will get you. If you are black in America, they will get you. They will get you before they get anyone else. And they will get you more forcefully and more ruthlessly just because you are black. Everything depends on this: politics, economics, education, crime, defence, corporate health and the general well-being of America. It is the unwritten constitutional guarantee of the country - whatever happens will happen first and worst to black folk. Glaude is unequivocal: “Our democratic principles do not exist in a space apart from our national commitment to white supremacy.”
Black wealth, and the lives associated with it are the insurance premium paid involuntarily by black people to cushion national disaster. Everyone paid for the financial insanity of Wall Street in 2008, for example. But black people paid most, as they have paid most in the various American international military adventures during the last 60 years. They will also pay most during the current Covid-19 crisis. More will be impoverished, more will die proportionately than anyone else. Black people are the shock absorbers of American culture; they are disposable. This is the function they perform in a society that considers this normal by not considering it at all.
And yet, incredibly, this is not a central issue in American politics. “What happens in black America is not a matter of national concern—unless, of course, it threatens people who ‘really matter.’” Unless they shoot someone, or are shot by police, black people are politically invisible in America. Black misery has been privatised. This is three or four generations after the civil rights leaders and their victories in the 1960’s. How did this happen? How did a rising political and economic power in America become so marginalised, so irrelevant to its existence?
“The United States remains a nation fundamentally shaped by its racist past and present.” The forces that were temporarily overcome in the 1960’s were never eliminated. The white supremacy that has existed from its founding continues to run the country. The proof of this is that black people are less valued by any reasonable standard - unemployment, health, mortality, rates of incarceration, education, pay. The gap in value between white and black is part of the American DNA. “At every crucial moment in our nation’s history, when there have been fundamental changes in how we’ve dealt with race, white people asserted the value gap and limited the scope of change.”
The political strategy by which race became a non-issue in America has many sources. But I think the dominant meme is that of ‘identity politics.’ Race has progressively become incorporated into a portmanteau of ‘interests.’ Everyone has interests. And according to the logic of democracy, diverse interests must balanced against each other. The interests of the financial entrepreneurs who create new trading instruments or the real estate developers in large cities are analogous to other ‘life-style’ interest-groups - gay, LGBT, feminists, veterans, environmentalists, and religious adherents.
The civil rights gains against racism in the 1960’s revealed the possibilities for addressing injustice in many areas. But racism is not one among many injustices. It is the root of them all. To treat it otherwise is to make it subservient to the interests of the entrepreneurs and the developers. Race is not an interest. It is not an ambition or a hope that people have. It is not something that can be accumulated or a means to a more fulfilling life. And it is certainly not something that can be ‘balanced’ against the well-being of others.
Race is an existential not an economic, political, or even sociological category. It cannot be changed, modified, mitigated, or traded-off against what others want, need, deserve, or have. Ultimately race is not even a criterion for the attainment of justice. Race is an absolute right which has been degraded into an arbitrary desire with the explicit purpose of making it irrelevant. This is an elemental subversion of democracy by those who reject that fundamental principle.
The degradation of race to the status of interest is the mechanism of white supremacy in America. It allows racism to be practised while never using the historical terms of racial abuse or the arguments of racial inferiority. Economic slurs about the ‘takers’ in society; sociological references to ‘criminal classes’; religious tirades against unAmerican ‘values,’ are now the ways in which racial hatred is expressed. As Glaude says, “Republicans wrapped the flag around their bigotry and couched it in criticisms of big government.” In this way white supremacy disappears, except as extremist nutcases on the FBI watch-list. But the real racism is acted out systematically by conceiving race as just one more claim to be politically assessed.
Glaude, therefore, is treading a dangerous line when he opens with his examples of black poverty. He knows this. Poverty is a consequence of race, but the issue is race not poverty. Actions to alleviate poverty may be required for humanitarian and ethical reasons. But, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, such actions have no significant impact on the fundamental issue. Race is non-negotiable. The recognition of race is not a political variable; it is a pre-condition for democracy tout court. The existence of systematic racism in America is a fundamental block to democratic politics. If you are black in America, democracy simply does not exist. This is the “great legacy of unfreedom at the heart of the American project.”
Glaude is insistent that white supremacy is so deeply built into the thing Americans call democracy as to be the standard of democracy. “We keep treating America like we have a great blueprint and we’ve just strayed from it,” he says, “But the fact is that we’ve built the country true. Black folk were never meant to be full-fledged participants in this society.” Without recognising this, American democracy will remain a caricature, a bad joke, a regime as oppressive and depressing as that of any other preferential ideology. That this may be difficult to comprehend is evidence of just how successful this ideology has been. It hides in plain sight; it is so pervasive that it cannot be seen except by those it crushes.
Trump is right: the system is rigged. But not against him and his supremacist allies. Their gripe is that the system might become unrigged, that voting rights will continue to be curtailed, that police will continue to be justified in providing ‘special treatment’ to black youth, that spending on black education and social welfare will be a fraction of that for white folk, that black infant mortality should remain twice the national average, that the American rate of incarceration is the highest in the world,wildly over represented by black people. All these things have to be ‘dis-remembered’ in order to bluster about maintaining American ideals. These are the ideals. They are what the system wants not incidental or accidental damage. This is Glaude’s central point. And it’s very difficult to find fault with it.
The ‘unit of change,’ as it were, that Glaude has in mind is not law, or attitude, or mental state but “racial habits,” those aspects of behaviour which are the carriers of racism. Primary among these is language. While the old fashioned racial epithets are largely gone from intelligent company, they have been replaced by the PC phrases which are the modern equivalent of the epithets that were common in my lifetime. And first among these is that race is not mentioned at all. We are to pretend that the way to deal with killings by police, riots, even complaints of racism, is by not referring to race. Race should be removed from the analysis and discussion of these issue as inflammatory and not relevant to their resolution. This is a racist tactic to divert attention from the pervasive fact of racism.
The second related habit can be summarised as white fear. This is “a deeply felt, collectively held fear shared by people who believe, together, that some harm threatens them and their way of life.” It is group behaviour passed from generation to generation through advice and admonition. Fear too is generated through language. Such fear is not a response to threat but to myth: “It isn’t based in any actual threat of harm. Instead, the idea of black violence or crime does all the work. The mere possibility of danger is enough to motivate us to act as if we are in immediate danger.” One cannot help but notice that the language of drugs is really that of racism revealing itself as moral panic - something repeatedly demonstrated about race throughout American history.
Ultimately the solution to bad racial habits has to do with unravelling the stories told by Reagan Republicans and their descendants about what race is in America. “We have to tell better stories about what truly matters to us” Thereis no alternative. This involves constantly harping on the real racial history of America and its legacy. To a significant degree, this means recapturing the spirit of Dr. King, black religious congregations and organisations like the original NAACP who sought to create a new narrative for being black in America. This narrative is not that of the co-opted liberal establishment for which race has become a political bargaining chip, one among many. It is a narrative which “will disrupt how society responds to black suffering and imagines black political participation.” This Glaude calls “a civil power outage.”
This undoubtedly means action in the streets rather than the statehouse, and making noise as well as writing and speaking. And, therefore, likely tear-gassing and arrests. And hostile media coverage. This is a necessary complement to voting in the non-democracy that is America, which may indeed involve an “electoral blank out,” the submission of blank/spoiled ballots to demonstrate disgust for the system. For Glaude, this is a route out of the political cage that the black population is in. I don’t know if this is good advice or not. But I can understand entirely the justified rage which provokes it.
Postscript 23 April 20: https://thebaffler.com/latest/ill-will-bonhomme
They will get you. If you are black in America, they will get you. They will get you before they get anyone else. And they will get you more forcefully and more ruthlessly just because you are black. Everything depends on this: politics, economics, education, crime, defence, corporate health and the general well-being of America. It is the unwritten constitutional guarantee of the country - whatever happens will happen first and worst to black folk. Glaude is unequivocal: “Our democratic principles do not exist in a space apart from our national commitment to white supremacy.”
Black wealth, and the lives associated with it are the insurance premium paid involuntarily by black people to cushion national disaster. Everyone paid for the financial insanity of Wall Street in 2008, for example. But black people paid most, as they have paid most in the various American international military adventures during the last 60 years. They will also pay most during the current Covid-19 crisis. More will be impoverished, more will die proportionately than anyone else. Black people are the shock absorbers of American culture; they are disposable. This is the function they perform in a society that considers this normal by not considering it at all.
And yet, incredibly, this is not a central issue in American politics. “What happens in black America is not a matter of national concern—unless, of course, it threatens people who ‘really matter.’” Unless they shoot someone, or are shot by police, black people are politically invisible in America. Black misery has been privatised. This is three or four generations after the civil rights leaders and their victories in the 1960’s. How did this happen? How did a rising political and economic power in America become so marginalised, so irrelevant to its existence?
“The United States remains a nation fundamentally shaped by its racist past and present.” The forces that were temporarily overcome in the 1960’s were never eliminated. The white supremacy that has existed from its founding continues to run the country. The proof of this is that black people are less valued by any reasonable standard - unemployment, health, mortality, rates of incarceration, education, pay. The gap in value between white and black is part of the American DNA. “At every crucial moment in our nation’s history, when there have been fundamental changes in how we’ve dealt with race, white people asserted the value gap and limited the scope of change.”
The political strategy by which race became a non-issue in America has many sources. But I think the dominant meme is that of ‘identity politics.’ Race has progressively become incorporated into a portmanteau of ‘interests.’ Everyone has interests. And according to the logic of democracy, diverse interests must balanced against each other. The interests of the financial entrepreneurs who create new trading instruments or the real estate developers in large cities are analogous to other ‘life-style’ interest-groups - gay, LGBT, feminists, veterans, environmentalists, and religious adherents.
The civil rights gains against racism in the 1960’s revealed the possibilities for addressing injustice in many areas. But racism is not one among many injustices. It is the root of them all. To treat it otherwise is to make it subservient to the interests of the entrepreneurs and the developers. Race is not an interest. It is not an ambition or a hope that people have. It is not something that can be accumulated or a means to a more fulfilling life. And it is certainly not something that can be ‘balanced’ against the well-being of others.
Race is an existential not an economic, political, or even sociological category. It cannot be changed, modified, mitigated, or traded-off against what others want, need, deserve, or have. Ultimately race is not even a criterion for the attainment of justice. Race is an absolute right which has been degraded into an arbitrary desire with the explicit purpose of making it irrelevant. This is an elemental subversion of democracy by those who reject that fundamental principle.
The degradation of race to the status of interest is the mechanism of white supremacy in America. It allows racism to be practised while never using the historical terms of racial abuse or the arguments of racial inferiority. Economic slurs about the ‘takers’ in society; sociological references to ‘criminal classes’; religious tirades against unAmerican ‘values,’ are now the ways in which racial hatred is expressed. As Glaude says, “Republicans wrapped the flag around their bigotry and couched it in criticisms of big government.” In this way white supremacy disappears, except as extremist nutcases on the FBI watch-list. But the real racism is acted out systematically by conceiving race as just one more claim to be politically assessed.
Glaude, therefore, is treading a dangerous line when he opens with his examples of black poverty. He knows this. Poverty is a consequence of race, but the issue is race not poverty. Actions to alleviate poverty may be required for humanitarian and ethical reasons. But, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, such actions have no significant impact on the fundamental issue. Race is non-negotiable. The recognition of race is not a political variable; it is a pre-condition for democracy tout court. The existence of systematic racism in America is a fundamental block to democratic politics. If you are black in America, democracy simply does not exist. This is the “great legacy of unfreedom at the heart of the American project.”
Glaude is insistent that white supremacy is so deeply built into the thing Americans call democracy as to be the standard of democracy. “We keep treating America like we have a great blueprint and we’ve just strayed from it,” he says, “But the fact is that we’ve built the country true. Black folk were never meant to be full-fledged participants in this society.” Without recognising this, American democracy will remain a caricature, a bad joke, a regime as oppressive and depressing as that of any other preferential ideology. That this may be difficult to comprehend is evidence of just how successful this ideology has been. It hides in plain sight; it is so pervasive that it cannot be seen except by those it crushes.
Trump is right: the system is rigged. But not against him and his supremacist allies. Their gripe is that the system might become unrigged, that voting rights will continue to be curtailed, that police will continue to be justified in providing ‘special treatment’ to black youth, that spending on black education and social welfare will be a fraction of that for white folk, that black infant mortality should remain twice the national average, that the American rate of incarceration is the highest in the world,wildly over represented by black people. All these things have to be ‘dis-remembered’ in order to bluster about maintaining American ideals. These are the ideals. They are what the system wants not incidental or accidental damage. This is Glaude’s central point. And it’s very difficult to find fault with it.
The ‘unit of change,’ as it were, that Glaude has in mind is not law, or attitude, or mental state but “racial habits,” those aspects of behaviour which are the carriers of racism. Primary among these is language. While the old fashioned racial epithets are largely gone from intelligent company, they have been replaced by the PC phrases which are the modern equivalent of the epithets that were common in my lifetime. And first among these is that race is not mentioned at all. We are to pretend that the way to deal with killings by police, riots, even complaints of racism, is by not referring to race. Race should be removed from the analysis and discussion of these issue as inflammatory and not relevant to their resolution. This is a racist tactic to divert attention from the pervasive fact of racism.
The second related habit can be summarised as white fear. This is “a deeply felt, collectively held fear shared by people who believe, together, that some harm threatens them and their way of life.” It is group behaviour passed from generation to generation through advice and admonition. Fear too is generated through language. Such fear is not a response to threat but to myth: “It isn’t based in any actual threat of harm. Instead, the idea of black violence or crime does all the work. The mere possibility of danger is enough to motivate us to act as if we are in immediate danger.” One cannot help but notice that the language of drugs is really that of racism revealing itself as moral panic - something repeatedly demonstrated about race throughout American history.
Ultimately the solution to bad racial habits has to do with unravelling the stories told by Reagan Republicans and their descendants about what race is in America. “We have to tell better stories about what truly matters to us” Thereis no alternative. This involves constantly harping on the real racial history of America and its legacy. To a significant degree, this means recapturing the spirit of Dr. King, black religious congregations and organisations like the original NAACP who sought to create a new narrative for being black in America. This narrative is not that of the co-opted liberal establishment for which race has become a political bargaining chip, one among many. It is a narrative which “will disrupt how society responds to black suffering and imagines black political participation.” This Glaude calls “a civil power outage.”
This undoubtedly means action in the streets rather than the statehouse, and making noise as well as writing and speaking. And, therefore, likely tear-gassing and arrests. And hostile media coverage. This is a necessary complement to voting in the non-democracy that is America, which may indeed involve an “electoral blank out,” the submission of blank/spoiled ballots to demonstrate disgust for the system. For Glaude, this is a route out of the political cage that the black population is in. I don’t know if this is good advice or not. But I can understand entirely the justified rage which provokes it.
Postscript 23 April 20: https://thebaffler.com/latest/ill-will-bonhomme
stevereally's review
3.0
It's good, but not as much here was as new to me or unique to this book as I was hoping.
jozefsyndicate's review
5.0
Dynamic, valuable work! With clarity and poignant daring, Eddie Glaude Jr. presents a stark, bold challenge to politically active black Americans to change the nation--again. With statements like, "There are those among us willing to turn their backs on democracy to safeguard their privilege" and "No one can be comfortable," he challenges the reader's courage and imagination to ignite or join a truly valuable revolution. This is a revolution includes a change in how we view government; a change in how we view black people; and a change in how we view what ultimately matters to us as Americans. This revolution would close what he defines as the "value gap" and (perhaps) level systemic inequalities. Although not strong on direct steps to action, Democracy is Black's historical, social, and economic analysis are valuable tools for strategic organizing.
jorie's review
If an alien force sought to understand what American humans are, I would give them this book. It is a surprisingly succinct history of Black people in the United States, and how policymaking shaped and shapes their experiences, all while also providing deep (and religious) insight into human nature.
I loved this book. It is unflinching, uncompromising and demands action, not just change. Everyone should read this.
I loved this book. It is unflinching, uncompromising and demands action, not just change. Everyone should read this.
pbaillie's review
3.0
This is a placeholder rating. I'm just giving it three stars because I really don't know enough about the subject to accurately rate it. I bought this on a whim because I needed something to read on a 7 hour flight home and I had wanted to read a book on race relations in the U.S. written by someone who was a minority. I figured this would be a good book to get my feet wet in the subject. Specifically, the chapters on our implicit racial habits and how we "misremember" aspects of our history were really thought-provoking for me.
The author's thesis is that there is an inherent gap in the way we value white people and black people (along with other racial minorities) in America. He contends that this is not simply an issue of getting back to our roots of equality but that this value gap is baked into the fabric of our country as a whole and that leveling the playing field means holistic change.
The author's thesis is that there is an inherent gap in the way we value white people and black people (along with other racial minorities) in America. He contends that this is not simply an issue of getting back to our roots of equality but that this value gap is baked into the fabric of our country as a whole and that leveling the playing field means holistic change.
tonstantweader's review
3.0
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul contributes important ideas to the struggle of black liberation. The author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. argues that the core of the issue is a “value gap” that is woven into the entire fabric of our society, from its foundational myths and documents through its laws, customs and its values. That value gap is the simple, incontrovertible fact that black lives are valued less than white lives. If anyone seriously doubts that fact, I can refer them to the U.S. Constitution where with mathematical precision, black lives were valued at merely 60% of white lives. If there is still any doubt, we can see the judicial and societal acceptance and approval of police meting out capital punishment for such crimes as jaywalking, having a broken taillight or not signaling a lane change, or for no crime at all in the cases of John Crawford and the child Tamir Rice.
I did not need persuading that America as a whole values black lives less than white lives. The proof is in the snide responses to #Black Lives Matter and the joke memes such as “Black Labs Mattter/All Labs Matter.” That Americans think the never-ending murder of black men is something to joke about proves their moral culpability in the devaluation of black lives. That American police refuse to do their jobs because Beyoncé hurt their feelings while they defend the murder of black children by police is just another example of white lives (and tender feelings) matter more than black lives.
While Glaude provides a valuable service making a case for why black lives matter less than white lives and showing how that has been true throughout history, he omits some of the forces that are instrumental to that devaluation. Most importantly, he underestimates the force religion has played in that process from the initial declaration by protestant religious leaders that black people had no souls which made American chattel slavery significantly worse than slavery in Catholic countries where slaves still had some rights including the right to marry and keep their family together, were allowed to learn to read and write, were encouraged to join the church and could not be summarily executed. The pernicious role of religion continues to this day with the widespread prosperity gospel providing a theological defense of white supremacy and societal neglect for the poor and dispossessed.
Glaude is best when he describes the opportunity deserts that urban communities have become, though he understates the case. In fact, it is even worse than he describes it. How can people find work when the jobs are no longer in the city and public transit has been hollowed out. He is exactly right about the Great Black Depression that continues despite the “end” of the recession. He does not mention the destruction of public education by the charter school movement and while he focuses a lot on incarceration, he does not mention the repressive impact of school discipline in urban schools being handed over to the police, resulting in black people being confronted by an adversarial criminal justice system from kindergarten on up.
He does not think it is hopeless. He thinks we need a movement rooted in changing three things, how we view our government (expanding its role in creating the conditions that make success possible), change how we view black people (and of course, value them), and change what matters to us as Americans (Valuing people over property is one crazy idea we might consider.) These are big changes and will take a lot of work, work that has to build from the grassroots because those in power are in power precisely because they subscribe to the “racial habits” that sustain the status quo.
I agree with him on so much and think he is correct that fundamental changes are necessary. We know from the speed with which southern whites abandoned economic populism that people would rather be poor than equal. Their racism changed their view on what government should do; they valued white privilege more than getting ahead themselves. Borrowing from Scot Nakagawa who wrote that “blackness is the fulcrum of white supremacy,” I would argue that racism is the fulcrum on which economic inequality is levered. One way folks at Oregon Action addressed that was to work on economic justice issues, but only issues that could be framed and organized around racial justice and to deliberately incorporate that racial justice frame into all the messaging on that issue.
Glaude expresses a lot of contempt for black community leaders and he names names. Conservatives who call them race-hustlers will find ample comfort in this book, because Glaude seems to see them in the same light. He is particularly harsh in his critique of Obama, in particular calling him out for not speaking out about race enough. On the other hand, while it would be great for Obama to speak more honestly about race, we have seen many times that the moment he gives his opinion, racial justice issues become polarized in unhelpful ways. Just about everyone agreed that the cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates for trying to enter his own home was a jackass, until Obama called him one. Then suddenly, the petite and elderly Gates was a dangerous black man who disrespected an officer of the law. When Trayvon Martin was murdered by the violent thug George Zimmermann, there was widespread condemnation of the failure of police to arrest the murderer. But then Obama said Trayvon made him think he could have been his son and all of a sudden there were fake pictures of Martin in the media and he was a criminal wannabe and so on. Obama’s comments were not helpful in the least. Some honesty about how careful he has to be is in order.
My greatest disappointment, though, and something that made me want to throw this book across the room in disgust is Glaude’s prescription for change. He suggest that black people go to the polls and vote for everything down-ballot but leave the vote for president blank. A blank-out campaign to show their disgust and disappointment in the process, he thinks will be empowering. Instead, it will guarantee a Supreme Court that will finish their incomplete efforts to eliminate the Voting Rights Act, who will rubber stamp Voter ID laws that keep blacks from voting, who will approve Texas’ racist attempt to redefine one-person/one vote to disappear the far-too-many black people who are prohibited from registering to vote because of racist judicial practices, who will continue to erode all the gains and protections from the Civil Rights Act and set democracy back fifty years. I could not think of a more disastrous thing for black people and this is what he advocates.
I liked the writing. It is urgent, fast-paced and clear. He outlines his arguments well and makes a solid case for the value gap being a flaw built right into our foundation as a society. He makes a good argument about the causes of the unrelenting despair in the black community. He is right that we need major changes in how we think about government, black people and what is valuable. He could not possible by more disastrously wrong about how to change that.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
I did not need persuading that America as a whole values black lives less than white lives. The proof is in the snide responses to #Black Lives Matter and the joke memes such as “Black Labs Mattter/All Labs Matter.” That Americans think the never-ending murder of black men is something to joke about proves their moral culpability in the devaluation of black lives. That American police refuse to do their jobs because Beyoncé hurt their feelings while they defend the murder of black children by police is just another example of white lives (and tender feelings) matter more than black lives.
While Glaude provides a valuable service making a case for why black lives matter less than white lives and showing how that has been true throughout history, he omits some of the forces that are instrumental to that devaluation. Most importantly, he underestimates the force religion has played in that process from the initial declaration by protestant religious leaders that black people had no souls which made American chattel slavery significantly worse than slavery in Catholic countries where slaves still had some rights including the right to marry and keep their family together, were allowed to learn to read and write, were encouraged to join the church and could not be summarily executed. The pernicious role of religion continues to this day with the widespread prosperity gospel providing a theological defense of white supremacy and societal neglect for the poor and dispossessed.
Glaude is best when he describes the opportunity deserts that urban communities have become, though he understates the case. In fact, it is even worse than he describes it. How can people find work when the jobs are no longer in the city and public transit has been hollowed out. He is exactly right about the Great Black Depression that continues despite the “end” of the recession. He does not mention the destruction of public education by the charter school movement and while he focuses a lot on incarceration, he does not mention the repressive impact of school discipline in urban schools being handed over to the police, resulting in black people being confronted by an adversarial criminal justice system from kindergarten on up.
He does not think it is hopeless. He thinks we need a movement rooted in changing three things, how we view our government (expanding its role in creating the conditions that make success possible), change how we view black people (and of course, value them), and change what matters to us as Americans (Valuing people over property is one crazy idea we might consider.) These are big changes and will take a lot of work, work that has to build from the grassroots because those in power are in power precisely because they subscribe to the “racial habits” that sustain the status quo.
I agree with him on so much and think he is correct that fundamental changes are necessary. We know from the speed with which southern whites abandoned economic populism that people would rather be poor than equal. Their racism changed their view on what government should do; they valued white privilege more than getting ahead themselves. Borrowing from Scot Nakagawa who wrote that “blackness is the fulcrum of white supremacy,” I would argue that racism is the fulcrum on which economic inequality is levered. One way folks at Oregon Action addressed that was to work on economic justice issues, but only issues that could be framed and organized around racial justice and to deliberately incorporate that racial justice frame into all the messaging on that issue.
Glaude expresses a lot of contempt for black community leaders and he names names. Conservatives who call them race-hustlers will find ample comfort in this book, because Glaude seems to see them in the same light. He is particularly harsh in his critique of Obama, in particular calling him out for not speaking out about race enough. On the other hand, while it would be great for Obama to speak more honestly about race, we have seen many times that the moment he gives his opinion, racial justice issues become polarized in unhelpful ways. Just about everyone agreed that the cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates for trying to enter his own home was a jackass, until Obama called him one. Then suddenly, the petite and elderly Gates was a dangerous black man who disrespected an officer of the law. When Trayvon Martin was murdered by the violent thug George Zimmermann, there was widespread condemnation of the failure of police to arrest the murderer. But then Obama said Trayvon made him think he could have been his son and all of a sudden there were fake pictures of Martin in the media and he was a criminal wannabe and so on. Obama’s comments were not helpful in the least. Some honesty about how careful he has to be is in order.
My greatest disappointment, though, and something that made me want to throw this book across the room in disgust is Glaude’s prescription for change. He suggest that black people go to the polls and vote for everything down-ballot but leave the vote for president blank. A blank-out campaign to show their disgust and disappointment in the process, he thinks will be empowering. Instead, it will guarantee a Supreme Court that will finish their incomplete efforts to eliminate the Voting Rights Act, who will rubber stamp Voter ID laws that keep blacks from voting, who will approve Texas’ racist attempt to redefine one-person/one vote to disappear the far-too-many black people who are prohibited from registering to vote because of racist judicial practices, who will continue to erode all the gains and protections from the Civil Rights Act and set democracy back fifty years. I could not think of a more disastrous thing for black people and this is what he advocates.
I liked the writing. It is urgent, fast-paced and clear. He outlines his arguments well and makes a solid case for the value gap being a flaw built right into our foundation as a society. He makes a good argument about the causes of the unrelenting despair in the black community. He is right that we need major changes in how we think about government, black people and what is valuable. He could not possible by more disastrously wrong about how to change that.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
audreylee's review
3.0
I received this book as an Early Reviewer from LibraryThing. While not a fan of politics in general, this book has opened my eyes to the systematic way government plays a part in continuing racial imbalances and injustices. I was a little surprised that the Author did not include the juror remarks made following the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial regarding how she felt there was no choice based "on the way the law was written" that the jury could find Zimmerman guilty. On page 189, the Author states "we didn't jail children in the past", but historically, children HAVE been jailed and put to death for minor (or imagined) offenses. With the continued (and quite obvious) racial injustices and profiling, I believe this book should be included in general sociology courses.
There are many small editing issues with this copy; however, I received an uncorrected proof, so hopefully, these will be fixed prior to publication.
There are many small editing issues with this copy; however, I received an uncorrected proof, so hopefully, these will be fixed prior to publication.
fayelle's review
5.0
Enlightening
I don't read much nonfiction bc reading is an escape for me and nonfiction is not. But I have resolved to read what I *need* to read in addition to what I *want* to read.
This held my attention, though, and I was thinking about it often after I'd set it down. Very eye opening, and I learned so much about so many things, like why the economy and race go hand in hand. It's so obvious when you have the facts.
I appreciated that this book wasn't emotional or persuasive as much as it was trying to present an easy to understand case, by going back - from anecdotes to laws to just history laid out clearly. I am really glad I read this. It wasn't hard to follow or too academic.
I don't read much nonfiction bc reading is an escape for me and nonfiction is not. But I have resolved to read what I *need* to read in addition to what I *want* to read.
This held my attention, though, and I was thinking about it often after I'd set it down. Very eye opening, and I learned so much about so many things, like why the economy and race go hand in hand. It's so obvious when you have the facts.
I appreciated that this book wasn't emotional or persuasive as much as it was trying to present an easy to understand case, by going back - from anecdotes to laws to just history laid out clearly. I am really glad I read this. It wasn't hard to follow or too academic.