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A review by birdinflight1
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward
3.0
I especially liked the essay Black and Blue by Garnette Cadogan. The authors loves walking, and during his youth in Jamacia, he learned how to keep himself safe in the often terrifying streets of Kingston. Then, he goes to college in New Orleans, and later moves to NYC, and he continues to walk, but walking in the US is very different. Here, he realizes, he is seen as the threat, and he alters his walking to be seen as non-threatening as possible: wearing his college logo wear, never wearing a hoodie, dressing up for walks, walking with a friend (but not a white woman), crossing the street when people approach, all to be seen as not a threat and to be safe. It is striking how he goes from strategizing to keep himself safe on the dangerous streets of Kingston to strategizing how to not be seen as a threat to anyone else's safety in America. It's mind-opening that he is much less safe in America as a black man than he is in Jamacia.
I also like the essay Cracking the Code by Jesmyn Ward about uncovering her DNA and learning that she is about half black and half white. Many "black" people are due to white men raping balck slaves. How racism is still a part of her life even though she's just as black as she is white.
My other favorite essay was Message to My Daughters by Edwidge Danticat. Her argument, a good one, is that if a person came to the US govt and pleaded their case that police officers choke their people to death for petty crime, fatally shoot children as they play as well as unarmed people, (and all those people were of one race or ethnic group) they would have a good case for asylum protection under US law. That really struck me! It's so true that if looked at objectively, we would offer asylum. I feel safe in America, but many people who have a different color skin do not. We have a lot of work to do as a country. And the police force has a lot of work to do. I'm glad we are awakening to this as a country, but it's been going on for so long, and we have so far to go.
I also like the essay Cracking the Code by Jesmyn Ward about uncovering her DNA and learning that she is about half black and half white. Many "black" people are due to white men raping balck slaves. How racism is still a part of her life even though she's just as black as she is white.
My other favorite essay was Message to My Daughters by Edwidge Danticat. Her argument, a good one, is that if a person came to the US govt and pleaded their case that police officers choke their people to death for petty crime, fatally shoot children as they play as well as unarmed people, (and all those people were of one race or ethnic group) they would have a good case for asylum protection under US law. That really struck me! It's so true that if looked at objectively, we would offer asylum. I feel safe in America, but many people who have a different color skin do not. We have a lot of work to do as a country. And the police force has a lot of work to do. I'm glad we are awakening to this as a country, but it's been going on for so long, and we have so far to go.