THE JESUS BAG

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1971

In itself and also as a sequel to Black Rage (1968), this is a disappointing, shabbily unfocused book. Grier and Cobbs briefly review the ways in which black people are disarmed and unmanned in American society, prohibited from safe expression of their reactions to white hostility and contempt. The book relies on anecdotes and anecdotal renditions of case histories from, one assumes, the authors' psychiatric practice. These are often insensitive and obtuse: the story of a young black homosexual is spectacularly mishandled, not least by ignoring the ""hustle"" dimension, a mode of hostile self-expression the authors bypass. The data invoked lack rigor, however plausible; and however sympathetic the reader, he will be put off by the abundance of tenuous, timeless generalizations (the comment that ""fortunately black men and women say clearly that they were unrewarded because of the hatred of the white man"" is no clearer in context). The ""Jesus bag"" theme of religion's quietistic, repressive side among blacks, remains strictly incidental, providing a few acute paragraphs on the effects of the belief that God and God alone speeds punishment and reward; but the authors make no attempt even to indicate the obvious by relevant parameters of age, sub-class, and gender. Filling out the scrapbook effect, there is an elaborate bibliography on hypertension among blacks, with no commentary at all. Black Rage was also facile and superficial and irritatingly unsystematic, but it put together apposite material and themes in a stimulating way: by any standards, this is flaccid in its lack of focus and serious elaboration.

Pub Date: April 1, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION