An accessible introduction to institutional racism in the United States and its ongoing effects.
A psychiatrist explores the legacy of American racism in this second edition of his nonfiction book.
“The problem with America is not that there are too many non-White people,” author D’Agostino asserts. “The problem is that White people are afraid of change and have given up on democracy.” As a white Catholic born in 1940s Chicago, the author notes, he “almost always voted Republican” in Illinois state elections, and he sees himself as “representative of elderly White American males.” After the election of Donald Trump and the growth of the racial justice movement after the death of George Floyd, the author began a journey of self-reflection and contemplation about race in America. The book includes a discussion of how he grappled with Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility (2018), and explicitly offers white readers a “primer” on how America’s racial history continues to affect the present. The book’s emphasis on precise terminology will be useful for readers who are unfamiliar. This well-researched book draws on the work of contemporary academics who challenge the conflation of the term racism with prejudice. Prejudice, they note, refers to an unfavorable opinion towards a group, often based on stereotypes, but racism historically manifests as an institutionalized doctrine through government policy. Much of the book centers on the American history of Black and white people, but D’Agostino also devotes chapters in this updated edition to prejudices against women, immigrants, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ communities.
The author has a solid grasp of U.S. history and uses it to explore such topics as the connection between wartime propaganda and Japanese internment camps, and the role of the eugenics movement in fostering racist policies. Perhaps most convincing is the book’s argument that there’s “both financial and political gain in maintaining inequality, and racial inequality sells best,” noting that for many white men, there’s a “tangible benefit” in preserving the status quo. This is the reason, according to the author, that many white Christians “are willing to give up on democracy” to embrace an “authoritarian government,” as they see it as their “only way to preserve their vision of culture.” The book won’t be revelatory for readers who are already aware of the insidious legacy of racism, but it excels at introducing the subject to its intended audience of skeptical white men. Its concluding chapter, “The White Man’s Dilemma,” offers a poignant reflection on the concept of white guilt, highlighting differences between guilt and shame and reminding readers that the purpose of the latter is to “behave better in the present.” D’Agostino admits that he’s not a scholar on the subject of racism or prejudice, but his background as a medical doctor and former president of the Illinois Psychiatric Society brings a learned approach, which blends nuanced analysis with a down-to-earth, conversational writing style. The stories of his personal history with race and prejudice may not appeal to those whose backgrounds and identities differ from his, but they may offer a valuable perspective to his target audience.
An accessible introduction to institutional racism in the United States and its ongoing effects.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798886546453
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
An eye-opening look at prison life from the point of view of a true warrior for justice.
A memoir on the making of a literal “jailhouse lawyer.”
Wrongfully arrested and convicted of murder in New Orleans, which at the time had “the highest rate of wrongful convictions in the nation, with nearly all the victims being Black men who…grew up poor,” Duncan served for 23 years in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison and other institutions. He might have done his time at the Orleans Parish Prison, but, he writes, he wanted access to Angola’s more extensive law library. Well before being transferred there, he petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for a law book, a motion denied because it had not first been adjudicated in a lower court. A sympathetic judge gave him a copy all the same, and Duncan was off to a career as an inmate advocate, regularly filing petitions and lawsuits on his own behalf and that of his fellow prisoners—the first suit being “over the jail’s failure to provide him with a high-fiber diet,” soon followed by motions to provide mental health treatment, end beatings and arbitrary punishments, and improve medical care. Known as the “Snickers Lawyer” for taking payment in candy, he became a self-taught expert on constitutional issues. Naturally, he recounts, he was targeted by guards and wardens for his legal activism, even as he proved essential to Angola’s population; in time, too, he found a few unlikely allies among the staff. Duncan’s well-told story is full of fraught moments of abuse both physical and judicial, though it has something of a happy ending in that, after earning a law degree after his release, he was exonerated of the crime and has since been fighting for other prisoners to “have meaningful access to the courts.”
An eye-opening look at prison life from the point of view of a true warrior for justice.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593834305
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
