There is much more to inequality and discrimination than we know, and Crump will open your eyes. Pay attention.
An accomplished civil rights attorney and former president of the National Bar Association exposes subtle, systemic genocide in America.
Crump assails the criminal justice system in the United States as one designed for white, wealthy men: All others are on their own. “This book,” he writes, “featuring many of the cases I have worked on, reveals the systematic legalization of discrimination in the United States, and particularly how it can lead to genocide—the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a people. This book particularly addresses genocide as it relates to colored people.” It’s vital, writes the author, to understanding the terms involved as well as how those terms have been manipulated over time. First, the concept of race does not have a biological or genetic basis. It began in the 15th century as Europe sought to justify enslaving, murdering, and stealing the lands of Indigenous people. When left unchecked, racism, the assertion of superiority in order to discriminate, is a tool of genocide. There are also institutional racism and environmental racism, demonstrated in the plight of citizens enduring poisonous water in Flint, Michigan, as well as legal slavery in our prisons, people innocently killed in police custody or on the street under “stand your ground” laws. Crump consistently condemns the courts’ failures, demonstrating how policing is unequal and disproportionate; as he notes, people of color are far more likely to go to jail for misdemeanors than white people. The Supreme Court has a long pattern of intellectual justification of discrimination and has relied on the concept of states’ rights to throw out cases. Though Jim Crow laws were overturned in the 1960s, new laws quickly replaced them, laws that may be less obvious but still result in voter suppression. Crump rightly warns readers to ignore talk of voter fraud; it’s a myth used to justify restrictive laws. Many readers will be justifiably infuriated by the author’s well-documented findings; hopefully, they will also choose to follow his 12 “personal action steps” to combat systemic racism.
There is much more to inequality and discrimination than we know, and Crump will open your eyes. Pay attention.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-237509-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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