WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

A Black businessman confronts systemic racism and corruption in Los Angeles.

In the early 1980s, Galloway joined a group, comprised mostly of minority businessmen, in establishing a cable television franchise that sought to bring the nascent utility to racially diverse neighborhoods in South-Central Los Angeles. Their request to access poles and lines, however, was denied by the city. Though Galloway’s group would ultimately win their case in a landmark First Amendment decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, it was a hollow, and late, victory. In telling the story of how systemic racism remains entrenched even in “progressive” cities, the book also highlights what Galloway sees as uncomfortable truths about the U.S. political system and racial coalitions. He directs his most vocal ire against the city’s Democratic machine and Black political establishment, including civil rights groups like the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Far too many Black leaders and organizations, he laments, were “willing to turn a blind eye” to corruption that benefited White business interests and denied Black entrepreneurs a stake in a multibillion-dollar industry during its formative decade. To make matters worse, cable television—run and operated almost exclusively by White-owned corporations—became one of the largest purveyors of “bizarre and aberrant” Black caricatures in popular shows like Cops and the Jerry Springer Show. These anti-Black images provided a cultural milieu in the 1990s that led to the creation of Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which further targeted Black communities. While convincing in its critique of Democrats, the author largely ignores Republican stakeholders who held significant interests in both cable utilities and media productions. Likewise, the book, while consistently interesting, too often drifts into screeds against the Democratic Party, with many of the same lines of argument repeated ad nauseum chapter by chapter, which distracts from, rather than complements, the book’s important story.

A flawed but valuable case study of how systemic racism transcends political parties in America.