A book that merits a place on ethnic studies—and American history—curricula.
A survey of ethnic relations in America that links past and present injustices.
“To understand the current efforts to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters,” writes Cose, “you have to understand what happened at the end of Reconstruction.” The end of Reconstruction returned White conservative Southerners to power and introduced an era of Jim Crow laws that seem all too current today. At stake, notes the author, is the vision of an American nation made up of equals as opposed to one in which only some Americans are entitled to the benefits of citizenship, including voting rights. Cose begins at Jamestown and the introduction of African slavery to the American Colonies, showing how the enslavement of Blacks and the removal of Native Americans from their homelands were conjoined efforts to secure White supremacy. Every state was once complicit, given the requirements of such laws as the Fugitive Slave Act, which Cose examines through the lens of the real-life case that inspired Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved—a book, he reminds us, that figured in a campaign ad for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as one to be banned in public schools. In many cases, Blacks enslaved before the Civil War became enslaved in practice, if not in name, afterward even as immigration officials tried to sort out other racial classifications. One such official, reported the Washington Post, held that “Syrians and their racial kindred…were yellow, not white, and that they were barred therefore from naturalization.” In the face of civil rights advances after World War II, racism is growing today through social media and dog whistlers such as Donald Trump, whom Cose links to a eugenicist from the previous century who complained that Latin American countries “furnish very undesirable immigrants.” The author ends with a well-reasoned defense for teaching this history against those who “doggedly refuse to acknowledge how our past affects our present.”
A book that merits a place on ethnic studies—and American history—curricula.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-307244-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.
A Black man speaks hard truths to White men about their failure to dismantle systemic racism.
A “child of the Black bourgeoisie,” journalist Ross first learned “the shadow history of Black revolutionary struggle” in college. He accepted that he “directly benefited from the struggle that generations of Black folks had died in the name of, yet I wasn’t doing anything to help those who hadn’t benefited.” The author calls the White men of his generation, Gen X, to also recognize their complicity and miseducation. “We were fed cherry-picked narratives that confirmed the worthlessness of Black life,” he writes, “The euphemistic ‘culture of poverty,’ not systemic oppression, was to blame for the conditions in which so many Black people lived.” The story that White people have been told about Black people is “missing a major chapter,” and Ross thoroughly elucidates that chapter with a sweeping deep dive into decades of American social history and politics that is at once personal, compelling, and damning. Through a series of well-crafted personal letters, the author advises White men to check their motivations and “interrogate the allegedly self-evident, ‘commonsense’ values and beliefs” that perpetuate inequality and allow them to remain blissfully unaware of the insidiousness of racism and the ways they benefit from it. Ross condemns the “pathological unwillingness to connect the past with the present” and boldly avoids the comfortable “both sides” rhetoric that makes anti-racism work more palatable to White people. “It is on you,” he writes, “to challenge the color-blind narratives your parents peddle.” The letters are consistently compelling, covering wide ground that includes the broken criminal justice system, gentrification, and the problem with framing equity work as “charity.” Finally, Ross offers practical guidance and solutions for White men to employ at work, in their communities, and within themselves. Pair this one with Emmanuel Acho’s Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man.
A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-27683-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.
Remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Smith (Rethinking America, 1995, etc.).
“Over the past three decades,” writes the author, “we have become Two Americas.” We have arrived at a new Gilded Age, where “gross inequality of income and wealth” have become endemic. Such inequality is not simply the result of “impersonal and irresistible market forces,” but of quite deliberate corporate strategies and the public policies that enabled them. Smith sets out on a mission to trace the history of these strategies and policies, which transformed America from a roughly fair society to its current status as a plutocracy. He leaves few stones unturned. CEO culture has moved since the 1970s from a concern for the general well-being of society, including employees, to the single-minded pursuit of personal enrichment and short-term increases in stock prices. During much of the ’70s, CEO pay was roughly 40 times a worker’s pay; today that number is 367. Whether it be through outsourcing and factory closings, corporate reneging on once-promised contributions to employee health and retirement funds, the deregulation of Wall Street and the financial markets, a tax code which favors overwhelmingly the interests of corporate heads and the superrich—all of which Smith examines in fascinating detail—the American middle class has been left floundering. For its part, government has simply become an enabler and partner of the rich, as the rich have turned wealth into political influence and rigid conservative opposition has created the politics of gridlock. What, then, is to be done? Here, Smith’s brilliant analyses turn tepid, as he advocates for “a peaceful political revolution at the grassroots” to realign the priorities of government and the economy but offers only the vaguest of clues as to how this might occur.
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6966-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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