A bracing and timely, if somewhat one-note, appraisal of racism in America.
A sociological work confronts the many facets of American racism.
“If you are Black, you are at risk of genocide.” So claims Rivers (Swallowed Tears, 2012) early in this book, which examines the nature of American white-on-black racism from the founding to the modern day. She is not exaggerating for effect. Rivers argues that the institutional treatment of blacks in America fits the definition of genocide as outlined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. According to Rivers, American racism has seven faces: Distortion, Omission, Stereotype, Inferiority, Superiority, Hatred, and Denial. The author explores each face in detail, from the distortion of science in order to dehumanize non-Europeans to the denial of white liberals who do not believe they are racist: “Whites are racist because racism is institutionalized in every facet of life in the United States. Most Whites are not intentionally racist, but the faces of racism, in many cases, have become unrecognizable.” Each chapter takes one of the faces as its subject, examining its origins and effects on people of color. Rivers provides an anecdote relating to the face, followed by ethical standards through which the face should be considered, proposed solutions for dealing with it, and questions and actions to inspire readers to address it in their own lives. For Superiority, for example, Rivers recommends the ethical standard of Balance; the proposed solution is a level economic playing field; a question readers should ask themselves is whether they know about various liberation movements across the globe; an action is to patronize black-owned banks and businesses. A sexagenarian, Rivers brings a lifetime of activism and educational experience to the work, from participating in the desegregation of East Baton Rouge’s public schools in the 1960s to establishing an Afrocentric charter school in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1990s. Her frequent use of quotes and the extensive bibliographies attached to every chapter reveal her deep familiarity with literature and research on the effects of American racism. Her uncompromising posture and willingness to call out racism at every level are invigorating, and it feels particularly urgent now in an era of increasingly visible instances of white supremacy. Even so, there is an emphasis on rhetoric over substance that keeps the book (which features contributions from debut author Angela Hawkins-Rivers) from becoming as persuasive as it wants to be. There are many instances of emphatic capitalization and long, unlinked URLs that clutter the pages. Despite Rivers’ frequent citation of charts and studies, her language veers closer to the emotional than the scientific: “European doctrines of White supremacy are force fed into the brains of our babies.” Appendix B is simply an ad for Rivers’ academic consulting group, which further undermines the altruistic purpose of the book.
A bracing and timely, if somewhat one-note, appraisal of racism in America.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5398-0683-7
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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