In a digressive but illuminating book that is an ambitious blend of reportage, memoir, and social commentary, Njeri seeks a redemptive reconfiguration of America's racial self-concept. Brooklyn-born and Caribbean-descended, Los Angeles Times reporter Njeri (Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone, 1990) explores ``conflict among people of color in a White-dominated nation'' by examining a 1991 Los Angeles racially charged killing, which was overshadowed in national headlines by Rodney King's videotaped beating and its aftermath. For the shooting death of a 15-year-old African-American named Latasha Harlins, a 49-year-old Korean immigrant merchant and matriarch, Soon Ja Du, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but received probation instead of a prison sentence. Njeri makes the argument that this case offers a more penetrating look into the complex tensions beneath Los Angeles's violent 1992 eruption than the Rodney King incident. She writes of the principal and supporting players in this kaleidoscopic drama with empathy, anger, and a desperately funny wit. At the end of this process, Njeri values her own heritage as a New World Black: ``Black, by definition in the New World, is essentially multiracial,'' she points out, like the denied character and culture of the US itself. But Njeri refuses to exoticize the content of her identity, nor does she idealize the content of the human character. Still, she feels free to take the paradoxical and heretical stand that ``the path out of the racial prison of our mutual creation lies . . . in a rejection of all racial categories.'' She insists that ``the last plantation remains the mind.'' Njeri's eclectic perspective is unsettling. But regardless of where individual Americans place themselves on the spectrum of race, culture, identity, and politics, following this writer through the discomfort her views may prompt offers a new path to seeing this country clearly and its increasingly diverse citizens as a vibrant, human whole. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-77191-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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