An entertaining and informative read that will serve as a jumping-off point for countless discussions about racism.
A relatable conversation about race that stands out from many other books on the always-relevant topic.
By now, most readers are familiar with racial stereotypes such as "black don't crack" or "white men can't jump.” However, few have bothered to examine their origins or consider them critically. Here, Graves Jr., a professor of biology, and Goodman, a professor of biological anthropology, tackle a wide variety of racial issues using science and statistics, with just enough emotion to keep readers engaged. Throughout, the authors debunk numerous accepted myths, such as biology being related to race. Instead, the authors focus on the role that genetic variation plays in determining specific characteristics, from eye color to one’s predisposition to specific diseases. Defining raceas "a social classification based on assumptions about ancestry and appearance,” Graves and Goodman find archaic religion and erroneous science as early culprits that paved the way for racist stereotypes and systems to exist, many of which continue to operate today. Using questions and answers and the life and social sciences to back their conclusions, the authors are unafraid to dig into a host of thorny issues (“Are ‘Jews’ a race? What about people of Italian and Irish descent?”), providing well-documented evidence to bolster their arguments. Their approach is a pleasing mix of broad and granular—e.g., “Why is it that you can almost always tell a Nigerian from a Norwegian, yet a Nigerian and a Norwegian do not genetically differ that much?” The authors also interrogate the murky concept of intelligence and how medical and judicial assumptions nurture environments in which racism assists in the degradation of communities of color. Similarly, they break down White supremacy, calling it "our time's big lie." Each chapter concludes with a summary about the subjects at hand, and the authors also include a call to action to tackle personal and communal racism head-on.
An entertaining and informative read that will serve as a jumping-off point for countless discussions about racism.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-231-20066-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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