Belew's impressive research effectively supports her hypothesis. A good launching point for even further intensive study.
Belew (History/Univ. of Chicago) pieces together evidence from primary and secondary sources to argue that the racist, anti-government, heavily armed white power movement is not what it seems.
As the author shows, many government agencies, law enforcers, and individual citizens have fallen for the myth that the lethal domestic terrorism carried out in the name of white supremacists is the doing of angry lone wolves. On the contrary, she writes, the movement is well-organized and thus more dangerous than previously understood. Belew places these types of individuals under the umbrella of sometimes-violent white power, a group that includes neo-Nazis, radical tax resisters, self-proclaimed Klansmen, members of local militias, separatists who oppose racial integration, and believers in white theologies such as Christian Identity. Although violent white supremacists have never been absent in American history, the author pegs the contemporary movement as growing from the discontent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, a war that not so incidentally trained young men filled with racial hatred how to kill efficiently, not only with rifles, but also with powerful explosives. Before the war, white supremacists believed they were supporting governmental authority via vigilante justice, meant to marginalize undesirables. But the current white power movement members would prefer to overthrow governments, even at the cost of lives taken. A key concept in understanding the overall movement, writes Belew, is the concept of “leaderless resistance,” as exemplified by Timothy McVeigh’s insistence that he acted almost entirely alone in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing despite evidence that he considered himself a soldier in a coordinated cell-style underground. The near invisibility of the movement leaders has led directly to the proliferation of the public’s belief in the phenomenon of lone wolves, which helps protect the movement from a coordinated takedown.
Belew's impressive research effectively supports her hypothesis. A good launching point for even further intensive study.Pub Date: April 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-674-28607-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.
Straight talk to blacks and whites about the realities of racism.
In her feisty debut book, Oluo, essayist, blogger, and editor at large at the Establishment magazine, writes from the perspective of a black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman living in a “white supremacist country.” The daughter of a white single mother, brought up in largely white Seattle, she sees race as “one of the most defining forces” in her life. Throughout the book, Oluo responds to questions that she has often been asked, and others that she wishes were asked, about racism “in our workplace, our government, our homes, and ourselves.” “Is it really about race?” she is asked by whites who insist that class is a greater source of oppression. “Is police brutality really about race?” “What is cultural appropriation?” and “What is the model minority myth?” Her sharp, no-nonsense answers include talking points for both blacks and whites. She explains, for example, “when somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing.” She unpacks the complicated term “intersectionality”: the idea that social justice must consider “a myriad of identities—our gender, class, race, sexuality, and so much more—that inform our experiences in life.” She asks whites to realize that when people of color talk about systemic racism, “they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you” and are asking that they be heard. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Action includes pressing for reform in schools, unions, and local governments; boycotting businesses that exploit people of color; contributing money to social justice organizations; and, most of all, voting for candidates who make “diversity, inclusion and racial justice a priority.”
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58005-677-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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