A complex and nuanced academic book.
A sociologist examines how affluent white children think about race.
Hagerman (Sociology/Mississippi State Univ.) spent two years immersed with 30 privileged white Midwestern families to produce this timely ethnographic study. “Race shapes the lives of everyone in the United States,” writes the author, “whether people believe this to be true or not.” Her assertion is borne out in these interviews with 36 children (ages 10-13) and their parents, who “design” their kids’ social environments (neighborhoods, schools, etc.), shaping their interactions with and attitudes toward other races. She finds that these children “think about race and class inequality differently” depending on family experiences and daily interactions. Hagerman’s writing is scholarly and sometimes stodgy, but she provides revealing portraits: The Schultz parents think that “if ‘they’ could behave exactly like ‘us,’ we would welcome them”; Victoria and Ryan Chablis believe “current racial inequalities are the fault of people of color”; and the “well-meaning” Norbrooks, who keep their children in public school, “fail to acknowledge inequality and racism…[and] are unintentionally complicit in the reproduction of it.” Children, generally racially aware, often think for themselves: “Sometimes my mom is racist and tries to pretend like she isn’t,” says one 12-year-old girl. Yet while critical of racial inequality, the kids “believe they are better and more deserving than everyone else.” Hagerman is especially good on the “conundrum of privilege.” These families often want diversity but “choose to opt out of diverse spaces,” giving children the benefits of their wealth with all-white dance lessons and vacations. The ironies abound: “While some parents of black children are teaching their kids how to navigate racism to stay alive, some parents of white children are teaching their kids that race no longer matters in the United States.” The author concludes that white parents can fight racism “by rejecting the idea that their own child is more innocent and special and deserving,” but individual choices may not matter much “as long as structural inequality persists.”
A complex and nuanced academic book.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4798-0368-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
This exciting collective biography features ten important women in the historic struggle to win freedom and civil rights. Pinkney (Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra, 1998, etc.) tells the well-known stories of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks. Other women such as Biddy Mason and Dorothy Irene Height are in the history books but are less familiar. They span the 18th and 19th centuries, from Sojourner Truth, born into slavery circa 1797, to Shirley Chisholm, born in 1924 and living today. Each story contains essential demographic and biographical information written in an accessible, informal style, which provides a vivid picture of the women’s lives, their personalities, backgrounds, and the actions that made them memorable. Many of the women also had to fight against prejudice toward women in addition to their causes. Some did not live to see the results of their struggle, but successful or not, all were courageous leaders who paved the way for a more democratic and inclusive America. The introduction gives the reader a glimpse into Pinkney’s own life and her rationale for the selection of biographies. A bibliography for further reading lists what are probably her research sources, but are not identified as such and quotations within the chapters are not footnoted in any way. Another quibble is a small mistake in the biography of Dorothy Irene Height as to the two degrees she received in four years. Both were in educational psychology, but Pinkney lists the bachelor’s as in social work. However, these flaws do not compromise the value of the book. Alcorn’s (Langston Hughes, not reviewed, etc.) paintings, oil on canvas, are as magnificent as his figures and add much to this handsome volume. Vibrant colors, rhythmic lines, and collage-like compositions are allegorical in design and convey the essence of each woman and her work. A truly inspiring collection for personal as well as institutional libraries. (Biography. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-201005-X
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.
If you listen closely, you can hear the guns of August blasting a decade and more before WWI actually began.
Fromkin (History/Boston Univ.; The Way of the World, 1999, etc.) delivers a thesis that will be new to general readers (though not to specialists): WWI came about because of the very different, but conveniently intersecting, ambitions of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, and the signs were evident long before the fighting began. The Habsburgs wanted to crush Serbia, which they (perhaps rightly) perceived to be a potent threat to Austro-Hungarian designs in the Balkans; the Austrian chief of staff “first proposed preventive war against Serbia in 1906, and he did so in 1908–9, in 1912–13, in October 1913, and May 1914: between 1 January 1913 and 1 January 1914 he proposed a Serbian war twenty-five times.” Just so, the Kaiser wanted to crush Russia, which he regarded as Germany’s one real rival for European dominance; war against Serbia would provide a useful pretext, though it wasn’t essential. Indeed, writes Fromkin, when a Slavic nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, the rest of Europe practically yawned; even Austria did not retaliate immediately, despite Germany’s urging to get on with the game. “Austria did not play its part very well,” Fromkin writes, and did not even bother declaring war on Germany’s enemies until some time after the war had actually begun. Similarly, Germany neglected to declare war on Serbia, “the only country with which Austria was at war and which, according to Vienna, was the country that posed the threat to Austria’s existence.” Fromkin’s notion that a pan-German conspiracy caused WWI is credible, even if the events he describes sometimes seem more a comedy of errors than a model of efficient militarism.
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.Pub Date: March 25, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-41156-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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