A powerful, well-researched indictment of racist media in the United States.
A scholar explores the role of the media in perpetuating systemic racism in this nonfiction book.
“Overly employed culturally racist stereotypes of Blackness,” Gammage writes in the book’s introduction, erroneously place "the burden of health and life disparities” on Black women. Reality television, she argues, with ample examples at her disposal, too often presents Black women as violent and threatening and feeds into narratives popular among white audiences that Black women “are chronically unhealthy and in need of social control.” This racist imagery, she convincingly notes, draws on a long history of the media’s racism, the origins of which can be traced back 500 years to the enslavement of Africans in the Americas. Whether it’s newspapers and print advertisements of the colonial era or the television and social media of today, “racially abusive media” has long shaped and reflected institutionalized systems of racial subjugation. As evidenced by the nearly 20-page bibliography, not only does Gammage have a firm command of the relevant scholarly literature on media studies—the topic of her first book, Representations of Black Women in the Media: The Damnation of Black Womanhood(2015)—but also on the history of Black health care. From enslavers who believed Black women faked illness to avoid work to television images of “crack mamas,” racist stereotypes of Black women in the media have played a key role in denying equitable access to medical care. While much of the book surveys the sordid arena of racist imagery, the final chapter examines the ways Black women in contemporary society have co-opted social media as a tool for empowerment “that celebrates Black pride, beauty, resistance, and resilience.” A professor and chair of Africana studies at California State University Northridge, Gammage expertly blends her erudite analysis with an engaging writing style that avoids academic jargon. This emphasis on accessibility is complemented by an ample assortment of tables, graphs, charts, and other visual aids that provide an abundance of data that supports her arguments regarding racism in the media and health disparities among Black women.
A powerful, well-researched indictment of racist media in the United States.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781942774075
Page Count: 216
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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