A concise, powerful reflection on the 50th anniversary of the landmark case.
A sobering look at the centrality of whiteness to the nation’s founding and growth, both before and after Loving v. Virginia, the significant 1967 Supreme Court case.
Cashin (Law/Georgetown Univ.; Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America, 2014, etc.) walks readers through the history of interracial marriage in the United States—i.e., the long legal restrictions to it until the court case of Richard and Mildred Loving challenged enduring strictures of white supremacy in the wake of civil rights legislature in the 1960s. In striking down Virginia’s long ban on interracial marriage, Chief Justice Earl Warren specifically cited the ban as “designed to maintain White Supremacy,” enforced by strict racial separation. In the first part of the book, “Before Loving, 1607-1939,” Cashin looks at early examples of “amalgamation,” such as John Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas, rationalized as a “patriotic, even sacrificial act for the good of the [Jamestown] colony.” In addition, bonding between indentured servants and African slaves began to threaten the planter class, and new restrictions on interracial sex passed in Virginia—e.g., a mandate that children fathered by Englishmen with a black woman take the mother’s status—became the model code in other states. Slavery henceforth “helped propagate supremacist thinking,” and slave-owning Founding Fathers were fraught by mind-bending contradictions about “black inferiority” while engaging in sexual relationships with black slaves—e.g., Thomas Jefferson. After Cashin chronicles the Loving case, she delineates the vast cultural changes that have occurred over the last decades in rendering people—young people, mixed-race couples, progressives—more “dexterous” in their navigation of interracial trust and resisting arguments of white supremacy. Moreover, she notes how the Loving case inspired the fight to legalize same-sex marriage. Finally, Cashin looks beyond the current “state of toxic polarity” and speculates on what propels and nourishes interracial intimacy and inclusion.
A concise, powerful reflection on the 50th anniversary of the landmark case.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5827-5
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A brief but thoughtful essay outlining the terrible misapprehensions that led to escalating tensions between the US and the Soviet Union from the close of WW I to the end of the Korean conflict. Although anti-Bolshevik feelings ran high even at the time of the Russian Revolution, fear of the USSR didn't dominate American foreign policy until after WW II. Drawing on materials newly available from Soviet, East European, and Chinese archives, Leffler (winner of the 1993 Bancroft Prize for A Preponderance of Power) deftly traces the history of US-Soviet relations in prÇcis, from the Bolsheviks' rise to power through the uneasy truce in Korea. Begining as an ideological clash, the tension between the two nations only gradually became a power struggle as well. Indeed, it was only when the USSR became a player on the same global scale as the US (albeit considerably weaker in key strategic areas after the pounding it took during WW II) that the Soviets were perceived as an active threat abroad. On the other hand, seen through the distorting mirror of obsessive anti-Communism, domestic American radicals were regarded as a danger almost from the first murmur of the word ``Bolshevik'' in the popular press, and it was the specter of homegrown subversion rather than foreign invasion that haunted American policies for a long time. Leffler retells this often familiar material methodically, using the new documentation to reveal Stalin as hesitant and tentative in foreign policy, primarily concerned with erecting a security buffer around Russia rather than building an evil empire. The portrait that emerges is of two superpowers-in-formation engaged in a grim dialogue of the deaf, with terrible consequences for humanity. Although much of the ground covered is well trod, this is an admirably complete introduction to the history of the Cold War.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8090-8791-X
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This gritty story of a woman's desperate struggle to overcome severe chronic progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) is a sometimes grating reminder that the disabled are no better than the rest of us. By her own account, MacFarlane is no angel. After an economically privileged but emotionally deprived childhood, she entered adolescence angry and self-absorbed, a self-described ``fighter.'' Eventually she found her niche as a consumer advocate, uncovering scams on a TV news show in Orlando, Fla. Fairly happily married as well, she was on a roll. Then an intermittent weakness in her left leg was diagnosed as MS. MacFarlane shrugged off the news, convinced that exercise and sheer willpower would keep the disease at bay. But, after a period of remission, it returned in full force. After a fall that left her unable to move for hours until help arrived, MacFarlane finally succumbed to the use of a cane and a walker. She began to lose control of her bladder. She cut back on her workload, and her marriage collapsed under the strain. One treatment after another failed, and her stubborn hope of recovering began to fade. Then her ego suffered a shuddering blow: The former medical reporter and longtime consumer watchdog fell for a classic con. After reading about a doctor who claimed to have a cure for MS, MacFarlane convinced her mother to pay him $100,000 for ``treatments'' that left her worse off than before. She was soon confined to a wheelchair, counting on aides and a ``canine companion'' to do simple tasks like turning a light on or off. Now only her characteristic rage and blind determination seemed to keep her going. She filed suit against the doctor with the phony cure. And she composed this book—with the help of her twin, Patricia, whom she cavalierly dubs ``my Number 2 pencil.'' This scrappy tale is a testament to what a powerful will can- -and can't—do in the face of severe MS.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-02-578110-3
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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