An outspoken political analyst offers concrete suggestions to revive democracy, heal culture wars, and prevent a Trump victory in 2020.
CNN political contributor Jones (Rebuild the Dream, 2012, etc.), founder of the social justice organization the Dream Corps, laments the dissension and polarization blighting politics today. Both Democrats and Republicans, he asserts, “have been letting down the American people for a long time,” even before “an erratic egomaniac” came to power. “Since both parties are responsible,” he writes, “both parties need to look within.” Searching for a way forward, Jones aims “to reach out and build some bridges” between liberals like himself and conservatives, whose views he respects. Part manifesto, part manual for activism, the book is enlivened by case histories and personal anecdotes that serve as support for the author’s assertions. He believes that the progressive movement, having lost connection to mainstream Americans, “needs to reignite the fight for cross-racial unity among working people.” Trump’s rhetoric fomented bigotry, causing what Jones terms a “whitelash” against changing demographics and particularly against a black president. But although he recognizes racism within Trump’s coalition, Jones does not believe that alone led to his election. He faults Democrats, as well, for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, calling for “a pro-democracy movement that can inspire” and not merely critique. The author proposes common projects that may bring opposing sides together: fixing the justice system, ending the opioid addiction crisis, opening up the technology sector to all, and transitioning to a greener economy. In two appendices, Jones offers suggestions of books and videos that can serve as bridge-building resources and a long list of political organizations to help people get involved in change. Although most are liberal and progressive—e.g., Black Lives Matter, Center for Community Change, Planned Parenthood—Jones does include conservative groups, such as the American Enterprise Institute and Compilation: Conservative and Libertarian News Sources. “I am interested in the moral center, not the political center,” he writes.
Pragmatic, optimistic proposals for an informed and active electorate. Will anyone listen?Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18002-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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BOOK REVIEW
Custer died for your sins. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism.
Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward; Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. For one thing, while “Indian” isn’t bad, since “[i]ndigenous individuals and peoples in North America on the whole do not consider ‘Indian’ a slur,” “American” is due to the fact that it’s “blatantly imperialistic.” Just so, indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a “colonialist settler-state” (the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today) and then “displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated”—after, that is, having been forced to live in “concentration camps.” Were he around today, Vine Deloria Jr., the always-indignant champion of bias-puncturing in defense of native history, would disavow such tidily packaged, ready-made, reflexive language. As it is, the readers who are likely to come to this book—undergraduates, mostly, in survey courses—probably won’t question Dunbar-Ortiz’s inaccurate assertion that the military phrase “in country” derives from the military phrase “Indian country” or her insistence that all Spanish people in the New World were “gold-obsessed.” Furthermore, most readers won’t likely know that some Ancestral Pueblo (for whom Dunbar-Ortiz uses the long-abandoned term “Anasazi”) sites show evidence of cannibalism and torture, which in turn points to the inconvenient fact that North America wasn’t entirely an Eden before the arrival of Europe.
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0040-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Categories: FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not an easy read but an essential one.
21
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Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke.
In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it—e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.
Not an easy read but an essential one.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50928-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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