An engaging analysis of the persistent vestiges of colonialism.
A South African psychologist surveys the lasting legacies of systemic racism in this debut book.
Borrowing from Albert Camus’ apothegm regarding the aftermath of Europe’s bubonic plague—the “rats had never left but went underground”—author Karani argues that, although we may live in a post-colonial world, colonialism’s legacy of systemic racism is still with us in “embedded mindsets.” Believing that “overcoming colonialism’s insidious impact requires freeing the oppressed mind,” the author offers readers a historical survey of colonialism and racist ideology from European enslavement of Africans through the killing of George Floyd and police response to Black Lives Matter protests. Interspersed throughout are more theoretical assessments that explore, for instance, anti-intellectualism in the United States and the toll of racism on Black mental health. Karani’s astute observations arise not only from his extensive research (the book includes 300-plus endnotes) and scholarly background as a clinical psychologist and professor, but also from personal experience. South Africa’s apartheid regime forcibly closed his father’s retail business in 1959, effectively condemning his family to poverty. Young Karani followed the leadership of Steve Biko and other revolutionaries who formed the Black Consciousness Movement. This “self-identification” as Black in a nation that divided colonized people into competing racial categories “empowered” Karani to pursue advanced academic degrees and convinced him that previously colonized people must dismantle the mental shackles and other ideological constructs left in colonization’s wake. Additionally, Karani’s later immigration to Canada, his current home, revealed an equally painful legacy of sustained discrimination toward Black immigrants and an even worse history of genocide against Indigenous citizens despite its comparative stability as a liberal democracy that nominally supports multiculturalism and human rights. This work is particularly adept at condensing longue durée history across multiple periods and continents, as well as complex colonial and post-colonial theories, into an accessible, well-written narrative accompanied by textbox vignettes and charts.
An engaging analysis of the persistent vestiges of colonialism.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2022
ISBN: 9781039139862
Page Count: 276
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2023
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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