A MORE PERFECT REUNION

An impassioned analysis of America’s failure at racial integration as a failure of democracy.

Decades after the many successes of the civil rights movement, why hasn’t America dismantled racism? According to Baker, a novelist who has taught at a variety of universities, it’s because we’ve never employed the only real solution to the problem: integration. The author argues that integration is “the most radical, transformative idea in US politics,” once properly understood, and he endeavors successfully to deliver that understanding. This is not an easy task considering that many Americans are invested in the systems that “perpetuate racism,” but Baker provides plenty of illuminating examples to bolster his argument: A company hires diversity consultants but won’t diversify its C-suite. We want to end the national crisis of school desegregation, but we shrink from the idea of busing. Baker defines integration as full rights of self-determination and participation for all black Americans and other groups historically excluded by race, “in every facet of national life.” A gifted storyteller, the author writes with the urgency of what’s at stake—i.e., the very survival of our democracy. Denying black people rights has been the “flaw in the design of America we have been struggling to resist” for 400 years, and Baker dissects critical junctures in the nation’s history when integration could have ameliorated racism, from the Continental Congress through the election of the first black president. He offers incisive analysis on a variety of topics, including politics, sports, gentrification, and pop culture, and he examines such pivotal figures as Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass, the Black Panthers, Public Enemy, and Colin Kaepernick. Scholarly yet accessible, this book is a wake-up call for a country that would rather celebrate how far we’ve come than focus on how far we still have to go to eradicate racism.

Required reading for any American serious about dismantling systemic racism.