Refreshing, illuminating contributions sure to spark lively and hopefully constructive discussion and debate.
A chorus of frank opinions personalize race and racism “across black America.”
Since the project began in 2012, the year Trayvon Martin was killed, acclaimed journalist Gordon has been assembling virtual conversations with black influencers on the condition of—and the issues facing—the nation’s black population. In each Q&A, the respondent, reflective of their unique communities, reacts to and answers queries about such topics as intracommunity violence, educational advancement, and how proactive attitudes and active engagement can bring about positive societal changes. The state of progress in black America is well articulated through the sentiments of activists and educators like Ericka Huggins, who insists the climate could shift if the “institutions and structures” changed in a nonmonolithic way, including within economic and political arenas. In one panel, which includes notable political figures and social activists like Stacey Abrams and Michael Steele, the contributors discuss the downslide of black equality amid a “drastically changed political landscape” of the Trump era and compare current conditions with that of the Obama administration, which had its own mixture of accomplishments and shortcomings. The narrative also looks at black leadership and how its efficacy can be evaluated and encouraged through outlets like social media and community outreach. Gordon wisely includes a diverse array of panelists within each discussion. These include comedians, TV producers, ministers, rappers, and academics as well as Harry Belafonte and 15-term congresswoman Maxine Waters. Their informed discussions offer both invaluable perspectives and solid motivation to counter the waves of racial injustice. Closing each chapter is a section of pertinent questions meant to inspire dialogue and create change on any level. Though the conversations are vibrant and empowering, the collective impression from the participants distressingly points to the fact that “the playing field for most Africans has not changed.” Other notable contributors include Jemele Hill, DeRay Mckesson, Michael Eric Dyson, Van Jones, Eric Holder, and Iyanla Vanzant.
Refreshing, illuminating contributions sure to spark lively and hopefully constructive discussion and debate.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-53286-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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