A well-researched, compelling case for the necessity of addressing systemic racism.
An expert explores the legacy of systemic racism in America.
Stewart opens with a traumatic childhood story of witnessing his father fall from a balcony in an alcohol-fueled stupor. Upon later reflection, the author, who is Black, realized that his father’s anger and substance abuse stemmed not from fundamental flaws in his character but were, instead, “a reflection of the social outcomes resulting from the constraints, conditions, and inequities” imposed on Black and other marginalized people, including poor white men. During service in the military, his father had been passed over for a promotion by a white man whom he had trained, and when he questioned the decision, he was called a racial epithet by his commanding officer. Interactions such as these, the book argues, contribute to a “racism of a thousand cuts” that permeates daily life for Black people historically and into the present. Drawing upon a wealth of data, the book makes a convincing argument for the ways that “flawed systems” (such as the endurance of race-based economic injustice) and “modes of thinking” (such as the model minority myth) contribute to the perpetuation of racial bias in American life. Stewart, a former deputy director within President Barack Obama’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Personnel Management, continues to facilitate diversity and inclusion trainings in government agencies and universities across the country and brings that deep experience to bear here. The book, via an abundance of statistical and qualitative data presented with photographs, charts, and other visual aids, efficiently outlines America’s racist history, taking on controversial thinkers, like Charles Murray, who espouses white supremacist views. Stewart offers an accessible, proactive approach to understanding and addressing racism in order to “create a truly equitable and just society.” Though academic studies are referenced throughout, scholarly readers may balk at the lack of formal citations.
A well-researched, compelling case for the necessity of addressing systemic racism.Pub Date: May 2, 2024
ISBN: 19.95
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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