An erudite collection to alarm conservatives and gratify progressives.
Penetrating essays on race and social stratification within policing and the law, in honor of pioneering scholar Derrick Bell (1930-2011).
At the beginning, the editors explain the anthology’s genesis: “Founded twenty-five years ago in 1995, the Derrick Bell Lectures were originally created as a birthday present from Janet Bell to her husband, and were designed to highlight not only Derrick Bell’s legacy as the father of the legal studies movement, but also to give that movement exposure in the academy and beyond.” Some speakers acknowledged Bell’s outsized personality; he’d repeatedly resigned from prestigious institutions to protest wan diversity efforts. Charles Ogletree notes, “the craziness is that he has such insight and foresight that it’s unimaginable,” before narrating the unequal legal landscape of Black America, even following Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark 1944 examination of the U.S. Charles Lawrence discusses backlash against affirmative action even as recruitment of Black students plummeted at prominent law schools, a topic of concern to Bell. Richard Delgado considers Bell’s research as a “toolkit” to address how each advance for racial justice “is cut back by narrow judicial interpretation, foot dragging, and delay.” Patricia Williams anticipates current discourse in a frank reflection on the echo of sexual abuse in persistent racial archetypes, denoting society’s refusal to acknowledge “the actual historical meaning of slavery as a system of human ownership.” Bell himself contributes “Racism as the Ultimate Deception,” in which he concludes, “the only defense against the racism phantasm as it operates in the real world is absolute honesty about our actions, our desires, our goals, or as close to that ever elusive dream as we can come.” Other prominent contributors include Lani Guinier, Paul Butler, Stephen Bright, and Michelle Alexander. Many powerfully acknowledge the persistence of structural racism and offer in-depth discussion regarding particular aspects of the law’s effect on marginalized communities, resonant in an era of White supremacy’s bid for mainstream acceptance.
An erudite collection to alarm conservatives and gratify progressives.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62097-620-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
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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