Enlightening & Entertaining: Trevor Noah

Host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah is a South African comedian, writer, producer and entertainer who has achieved well-deserved international success. Wickedly funny, he is an extraordinary person with an extraordinary personal story. Born under apartheid to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, Noah was, literally, Born a Crime. That is the name of the memoir of his childhood and a powerful reminder of the South African laws at the time, which prohibited people of different races from having children. Noah’s book is accessible, funny in just the way you would think a talented comedian might write, and also a chilling account how corrosively evil life in apartheid might be. Like a dark satire that brings laughter and discomfort, Born a Crime is not humorous at all when you consider its larger themes.

The hero of Noah’s childhood is his mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo. Born to a very large family in dire poverty, she escaped to craft a new life and to make sure that her son would not suffer the “tax of Blackness.” She navigated legal and state oppression to find work and opportunities. She chose to have a child, knowing that she could never be see n in public as a couple with the boy’s father. Sustaining her throughout was religion. She’s a person of deep and pervasive faith. Noah’s recounts of the various churches and his mom’s faith is humorous, touching and understandably overwhelming. What the woman was able to accomplish is a testament to her faith and strength. Noah gets this and is very much aware of his great debt to her.

Amid the friendships, the trouble-making, the attempts at girlfriends, the trips to church and to see his father, surreptitiously, all of which are told in good humor, Noah guides us through the many traps, barriers and challenges of a childhood in South African apartheid. He shows us how people followed and broke rules, and how the system worked its way into all aspects of life. It is important to remember that this is not ancient history. Noah was born in 1984. Nelson Mandela did not get out of prison until 1990. Multi-racial voting in South Africa did not happen until 1994. So many suffered and died because of apartheid and its legacy. Noah, though, is not interested in writing a public history. That said, he is very smart and he draws clear lines of connection and consequence for us as he tells stories and describes people and situations. Awful things often cause long-lasting harm. Many in Noah’s orbit suffered, but this is not a book about suffering. It’s about an amazing childhood filled with interesting people.

Noah describes his difficulty fitting in as a child, how is otherness led him to become more of a chameleon. This makes sense, particularly with the sharp divisions in his home country. That otherness, though, has also given Noah a powerful skill to see what many might miss or overlook. After I read the book I learned that it is being made into a film. It is easy to see why. There is much in the story that is recognizable and familiar to an American audience. And yet, there is also much that is different – a different country, different languages and histories – that can give us a different perspective on ourselves. Noah’s skill at doing this, with great humor, is a special gift.

David Potash

July 19, 2021 Reviews

Puerto Rican Crisis, Heroism, and Food

Hurricane Maria caused tremendous destruction in Puerto Rica in 2017, killing thousands and wiping out much of the island’s infrastructure. It was a disaster in the true sense of the term. A few days after the storm subsided, Jose Andres, an internationally renowned chef who had a restaurant in Puerto Rico (among several others), decided that he was going to make an effort to help. He recounts his efforts, filled with successes, failures and challenges, in We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time. It’s a cheering, frustrating, and interesting read – and not for the reasons that I expected. I did not know what a relief efforts was like for the key volunteer organizations. While I imagined confusion and difficulties, Andres’s book offers a more complete level of understanding – and highlights the consequences of poor leadership. The people of Puerto Rico were not adequately supported after Maria.

Andres is a chef, writer, television personality, and humanitarian – a man of influence and ability. In 2010 following a crisis in Haiti, he created a non-profit, World Central Kitchen (WCK), to feed people after disasters. He’s received numerous awards and by every standard, is wildly successful. As you might imagine from such a profile, he is also comfortable expressing himself. He is not a scholar; he is focused on outcomes. We Fed an Island captures all of this: incredible generosity, a tremendous ability to get things done, great smarts and a perspective that is about goal setting and achievement. It is a first-person account through and through. If you are looking for a more comprehensive study of the disaster, this is not the study. And while this book would have been stronger with more structure and data, that was not the aim. I have nothing but respect for Andres and gratitude for his work and the book. Proceeds from the book go to WCK, too.

For people to survive and rebuild after a hurricane, many things have to happen, from health care to water to power to shelter. Andres arrived and focused on one of the most basic needs: getting people enough food to get by. He drew on his experience with WCK and other relief efforts, as well as deep connections to many on the island, from former co-workers to elected officials to media personalities. Andres’ team quickly established kitchens and then, fighting a host of indifferent or ineffective bureaucracies along the way, greatly expanded its reach. It took time, but eventually other organizations stepped up as well. All though Andres’ was not the only group providing food, it is not far off from asserting that they truly did “feed an island”

The book is peppered with wisdom about relief efforts, problem solving of all shapes and sizes, and how restaurants work. “When you cook at scale, you become expert at processes” Andres tells us – and much of the book is all about process thinking. It’s also about how knowing your customer and community, which can make all the difference. Reading about the many different kinds of sancocho Andres’ team prepared was cheering and also made me hungry. Good Puerto Rican food is very, very good and a good sancocho is fantastic. Andres cares a great deal about the food, its impact, and even explains how customers can become volunteers. The big picture realization is the many ways that thoughtful and caring relief work can bind a community.

Much of the book, though, is about the challenges. Above and beyond the difficulties that Puerto Ricans faced, Andres and his team faced many, most visible of whom was President Trump and other elected and appointed officials. Andres does not hold back his criticisms. Particularly galling, but not surprising, are the recurring gaps between what was happening and what was reported. There was a massive lack of coordinated leadership in the relief work, regardless of what was reported.

Through a different lens, We Fed an Island is a call for reform. It is essential. We need to rethink our disaster relief organization and processes. Without that, the next crisis could be worse. Andres is worthy of our thanks – for his work, his food, and his willingness to share.

David Potash

June 17, 2021 American Culture Today

Chicago’s Lincoln Park – A Study of Changing Neighborhood

Cycling through Chicago neighborhoods, walking in this fascinating city, I often wonder about its development. Who built what and why? How did we end up with our city of neighborhoods, our parks, our nodes of this and that? The architecture, the public and private spaces of this city, are extraordinarily interesting. Add to that the city’s rich, vibrant and often troubling history and even more questions arise. Why are we so segregated? Why are some parts of the city so wealthy and others so much less so? It doesn’t seem to have much to do with geography. There’s no elevated part of the city that overlooks the rest. Chicago is a flat metropolis and public transportation, while important, does not offer a guarantee of an improved infrastructure or a healthier neighborhood.

Are there two inexorable neighborhood trends in the city: gentrification with exclusion or under investment with poverty?

Recently I read a short volume that helps to answer these questions, at least in one Chicago neighborhood. Daniel Kay Hertz’s The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago is an accessible study that could be considered local history. Read it carefully, though, and it offers more. It is a case study, a window into how politics, racism, and economics intertwine in the creation of our built environment. Hertz is a Chicago native who knows his way around the city’s economy and politics. He’s a reliable guide in this book, which unpacks and questions the dynamics of gentrification. It is well-written, thoughtfully considered and chock full of smart analysis. My greatest complaint is that it is light on maps. They would have given the book even more punch.

Lincoln Park is a community on the north side of Chicago, bordering Lake Michigan. In the years after World War II, it was a dynamic neighborhood filled with a diversity of backgrounds, incomes, races and economic activity. Though certainly not edenic and clearly suffering from the long-term effects of the Great Depression, Lincoln Park had much going for it. It appealed to artists and other creative types after the war. Knowingly or not, deep changes were coming. It is from these first influx of post-war residents that Hertz starts his story. He follows them, and the shifts in the neighborhood, for the coming decades. There’s increased movement by white middle class people, a push for urban renewal and slum-clearance, which disrupts neighborhoods, and the organization of community groups who preach inclusivity while promoting practices that drive less affluent community members out. All of this happens in phases, usually connected to broader economic trends. By the 1960s, the neighborhood has greatly stressed, particularly as a vibrant and politically active Puerto Rican community was displaced. Those changes led to violence and riots.

Architecturally, multiple-family dwellings are replaced by single family homes. This brings in new types of families and excludes those with lesser means. The population dips as wealth ticks up. Federal dollars speed up the rate of transformation. A few large developments shape the community further, each of which involve “clearance”, or removing buildings of less property value, under the flag of “improving the community.” These are highly contested politically charged affairs. Hertz stresses, though, that the underlying transformation is steady and ongoing, with or without the big projects proceeding. From 1945 to 1970, the span of this book, Lincoln Park is the site of significant and long-lasting change. It has continued, too, as have changes and gentrification in many other parts of the city.

Hertz does a good job presenting different perspectives from the neighborhood. He’s very interested in giving voice to those that were not able to exercise much political power. Gentrification can cause real pain and harm. It can also bring benefits to an under-resourced area. Ultimately, Hertz is less concerned about policy and more in telling a story of the built environment. Hertz pays close attention to who did what and why during those years. It begs the question of economic gain and problematizes the idea of a “nice” neighborhood. That is a loaded issue, particularly when one considers who is determining it and why. There is much more to community than property values. Or large single-family houses. Reading his book and walking Lincoln Park, it is much easier to understand the neighborhood and, importantly, to think about how other neighborhoods have and are changing. It calls into question what people think of as community and why. That is a very important question, one we need to continue to address if we are to have a healthy city.

David Potash

June 12, 2021 Chicago, Reviews

The Defender: A Powerful Voice for Black Americans

The story of Chicago’s The Defender, perhaps America’s preeminent Black newspaper of the 20th century, is the history of race and racism in the city and the nation. It’s been an extraordinarily important publication, an essential voice for Black community and a tireless advocate for racial justice and agency, for over a century. Ethan Michaeli’s hefty book, The Defender: How The Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, is a sprawling account of the newspaper, strong on personalities and affection. It is tome at 633 pages, yet is still leaves at least this reader with questions. More than a history of a business, Micheali’s volume shines a provocative light on the intersection of The Defender, those that made it, the stories that it told, and the communities in which it was read.

The Defender was the brain child of Robert Abbott, a fascinating Black entrepreneur from Georgia who visited Chicago’s 1893 World Colombian Exposition as a young man. Among his many skills, he was a talented singer and a member of the Hampton Quartet. Abbott, impressed with the city’s Black professionals and keen on the opportunities he saw in the growing metropolis, decided to move to Chicago and become a lawyer. Plans changed as Abbott’s law career did not take off as expected. Knowing a bit about printing from a relative, Abbott judged that the city’s growing Black community needed a newspaper. Borrowing money and leaning on friends and acquaintances, he started The Defender in 1905 with an initial print run of 300. His offices were in his landlady’s dining room. The paper, with a mission as a defender of Abbott’s race, was truly a visionary enterprise. From those small steps, Abbott’s drive, brilliance and amazing work built the organization and a paper with international impact.

Initially read on the South Side of Chicago, The Defender was passed from reader to reader. Importantly, the newspaper was picked up by Pullman porters, many of whom lived or traveled through Chicago, increasing its scope. Over time, Abbott attracted a cadre outstanding journalists and writers, like Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes. The paper was tireless in its attention to racism, opportunity and justice. It was relentless in its descriptions and criticisms of lynchings and other injustices, especially in the South. The paper investigated and reported factually racist atrocities and lynchings, in direct contrast to what white publications printed. Abbott and members of the papers were harassed and threatened, but they pressed on, unfazed. The paper’s work accelerated the political and cultural organizations of within Black Chicago, and was an extraordinarily important factor in the Great Migration. Abbott and the paper initiated the Bud Billiken parade in 1929, a celebration that has grown to being the nation’s largest African-American parade. It is a wonderful August event, and Michaeli cleverly draws the reader into his work by opening with a young Barack Obama at the event.

John H. Sengstacke, Abbott’s nephew, took over the paper in 1940 followings Abbott’s death. The Defender played a key role in politics and race issues at the city, state and national level through World War II, pushing hard for civil rights and the integration of the military. Facing strong competition from other Black newspaper by this time, Defender journalists and editors were prominent and active. That key scope extended through the 1950s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and beyond. Political and cultural leaders needed the newspaper’s attention, especially as more Blacks voted and acquired wealth and influence. It is difficult to overstate the key role that The Defender served in keeping Black communities informed and engaged.

Michaeli’s book describes all of this very well. He’s a talented writer with a good eye for detail. Consistently using the paper as a primary source, he has rich material to engage the reader. And as The Defender was active across the continent for decades, there’s more than enough history to reference and recount. Michaeli’s attention to the violence and prejudice that The Defender covered very strong. He appreciates, as did the newspaper’s staff and readership, the harsh realities of Black Americans. He underscores, too, that racial justice was only achieved through suffering and struggle. The book offers a powerful reminder of just how constant racial bigotry and violence were a prominent throughout the twentieth century.

On the other hand, the lengthy book could have been more effective with greater attention to context and history. Michaeli does reference some of the important historical scholarship that helps to explain the big picture, but I did not come away with the sense that he was comfortable crafting his history in that realm. I understand that this would have changed the book. Nonetheless, for those not familiar with twentieth century American history, or the history of Chicago, The Defender moves quickly and makes assumptions. Some of this is simply how the author approached the material. Michaeli, a white University of Chicago English major, took a job as a copy editor at the Defender a year after graduation in 1991. He stayed at the paper for five years, working his way up to journalist, and learning about Chicago, racism, and American history along the way. Five hundred pages into the book – its structure is chronological – Michaeli introduces himself, writes about his ignorance of race and history, and explains his journey to understanding through his job and the work of the newspaper. As he notes, the experience “filled in so many blanks in American history left by the textbooks of my youth and showed me how things really work.”

At the start of the 1900s, America had more than 20,000 newspapers. Many of these publications represented communities ignored by mainstream presses. Their function was much more than reporting the news. These newspapers were critical in the development of group identity and political mobilization, particularly as the country wrestled with issues of suffrage, political participation, and the meaning of being an American. Now read mostly by graduate students, the vast majority of these papers have long been assigned to archives, their readership and influence waning over the decades. The Defender had a much greater impact than most and has lasted longer than most. It still exists online and still has an important voice. Michaeli’s book goes far in telling that story.

David Potash

April 7, 2021 Chicago, Reviews

Extraordinary Aviator, Extraordinary Life

Fate is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir is considered by many (count playwright David Mamet on the list) as one of the best books ever written about aviation. Penned by Ernest K. Gann and published in 1964, it remains in print today. It’s an extraordinarily engrossing read. And as wonderful a book as it is, learning about Gann is just as exciting. First, though, a bit about this moving book.

Fate is the Hunter is an interconnected series of stories, reflections and observations by Gann about his life as a pilot. He started flying airplanes professionally in the years before World War II, learning his skills in a nascent industry, filled with larger than life characters and ever present danger. He shares virtually nothing of his life not as a pilot. The memoir is devoid of romance, family and pursuits outside of aviation. But he writes so well, he tells such good stories, that it is only after finishing that you might wonder why he didn’t tell us more. On the page, Gann is a man obsessed, focused and driven, by flight. And what a rich series of experiences he has, from those early days to his time in the war to life as a pilot in peacetime. He flew in the United States, South America, Europe and Asia – literally all over the world. He battle with weather, with technology, with all manner of challenges, and he considers himself extremely fortunate to have survived. The book’s title tells all – these early pilots tempted fate. Sections of the memoir were turned into a film with the same name.

Gann the person is worthy of biography on his own. Born in Nebraska in 1910, Gann was brilliant, curious and restless. His parents had money and tried to give him discipline by sending him to a military high school. It’s hard to see that it had a significant effect; Gann consistently pushed himself and the envelope, never really settling down. After graduation, he did a couple of years at Yale, but left to try his hand on Broadway, working both behind the scenes and doing some acting. Shuttling between New York and Chicago, Gann married and became a projectionist at Radio City Music Hall – as well as a cartoonist and filmmaker. The couple moved to upstate New York – Rockland County, nearby a local airport – where Gann became ever more committed to flying, first as an avocation and then as a career. With limited employment opportunities, he relocated his family to Hollywood, where he looked for work and gave flying lessons and charters on the side. He moved the family back to New York after an altercation on a job. Gann vowed to leave show business for aviation.

Starting in 1938 as a First Officer for American Airlines, Gann began his career as a pilot. Like many in the domestic aviation industry, he became part of the military in WWII, volunteering to do his part. He flew in the North Atlantic, then in South America, and then across “The Hump” in the Himalayas. After the war, Gann returned to passenger flight piloting, relocating his family in San Francisco. He also started a commercial fishing venture that did not make money. Gann had a longstanding love of boating, too. Through it all, he was writing.

Gann’s first novel was written in 1944 and it was remade into a movie a few years later. He would write twenty more novels, plus several memoirs. Many of these works became movies or screenplays. Gann’s storytelling expertise, coupled with his extraordinarily interesting life, came together in the creative process. He found financial success and made quite a mark, especially in aviation. He passed away in 1991. Gann’s “writing shed” is now at the Experimental Aviation Association’s museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

I enthusiastically recommend Fate is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memoir – it’s a gem of a book. And I’ll keep you posted, too; I’m going to explore more of Gann’s writing. If it’s anything like the memoir, there’s a lot more good Gann to be read.

David Potash

March 21, 2021 Reviews

Turning the Soil of 19th Century Literature

Students of American literature of the late 19th century cover a well-known cadre of writers. Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe stand out as fine examples. Decades ago when I was an English major, I learned about these authors and the broader literary trends of the period. Many of the popular works of the Gilded Age are marked by writerly care and precise language. There’s quite a bit of really good literature to read.

These authors, though, are not the only ones worthy of our consideration. America was fortunate to have many accomplished voices in the late 1800s, voices that we would be well-served to remember. Anne Boyd Rioux, a professor of English at the University of New Orleans, has brought her considerable skills to elevate one of those authors, Constance Fenimore Woolson. In addition to penning a biography of Woolson, Rioux edited an interesting selection of Woolson’s shorter works, Miss Grief and Other Stories. With a foreword by Colm Toibin and light framing by Rioux, this is an accessible and thoughtful introduction to Woolson.

Born in 1840, Woolson lived in the Midwest, traveled through the south and New England before spending her final years in Europe. She died in 1893, either jumping or falling to her death in Venice. Smart, focused on her career and prolific, she wrote novels, short stories, poetry and even a children’s book. Her efforts appeared regularly in popular publications like The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine. Never married and deaf in her later years, Woolson comes across in the biographical material as a talented but isolated creative force. She was friends with Henry James. Their relationship has been the focus of several studies.

Woolson’s writing is of the period. It reflects her context, her perspective, and her acute powers of observation. It cannot be hurried if one is to appreciate it. There’s a deliberate attention to detail Woolson’s prose, particularly when she focuses on what might be marginalized figures or circumstances in the hands of other authors. She is also quite attentive to place, the particular language of a region, the topography, flora and fauna. It does not diminish her writing and instead gives a realistic foundation. Sitting down with Woolson is to immerse oneself into another world, recognizable but still distinct.

It remains to be seen if future English majors will study Woolson. Whether they do or do not, her work serves as a welcome alternative to the well-known. And a deep thanks to Anne Boyd Rioux, too, for calling her out and getting her republished.

David Potash

March 7, 2021 Reviews

Contemporary French Horror

“The baby is dead. It only took a few seconds.”

From that ice cold and clinical horrific opening, Leila Slimani‘s The Perfect Nanny draws us in, enrages us, engages us, disgusts us and toys with us. The best-selling novel of France in 2016 under the title “Chanson Douce” (Lullaby), the book was translated into English and re-titled with something more appropriate for the American reader. It is a difficult and unforgettable read, even though the text moves quickly with pacing akin to a potboiler. Rarely have I wanted to turn the page – and dreaded turning the page – with the same intensity. I finished it in one sitting. A few days later, went back to re-read certain sections.

The story is about the murder of two children by their nanny. Inspired by a New York City case, Slimani stated, the novel is its own creation, a study of Parisian life and work. This is not non-fiction dressed up. It is an invention, a creative endeavor, with most of the trappings of fact. There’s a precision to it. Slimani spins out her tale with journalistic precision. She has worked as a reporter and it shows.

In The Perfect Nanny there are no surprises, no hidden secrets. It opens with the murder, goes back in time, and finishes with the children’s death. Slimani avoids moralizing and speculation. She handles her characters with care and attention. We see the why and how of the relationships between children and nanny, children and parents, parents and nanny, and between the father and mother. Each of the characters are drawn as complex, imperfect people. They feel real.

The absence of a larger sense-making is dark. On the other hand, it is often authentic. Why or how could something like the murder of two children happen? There can be no reasons, no explanation.

Slimani writes very well but very good writing is no guarantee of a best-seller. True crime and crime in general are also popular, but they, too, do not automatically generate sales. What makes The Perfect Nanny so effective is the mix of topic and style. Slimani tapped into a primal fear, one that can grab every parent by the heart and not let go. There are few important novels about motherhood, and fewer still that map out a horror like this. It is both extraordinary and, in Slimani’s hand, all too possible. The parents at the heart of the film make reasonable choices. Far from perfect, they are also far from indifferent. Their everyday qualities, like that of their children, bring the horror home. They are two professionals, working to make better lives for themselves and their family, dependent upon others.

The Perfect Nanny is a horror story well-suited the twenty-first century, a crime of violence without meaning or catharsis.

David Potash

January 23, 2021 Reviews

Sports and Sentimentality, Courtesy of Jerry Izenberg

Growing up in northern New Jersey, back in the 1970s, I was always the first one in the family to get up. My routine during the school week was rock solid. I’d head downstairs, take the dog out, pick up a copy of the newspaper – we got the Newark Star-Ledger, bring the dog in and feed her, start to brew a pot of coffee for my parents, and then, at long last, dig into the sports section of the paper. Sports always came first – even as so many New York teams in the 70s were awful. A hurrah for Joe Pisarcik.

The Ledger’s sport section was always comprehensive. They printed late night scores from the west coast, covered all the sports, and several times a week, a column by Jerry Izenberg would grace the pages. Izenberg wrote the way that I imagined old school sports writers did, with rich language, lots of adjectives, and stories of heroism, triumph and catastrophe. I pictured him in a fedora with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth like a character from The Front Page, hammering away at manual typewriter. His columns were interesting and engaging, offering a different take on sports. They were like to the older guys who spent time at the breakfast diner in the center of town.

Recently I was given a copy of his 1989 book, The Jerry Izenberg Collection. Truth in advertising: it is exactly as billed, a collection of Izenberg’s columns. Reading it reminded me of those morning and the consistent tone and perspective of his work. Izenberg is still at it – he’s 90 – and recently published a novel.

The collection is a testimonial to Izenberg’s interest in people and his preternatural sentimentality. He specializes in a particular kind of traditional male ethos that jumps headfirst into emotions. In the hands of a different writer, in the context of other topics, it would ring as false and maudlin. But when writing about boxers, jockeys, gamblers and football players it seems all the more appropriate. Damon Runyon, perhaps?

Izenberg’s gift is to write about intimate issues in a way that male sport fans can relate. And I hope others, too. It’s his secret power – and I cannot think of many other sportswriters able to do it as effectively.

So if you find a copy, curl up with a beer and some Kleenex – it’s a Jerry Izenberg special.

David Potash

January 12, 2021 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Worthy of Re-Reading, Again and Again: Kendi on Antiracism

Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist is one of the most important books on racism written in the last few years. Kendi, a brilliant and prolific scholar, writer and pubic intellectual, was named by Time Magazine as one of 2020’s most influential people. If you have not read this book, I urge you to find a copy and spend some time with it. And if you did pick it up over the past year, I recommend finding time to re-read it. It contains much to consider and reconsider.

Kendi’s book is both autobiographical and scholarly. He uses his own journey, his successes and failures, his strengths and his weaknesses, to guide us through the myriad of ways that race and racism intertwine and affect how we see the world and interact with each other. Kendi avoids the phrase “systemic racism” – and makes us understand how “systemic” is redundant. He explains how omnipresent racist thought is; it is in the air that we grown accustomed to breathing. To choose to become antiracist is a radical act – and demands a new consciousness. Lifting from DuBois and expanding on his work, Kendi recasts dual consciousness into dueling consciousness. He moves at a high level through twentieth century American history. He locates his own story within that larger history, giving his own development as much of a critique as that of society. There is great power in his vulnerability.

Kendi systematically observes, unpacks and challenges us throughout the book. His take on the half-steps and quarter-steps taken to address racism is especially insightful. He disdains the term “microagression” and instead calls it what it is: racist abuse. He calls biological racists what the are: segregationists. He shares how ethnic labeling can fuel racist thought. He employs facts and science to debunk racist claims. For example, if you want to find high crime rates, unemployment and poverty are significantly greater contributors than race. And he notes the influence of behavioral racism in our thinking, practice and culture.

As the book progresses, building a more comprehensive understanding of how racism operates, Kendi zeroes in what is at stake – power. He shows how power – both in the political realm, which is traditional and well-publicized, as well in the sociological sense of cultural capital – has an intimate relationship with racism. He picks apart the threads of capitalism, especially how it can exploit others, to strengthen the argument. The organization of this line of thinking is reinforced through chapter titles, too: Space, Class, Gender, for example.

The key take away for me is that Kendi draws a clear distinction between all that it racist and all that is antiracist. He denies the existence of a middle ground. Reading the book is like taking the red pill in the Matrix. After reading it, if you reflect, you can’t unsee the racism all around us – and the choice is clear. We have to be antiracists.

David Potash

January 9, 2021 American Culture Today, Reviews

White Fragility – White Racism

Robin DiAngelo’s best-selling book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, was published in 2018. After the murder of George Floyd, sales of the book jumped. Many of us, hunkering down in the pandemic, read widely to gain a better understanding of our racist history and the country’s deeply embedded racist practices. What could we learn and do to bring about greater justice? White Fragility was one of the volumes that seemed to be everywhere, and DiAngelo, a former tenured professor of multicultural education who now does diversity training, was prominent in the media.

DiAngelo is a sharp writer. Her message, that racism is woven deeply into structures, practices and our lives, is not radical. However, decades of work on racial issues gives her a comfort and skill set to write about it ways that others may not. The book’s underlying premises, that most white people have a very hard time when it comes to talking about, or even thinking about, race and the consequences of racism, is a truism. The tendency is to shut down, to defend, defer, point the other way – anything that can refute white complicity in systemic racism. DiAngelo takes this apart, showing how responses and actions can paper over issues or even make racist problems and practices more intractable. The term “white fragility” was crafted by her in a 2011 paper DiAngelo wrote for the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. It describes a rigidity, based on power and defensiveness, that takes place when a white person’s racism is questioned. What hovers over this book, and the larger enterprise of DiAngelo’s approach, is the question of how productive and honest it is to examine and work against racism through the lens of white fragility.

Reviews and summaries of White Fragility are ubiquitous. I wonder if the book has reached a stage where it is almost a trope – a volume regularly referenced and rarely read. If so, those that know the material well and do read it will most likely will find the book frustrating. It offers little new or different to explain how things have transpired, why we are in a society that is racist, or even how to advance policies that might lead to social justice and make for meaningful change. It is is far from a definitive account of racism, as DiAngelo readily acknowledges.

The strength of White Fragility rests on its extensive knowledge of how white liberals often react when challenged about race: denial, tears, and more denial. That’s a personal dynamic that DiAngelo witnesses and fights through regularly as a diversity coach. In and of itself, this point of resistance is very much worth examining. The phenomena offers a useful viewpoint as to why we have not made more progress towards social justice, even with people who voice inclusive sentiments, and why change at an individual level can prove to be very difficult.

That said, there is much more to think through here. Economic, political and societal power structures, centuries of exploitation, how certain kinds of capitalism and economic structures can reinforce racism – the evil tentacles of racism are systemic, pervasive, and complicated. DiAngelo knows this, too; she regularly references other authors and other works throughout White Fragility. It’s a strategy that makes sense to me and one that I recommend. Ongoing study is essential. Read widely, investigate thoroughly, and don’t rely on one author – especially one whose strength is diversity training – to explain racism.

David Potash

January 6, 2021 American Culture Today, Reviews