I know your countrymen do not agree with me here and I hear them saying, "You exaggerate." They do not know Harlem and I do. So do you. Take no one's word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit … Continue reading From Slavery to Freedom – or – Why White People Need to Learn from Black History →

"The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race." (Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro) Back at that anti-racism workshop in Hyde Park … Continue reading What I Mean by White Supremacy →

 Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, … Continue reading What is White Supremacy? Does it Exist? One try at explaining these questions →

I started reading George Pelecanos novels because he was one of the writers on HBO's The Wire.  Specifically, he gets the writing credit on the episode that has what still feels to me, 15 years later, like the saddest moment I have ever watched on television, and perhaps the truest evocation of the catharsis of … Continue reading George Pelecanos’s DC Quartet →

Created by politics, culture, and consciousness, our possessive investment in whiteness can be altered by those same processes, but only if we face the hard facts openly and honestly and admit that whiteness is a matter of interests as well as attitudes, that it has more to with property than with pigment. It's often said … Continue reading The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics – George Lipsitz →

I have read 40 books this year.  This one was the best.  You should read it. If you are a White liberal and you think you know what "identity politics" means and are very clear about why you think it's a "distraction" from "more pressing economic concerns," I implore you, as one who used to … Continue reading We Were Eight Years in Power: American Tragedy – Ta-Nehisi Coates →

I believe this is the first book labelled as "Young Adult" I have ever read - when I was a kid, when I was a young adult, now.  It's not that when I was younger I read lots of "grownup" books - it's more that I didn't read.  It's also not that I have anything … Continue reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian →

Sometime last year I read The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead's speculative historical fictional piece which asks what if that railroad were a railroad, and underground?  That premise opened up into a very present-regarding look at how people and social structures work (or don't) under oppressive conditions.  It also had a sense of the uncanny about it … Continue reading The Intuitionist →

This was one of those books I ended up reading because is has recently been made into a movie (actually TV show).  But I've done this before - decided to read something because other people were watching it (then I usually don't see the movie/show) .  I remember reading Sense and Sensibility for the first time … Continue reading The Handmaid’s Tale →

For some reason, Volume 6 of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle has been delayed until next year.  Having read and enjoyed the first five (I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with them - they're good, I like reading them, I look forward to the final volume), I turned to Autumn not knowing what to expect.  It's still in … Continue reading Autumn – Karl Ove Knausgaard →