In a year when names of places like Charleston and of people
like Sandra Bland are permeating the headlines, we have had much to contemplate
and discuss regarding race in America. Several new books address this theme; currently
the most provocative is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The author has written a letter to his son about the
injustice that a black person, especially a black male, faces in America. Coates’
anger and frustration are obvious and his work has generated controversial responses
from writers like the New York Times’ David Brooks whose readers also added to the dialogue. As part
of their “brief but spectacular” series, PBS has posted a short video of Coates and he will be appearing on “The Daily Show”
this evening (July 23).
Ta-Nehisi Coates talks
about fear in Between the World and Me, describing for his son “what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is
your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within
the all of it.” Called “required reading”
by Toni Morrison, Between the World and Me is an extremely powerful and
emotional read. Coates says he is trying to communicate as directly, forcefully and honestly as possible and his publisher posted a short reading by him. Between the World and Me received several starred reviews, including one from Kirkus.
Two related scholarly works will be published in September and
also deserve our attention.
Despite
the Best Intentions (from Oxford University Press coming 9/1), was
written over several years and is based on hundreds of interviews with students
and faculty at a high school not unlike Evanston Township. According to the authors, this school that
they call Riverview is located in a suburban setting and has a population with
fairly equal numbers of white and black students. Despite many opportunities and “the best
intentions” of the title, students do not perform equally, prompting authors
Amanda Lewis and John Diamond to offer somewhat long-winded hypotheses about how
racial inequality thrives in good schools. Excerpts from Despite the Best
Intentions will certainly be of interest to New Trier students and
faculty, especially in tandem with reading more about recent efforts to close the achievement gap at Evanston which were profiled on pbs
and posted by the College Board.
Next, This Muslim American Life (from New York
University Press coming 9-18) by Moustafa Bayoumi discusses the unfair
targeting of people based upon their ethnic background. Although some of the
facts are slightly dated in this collection of previously published essays, I
was still amazed at the numerous statistics and sources which award-winning
author Bayoumi cites to support his arguments. For example, did you know that that
the White House minimizes the number of civilian casualties overseas by “in
effect count[ing] all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants?” The
essays in This Muslim American Life are divided into four
sections: Muslims in History, in Theory, in Politics and in Culture. Near the
beginning of his book, Bayoumi quotes extensively from The Enemies Within
by Apuzzo and Goldman, published in 2013 about NYPD secret spying, observing “this
idea that you are not seen as a complex human being but only as a purveyor of
possible future violence illustrates the extraordinary predicament of the heart
of contemporary Muslim American life.” Bayoumi later references the Pew
Research Center, whose updated work regarding Muslim Americans is found here.
Be it generational, educational, or civil-rights related, each
of these titles addresses an aspect of a critical issue for America. As educators and informed citizens, we need
to read more works like these in order to appreciate others’ perspectives and experiences
so as further encourage this important conversation.
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