I was a little surprised to find out this book hasn't (evidently) been reviewed on this sub yet, since it was very highly recommended on a question I submitted to another sub about what's the best book on racism in the US.
The book is a set of descriptions of the author's visits to places that memorialize the US slavery era in some way. He visited a cemetery, a plantation that has been set up as a kind of slavery museum, he visited Angola prison in Louisiana, he took an "Underground Railroad" tour in New York City, he went to a slave auction site in Senegal.
The primary McGuffin, I guess is: what did he write it for? If he said, I didn't catch him at it. But it's a good question. Why go to these places and record your impressions of those places and of the people you met and spoke with there? What were you hoping to accomplish?
So I can't say what he intended, because as I say I didn't catch him telling us that. I myself feel that I learned a few things, however, and they seem like good things to know, and so I'm going to pass them on to you, and maybe you'll want to read the book to see if I'm right.
The most important thing that I personally learned is that there seems to be a very good reason that all these leftists spend so much time rubbing our noses in the bad stuff. The reason is not that it does us good to feel bad about this stuff; the reason is not that the worse we feel about it the more likely we will be to actually do something about racism. No. The reason, at least as I see it, is that there is something which is of maybe more importance to us all than eliminating racism, something that focusing on stories like these helps us do, and that is this: when we don't tell their stories, we in a very real sense exclude these people from our community.
Telling their stories makes them part of the club. Insofar as it's possible to do that without eliminating racism. And that is a valuable thing to do. That strengthens our democracy. It needs strengthening. It's a task we should take on ourselves more than we do.
It's tempting, for some reason, to think these people are related to us and those are not. But in fact if you go back half a million years, every single one of my ancestors at that time was a black African. And that is true of every living human being. There are no exceptions. And so whether our ancestors were their ancestors or whether their descendants are our ancestors, we are all very closely related. And so their story really is our story. And we should be telling it in school.
The second thing I personally learned was that there is a very good reason to celebrate Juneteenth. A reason I was not aware of. I mean, I KNEW it but it had never really been brought to the forefront of my mind before. And that is that our Independence Day was not their Independence Day. They should have an Independence Day of their own, and Juneteenth is as close as we can really get to something like that. And sure, like I said earlier, our Independence Day is part of their story too; but their Independence Day is part of ours, as well. It's important.
What else. Well, his emotional overflows did get to be a little much, on occasion. Sympathizing with the downtrodden is a lot more fun that sympathizing with the brutal, but if we cannot do both, we cannot see the truth. We need to do both. The truth is important. That said, I wouldn't say his emotionalism was overwhelming. I said "a little much" and that's all I meant. The prose was not mostly or even frequently overheated.
There's more, but what the heck. I recommend it highly!!
by tolkienfan2759