Your Death Will Be Our Reality Television For The Day or 21st Century Lynchings

Black dead bodies pile up on the television screens across the nation.

While there is a 'debate' about force by some fancy people in some fancy room.

Children live in terror everywhere.

Educated grown men and women tremble at the sight of a police officer.

These are lynchings that puts the Klan to shame.

This is Freedom in the US at the beginning of the 21st century.

Short Review of Between the World and Me

I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates in one sitting.  It was a decent book.

Get this book for your library!

So many people have already praised it for its great writing and incredible erudition.  I felt really let down after reading his book because I was expecting so much more.

Mr. Coates is a good writer, but he is not a great writer.  His prose flows and I believe he has found his own voice.  However, the writing is not beautiful, nor is it creative or innovative in any manner.

In my opinion the most important aspects of this book are his insights on the black body.   African Americans, after all, were considered products to be exploited for their value as slaves.  Their (and latino) bodies are still used in such a way in the prison industry as explicated so brilliantly in Michelle Alexander's seminal work, The New Jim Crow.

He COMPLETELY neglects the fact that other ethnicities (besides black people) have race issues in the US as well.  I wouldn't expect him to explicate on these issues, but to mention them at least would give his writing a much more well rounded analytic style.

I found Coates' story about his friend's death at the hands of the police to be distant and not too empathetic, except that the writer realized he was not safe. from the hands of the police either.

His article on Prince's death is a good piece of work:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0106.coates.html

He doesn't get into the fact that he was extremely lucky to have a family background that valued education.  He has multiple generations of college graduates in his ancestry.  This is a great thing, but not addressing educational disparities in the milieu that is the US today is a mistake and will lead to bad analysis.

He also makes France sound like an escape from colonialism--which it can't be--as it is and was one of the world's colonial powers.

Coates

I believe Coates is primarily a journalist, and that is good.  This book is a good example of journalist non-fiction writing.    However, I don't go looking for James Baldwin when I read nonfiction books by journalists.

I'm going to say that you should read this book and also buy it for your library though.  It is an important book, and it is written in a journalistically accessible style.

Citizen by Claudia Rankine (Book Review)

This book is amazing on so many levels.

Poetically, it stands almost alone as an example of relationships, alienation, microaggressions, and racism in the 21st century US.

Quote from Citizen

A friend recommended this book to me over the break--as we were all freshly cut wide open from the Ferguson coverage, revealing local discussions and ongoing murder of POC from any age and area in the US.

I finally got a hold of it via the library and read it in earnest.

The descriptions of racial microaggressions in 2nd person narrative poetry are so powerful I was shaking as I read them.

Quote from Citizen

Each page is condensed emotion, reaction and analysis of a lifetime of experiencing relationships that bite while smiling.  Her poetry describes how inescapable it is to be a POC in the US at this time and place.  The relentless assault upon our senses of 21st century lynchings and their impact the mental health, awareness and identity of POC is explicated in detail.  This explication is via emotions, images and the powerful poetic voice of Ms. Rankine.

I don't read many books of poetry, nor do I often recommend them.  However, this work should be standard reading for any HS senior, or 1st year college students.  Anyone interested in Race in the US should read this book.  It gets at the heart of what it feels like to live in the US at this time as a POC.

Read this book.

Order this book for your library.

Tell others about this book.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace hit upon almost all the intellectual struggles I have with education as a scholar of color.  This doesn't mean every person of color will relate to this book, and it doesn't mean that White people can't relate to the book either.

It is really a book anyone should read, but the themes covered:

• Alienation from the dominant culture in an educational institution
• Bifurcating one's life to handle a life in two worlds
• What does success mean?

       are themes that many people of color in academia can relate to specifically.  

Robert Peace was a brilliant Science student, who earned a full scholarship to Yale University.  He graduated and seemed to have everything going for him.

This book tells the story of his family background, his upbringing, his education, his post-education decisions and his untimely death.  Rob's story is told from his White-upper middle class roommate's perspective.  

Rob peace went to Yale,dealt cannabis throughout his stay at Yale, graduated and then went back to life in Newark New Jersey, selling weed, teaching, working at the airport and inventing new strains of marijuana.  This book claims he invented the famous Sour Diesel strain of cannabis.  The conundrum this book addresses and is stuck on is:  How could a kid, who had so much going for him, fuck up so bad and get murdered?   

The writing is mediocre, but the story is something that is gripping and I believe happens much more than people speak about.  Alienation, and a turn away from the "gifts" that are  bestowed upon this "blessed" and "unusual" person.

[Writing in blue below are my personal observations.]

Sometimes, the supposed gifted ones, know people who are as smart, or smarter than them.  These people use their smarts to survive and to make money.  When one is lauded, and knows others who are smarter, who are rotting in jail, or dead, or addicted to drugs,  then the gifts that one is bestowed with don't mean as much to you as to those who are giving the gifts.  

Why couldn't he break away from his former neighborhood and the life there?

When I was an undergrad, I came to realize that the inner workings and business deals on the street level were not any different than those business deals and workings of "legitimate" businesses.  The legitimate business dealings, were far larger and impacted far more people than street level deals, or even big dealer deals, but they are fundamentally the same.  I realized that the drug trade was unfettered capitalism.   

Why didn't he plan something after college?

I couldn't plan anything in college either, not because I was unmotivated, but because I was so focused on getting my degree and having to accomplish this completely by myself--it was all I could do to graduate Cum Laude.  People who are in college as first generation students need more support and more advising than those who are not first generation.  First generation people don't have the support system that many other college students have.  

One can be academically successful and NOT hold the same values as their educational institutions.   The scene where Rob was confronted by the authorities at Yale for selling weed at school, and him not getting in trouble.  And his continued sales even after the confrontation with his administration.  Rob knew he was being used as a token, and knew they would not prosecute him, nor even punish him--it would look bad.  This is my take on it at least.  It also shows that Rob was not your stereotypical "successful" minority scholar, who doesn't smoke weed, believes in Jesus and doesn't own guns.  

Survivor guilt?  I am not claiming that Rob Peace had survivor guilt, but this is something that has bothered me forever.  How come I am alive, free, educated and employed?  While others, who are far smarter than me, far greater than me in many respects, are locked up in prison, dead, or drugged out?

This book bothered me in many ways:

• The author is White and doesn't really know Ethnic Minority culture in the US.
• The author imposes many people's desires for Rob, but doesn't know Rob's desires enough. 
• The author is a mediocre writer and bums me out on Yale's creative writing program.
• I was constantly wondering if the author was going to split his profits with Rob's mother.
• The author didn't show enough redeeming qualities about people from the hood.

I would recommend this book for all HS seniors and incoming freshmen of color because it may help them sort out what success means to them.  I would have a  discussion with them about what it means that the author is White though--what it means to the story and how the author's class impacts his understanding of Rob, his family, his neighborhood and his values.  

Available Hardcover – September 23, 2014  

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (September 23, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 147673190X
• ISBN-13: 978-1476731902
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 1 inches