Summer Book Reading—2022
I’m sharing short entries about the following books I’m reading this summer to arm you for the challenges afoot now as well as those to come, and to alarm you about the risks we face. I don’t intend for the alarm to cause inaction and fear; rather, it’s so you can be duly informed and take better individual and collective action as leaders.
Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America by David E. Bernstein
In a nod to the great American historian of the South, C. Vann Woodward, Attorney David Bernstein could’ve titled this work arguing for the separation of race and state The Strange Career of Racial Classification. The arbitrary and contradictory systems of official marking of populations by race and ethnicity reify the despicable practice of racialization. This work is an excellent contribution to a rising tide against such practices.
(Evidence of this rising tide is a conference that I’m co-facilitating with Drs. Sheena Mason and Carlos Hoyt Jr. on Sept. 24, 2022 in Lexington, Massachusetts, “Resolving the Race(ism) Dilemma.”)
Victory Is Assured by Stanley Crouch
In this collection of nonfiction by my late friend and colleague Stanley Crouch, set for publication in September, editor Glenn Mott has done a yeoman’s job, bringing to light, yet again, Stanley’s unique voice and continued relevance as a nonpareil 20th-21st century American social and cultural critic. Soulful essays by Jelani Cobb and Wynton Marsalis bookend this vital work featuring Stanley’s previously uncollected writings from 1968 to 2016. As Cobb understands well, Stanley was about heroic aspiration and swingin’ punches against pablum, “lazy thought that had gained the ballast of public support.” These notes from the hanging judge who fought against the decoy of race—the All-American skin game—are more than worthy to counter the entropy and confusion of our times, which Albert Murray called “the epidermis of actuality.”
African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer
The work of mainstays in the blues idiom wisdom tradition such as Alain Locke, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Toni Morrison, Wynton Marsalis, and Danielle Allen make a strong case for the centrality of Afro-Americans in the cultural formation of American character. Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Hackett Fischer’s closing arguments in favor of this thesis wins decisively in an epic tale of the regional ingenuity and cultural genius of African descendants, who more than made a way out of the abyss of oppression and exploitation by embodying and forever influencing the ideal of American freedom.
Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison
A key aspect of blues idiom wisdom is de-centering race and emphasizing the centrality of culture. In this work alone, a grandmaster of contemporary literature, Toni Morrison, demonstrates that she holds a high place in the blues idiom pantheon. I agree with Zadie Smith, who in her intro writes that the short story Recitatif is a “perfect—and perfectly American—tale, one every American child should read.” On the surface, the tale is about two women, Roberta and Twyla, who meet as children in a shelter, lose touch, then re-connect as adults, tensions of disagreement threatening to overshadow the bond they share from childhood. A deeper reading is given by Morrison, who revealed that this work (written in 1980) is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different race for whom racial identity is crucial.” The mystery of who is “white” or “black” in this story ultimately causes us to reflect on racial codes and their maintenance, not only in racial classification systems, but in our very minds.
The War on the West by Douglas Murray
In a vigorous defense of the West and the value of the Western tradition, journalist and critic Douglas Murray slices and dices the slim arguments and bad faith of those who selectively critique the West’s ills without highlighting its glories, also ignoring the same sins of bigotry and illiberal thought and behavior by icons of the left such as Marx and Foucault. Murray successfully argues that not only does such blinkered anti-West reasoning ignore historical context but that it empowers the enemies of democracy and pluralism, who use such rhetoric to cover up their own authoritarian and dictatorial intent. Unfortunately, Murray overreaches in his conclusion by explicitly equating “Western” with “whiteness,” a deadly braiding of race with culture and civilization that believers in the folklore of white supremacy will read with glee as justification for their racism.
They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terroists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency by Malcolm Nance
While some, such as Douglas Murray, focus on threats from the illiberal left, others, such as counterterrorism intelligence expert Malcolm Nance, center on threats from the illiberal right, such as those inspired by the orange-haired menace to democracy to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. If Paul Revere is famous for alerting early Americans that “the British are coming, the British are coming,” then Nance likewise should be known as the patriot urging Americans to realize that an armed white nationalist insurgency threatens contemporary American democracy. If enough Americans vote in pro-Trump politicians in November 2022, Nance argues, these forces will be emboldened and continue to carry out their nefarious plans, perhaps with impunity.
Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for All Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power by Ian V. Rowe
Ian Rowe, educational advocate and entrepreneur of charter schools in South Bronx, is far from a theorist with no practical application of his ideas. In this excellent treatise, Rowe bases his ideas on empirical evidence, his experience, and what should be common sense. Young people, especially in impoverished inner cities, rather than being caught between the Scylla of powerlessness caused by systemic racism or the Charybdis of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps when your Timberlands don’t have strings, should rely on a combination of agency—“the force of free will guided by moral discernment”—and intermediating pillars of development into adulthood: FREE (Family, Religion, Education, and Entrepreneurship).
The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan
Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan lays out a compelling and even frightening picture of deglobalization and demographic collapse leading to scarcity for most nations across the globe. Similar to Jamie Wheal in Recapture the Rapture, Zeihan argues that the post-World War II Pax Americana was a historical anomaly in which worldwide economic growth and relative political stability ended somewhere in the last decade. Armed with graphics galore, and told in a refreshingly irreverent tone, Zeihan informs us that while America and a few other countries such as France, West Germany, Sweden and New Zealand may have the wherewithal to withstand the downward spiral to come, most other nations, with aging populations and an inability to sustain their own energy and production of goods and services, will have a rough road to go, to say the least. As with going to the doctor regularly to find out if there are conditions to attend to before it’s too late, reading Zeihan may be bitter medicine, but knowing where we stand can better equip us to be prepared for what’s coming the remainder of this decade and beyond.