Book Reviews

In large part to participate intellectually in Black History Month 2006, I read or re-read four books dealing with racial problems. In chronological order of being written, the book are:

The first two books were written by American black men, the third by a 7-man British news team whose racial mix was not disclosed, the fourth by an American of Asian Indian descent.

The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. DuBois
1903

Du Bois (rhymes with "rejoice) reminds me of Carlyle's The French Revolution, in that Du Bois interweaves facts, interpretations, poetry, biblical citations, and classical allusions in an almost mystical style. He writes both objectively and subjectively, but it is easy to identify the mode of any paragraph or passage. Thus, he shows how the U.S. Government tried -- with its Freedmen's Bureau and working with as many as 50 charitable groups, but with no money -- to implement the promises of 40 acres and a mule and of education. He cites the efforts of New England school marms to set up 1-room school houses throughout the South. He even dares to describe the pluses as well as the minuses of slavery as practiced in the South, characterizing Southerners by both their praiseworthy and evil attitudes. The two lengthy extracts, below, capture his objective/subjective style.

"Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it is fair to characterizes it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent, are poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding and to a degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class lines are by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say, with the price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot be easily expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function of government, of individual worth and possibilities -- of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defense had to keep them from learning. Much that the white boy imbibes from his earliest social atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's mature years. America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons."

"Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire, -- the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals, -- not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free! On Saturday, once or twice a month, the old master, before the war, used to dole out bacon and meal to his Negroes. And after the first flush of freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the freedman, he came back and picked up his hoe, and old master still doled out his bacon and meal."

"Guerrilla raiding, the ever-present flickering after-flame of war, was spending its forces against the Negroes . . . "

Du Bois speaks of "the other world" when attempting to describe how it feels "to be a problem." When approached by friendly whites with examples of "excellent colored men" they know or who want to point out that they fought for the North in the Civil War, the educated black must decide whether to smile, be interested, or "reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require."

It is a sensation of a "double consciousness" which gives the American Negro "two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

That sense of two-ness was a major factor in Du Bois's rejection of what he termed the "narrow commercial" focus of Booker T. Washington. Du Bois characterizes Washington's encouragement for black to become successful workers in commerce and industry as "counsels of submission" which overlooked "elements of manhood."

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
by James Weldon Johnson
1912 & 1927

Supposedly written by a musician/composer with an "Italian complexion," who in his childhood was told he was black, after living for years as a white, this "autobiography" is really a novel. The narrator much later in life decides to pass for white again, marries and has children whom he feels obligated to protect, as white, after his wife dies.

Softly, with only a occasional touch of anger, he depicts the burden of being black, even a successful black -- after years of experiences, including black "low-life." The tone and substance of Autobiography are best captured with meaningful extracts written by a man who admits to having "natural and acquired Bohemian tastes."

[Running home at age nine just after learning that he wasn't white and being assigned a "coloured" designation by a teacher] "Mother, mother, tell me, am I a nigger?"

[Looking back on that day] "And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were coloured, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea [being coloured]."

"When I learned that Alexandre Dumas was a coloured man, I re-read Monte Cristo and The Three Guardsmen with magnified pleasure."

[After mentioning musical and literary accomplishments by "coloured people"] "In this measure, at least . . . all of the Indians between Alaska and Patagonia haven't done as much."

[Ragtime music] "originated in the questionable resorts about Memphis and St. Louis by Negro-piano-players who knew no more of the theory of music than they did of the theory of the universe, but were guided by natural musical instinct and talent."

[Describing white high society people who thought of him as white when he played piano in their gatherings] "These were people . . . who were ever expecting to find happiness in novelty, each day restlessly exploring and exhausting every resource in this great city which might possibly furnish a new sensation or awaken a fresh emotion . . . "

"The French are more logical and freer from prejudices than the British . . .morality of the French . . . hypocrisy of the Anglo-Saxon."

[Speaking of the differences between upper class coloured in the North and the South] "The difference was especially noticeable in their speech. There was none of that heavy-tongued enunciation which characterizes even the best-educated coloured people of the South."

". . . black men generally marry women fairer than themselves . . . dark women of stronger mental endowment are very often married to light-complexioned men."

[Quoting a black doctor who was commenting on the best and worst of black behavior] "You see those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies; they're not worth digging graves for; yet they are the ones who create impressions of the race . . . because they are always in evidence on street corners, while the rest of us are hard at work."

[After his white wife died (she knew of his background) and after he had lived "white" and decided he had to continue doing so to protect his children] "I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."

the black man in search of power
by a news team from The Times (London)
1968

The United Kingdom had race riots a decade before the United States; the major riot, in Nottingham, occurred in 1958. The U.S. riots were in 1967.

As the writers deal with Britain's racial problems and use international references, they repeatedly focus attention on American racial history, sometimes citing commonalities and sometimes pointing out uniqueness -- as the following excerpts and comments demonstrate.

Writing the year after the 1967 American riots: ". . . nervous white Americans have been making the same response as their ancestors made when they were faced by hostile Red Indians; they are reaching for their guns."

Ghettoes are "politically controlled by the whites" . . . are the equivalent of Latin-American countries which are "colonies of the United States."

Although "the Portuguese are colour-blind" and although there is "lack of colour prejudice within the Portuguese army . . . Angola and Mozambique [Portugal's African colonies] must be taken first."

About any "sense of solidarity" among African nations: "This brotherhood, this instinctive identification, often degenerates into bloody strife."

"One Negro family in four is headed by a woman -- evidence of the marital discord which constant unemployment, bad living conditions and financial trouble cause in the ghetto. Only 9 per cent of white families are headed by women."

Over the centuries, "London's history shows hostility, sometimes resulting in riots," against Huguenots, Jewish refugees, the Irish. "Native British people at the bottom of the pile, fighting to scrape a living and provide a sometimes leaking roof over their heads, are inclined to resent the arrival of newcomers eager to share already meagre resources."

Two thousand years ago, "the Romans found the Britons inherently inferior . . . utterly stupid and incapable of learning."

After six Englishmen were stabbed by West Indian blacks, whites fought the police who were protecting the immigrants, the Ku Klux Klan got into the picture, the immigrants suspected government-appointed helpers were spies, even after the U.K. employed "whole-time coloured welfare officers."

"In Britain there are black people who think in terms of actually carrying out violence as a protest, rather as Welsh extremists blow up reservoir pipelines carrying water to the thieving English."

"The simple truth is that in Africa, America and Britain, black people are protesting against white privilege [and relating their protest to the thoughts of] "post-Marxist revolutionary ideology of the new dissenters who have Castro, Mao, Stokely Carmichael and Ché Guevera as their prophets."

" . . . coloured teenagers are stopped and questioned, even searched, by police more frequently than most people would imagine."

As has happened in the U.S., Britain's coloured people insisted on having police who look like them . . . The British police found it difficult to find qualified candidates . . . When they did, the coloured community said, "Man, that's selling out. When you join the cops, you think like them."

Because Asians and well as blacks experience discrimination in the United Kingdom, diverse coloured groups have attempted to form "multi-racial organizations of of militant groups."

This book will anger you if you believe --

Equal results for groups are more important than equal rights for individuals.
Groups must be proportionately represented in all public and private sectors.
No culture is superior to any other.
Western culture properly dominates major world civilizations.
Martin Luther King was wrong.
Today's self-appointed black leaders have created a civil rights "industry."
There is a mystical superiority emanating out of Africa.
Africa has yet to produce great writing or any significant civilizational benefit.

Although D'Souza does attempt to be fair (fair, not "balanced") as those snippets suggest, the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world understandably consider The End of Racism a racist attack on blacks. For one thing, the writer concentrates mostly on group differences -- real, imagined, statistical. He questions the logic of those black leaders who speak of "my people" and "we blacks," identifying themselves as a group who need special consideration -- then take offense when whites make generalizations about black behavior or speak of "you people."

The writers of the three books reviewed above, especially Du Bois and Johnson, dealt mostly with the lives of individuals, and they rather reluctantly addressed group characteristics. When they did, they cited beneficial, harmful, pleasant, ugly, gentle, coarse characteristics of blacks. Du Bois went so far as to assign percentages: a talented ten percent at one end and nine percent "lewd and vicious" at the other end. Martin Luther King stressed the need to modify some black behavior (see his comment in the column at right).

In 13 chapters and using 2,198 chapter end-notes, D'Souza makes such statements, references, and inferences as the following.

"Black rage, white backlash, liberal despair": Blacks, including middle- and upper-class, are angry that civil rights laws and developments have not completely eliminated racism; Whites are challenging oals and quotas and affirmative action in general, claiming "reverse discrimination"; Liberals can't understand what went wrong, why so many blacks continue to live in dysfunctional cultures.
Studies of group intelligence conducted in modern times -- by Americans, Europeans, Japanese -- repeatedly give the same results: Asians the smartest, whites in between, blacks last. Earlier studies by some WASPS "proved" that White Anglo Saxon Protestants are superior to blacks, Russians, Italians, Hungarians -- everybody else.
Afrocentrism closely parallels white racism.
5,000 years after the wheel had been invented (probably in Mesopotamia) it remained unknown in Africa.
It was the Portuguese who arrived on the shores of black Africa, not black Africans who journeyed to Europe.
When whites first encountered Australian aborigines, the natives had not yet developed the bow and arrow.
[Some writers maintained] the Irish were the most barbarian people in the world. In the American South, a black slave was considered more valuable than an Irish laborer. The Irish were assigned the more dangerous work.
When whites cluster, it's segregation; when blacks do, it's a support group.
American Indians practiced slavery long before Columbus arrived.
U.S. State Department is forced to lower employment standards because so few African Americans speak foreign languages . . . Blacks prefer soft sciences, sociology. and have few doctorates in science, engineering, economics, language.
"So if Hill Street Blues was racist because it portrayed black criminals, and the Cosby Show was racist because it did not, is it possible to arrive at agreement on what constitutes nonracist television?"
Intermarriage is making it less and less useful for the government to collect racial statistics or to create race-based programs.
[Aryan racist writer] Gobineau asks where is the American Indian or African version of Caesar, Newton, Charlemagne, Homer?
Southern slavery led to a lackadaisical approach to punctuality and hard work" -- among slaves and masters both.
African Blacks fought the early anti-slavery movements. Tribal leaders in Gambia, the Congo, Dahomey, and other African nations "that had prospered under the slave trade" sent delegations to Europe to "vigorously protest the abolition of slavery."
Those who would suggest that there is a difference between goals and quotas cannot distinguish between a push and a shove.
[French writer Anatole Fance] "The law . . . equally forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges and to steal bread."
Poor blacks are now a minority of African Americans.
The Nation of Islam does good, social, things. That was also true of the fascists in Germany and Italy.
IQ should not be confused with morality.
If race concepts are fictional, there is no logical basis for civil rights laws.
Nature vs. nurture; evolution; ice people; sun people -- attempts to explain differences between races.
We have witnessed "nothing less than a breakdown of civilization within the African American community. . . . Are there cultural factors which reduce a race's "civilizational" abilities?
If racism was not the primary obstacle currently facing blacks, many in the civil rights movement would have to find something to do.
[Citing Alice Walker] Single motherhood is an honor able vocation for African Americans and the European tradition of marriage is obsolete and should be abolished.
Proportional representation erodes the principle of merit. People should be able to live with the results if they are assured of equality of rights.

D'Souza mentions Jesse Jackson's comment of feeling relieved when the footsteps he heard belonged to whites; then the writer reports Jack's retraction/clarification of that remark.

D'Souza uses terms like "rational discrimination" to contend that real data justify some qualifications -- when seeking a mortgage, for example. He contends that groups do differ; they go into different occupations, different sports. He thinks it is too conveniently one-sided for blacks to charge "institutional racism" when results don't equate to "proportional representation."

The writer expresses concern that today's American Blacks seem polarized among themselves: historically, are they still choosing between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington (see above)? currently, can they not resolve their differences between achieving Martin Luther King's color-blind society and suspecting that a color-blind society would be racially biased against blacks.

(continued at bottom of column at right)

D'Souza quotes others
(some samples)

Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands . . . . Notwithstanding the cruelty and morally wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. -- Booker T. Washington

At some future period, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. -- Charles Darwin

Du Bois was a creation of Europe and Harvard, but Booker T. stayed close to the land. He was one of us. Instead of following his example, instead of building ourselves as a people, we have this generation of self-promoting octoroons who are making a good living by playing the white man. Is this how we advance the race: by wailing and crying? -- Elizabeth Wright

We must not let the fact that we are the victims of injustice lull us into abrogating our responsibility for our own lives. We must not use our oppression as an excuse for mediocrity and laziness. Our crime rate it too high. Our level of cleanliness is frequently far too low. We are too often loud and boisterous, and spend far too much on drink. By improving our standards here and now, we will go a long way toward breaking down the arguments of the segregationist. -- Martin Luther King

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. -- Booker T. Washington

There is nothing more painful for me than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery, and then see it's somebody white and feel relieved. -- Jesse Jackson

Show me the Proust of the Papuans and I'll read him. -- Saul Bellow

If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? -- Sister Souljah

We do not want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. -- Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood

The little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. Why are we hanging onto it, I don't know. I don't think a female running the house is a problem. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. . . . The child's not going to hurt the women. Who cares about the schedule? What is this business that you have to finish high school at 18? The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then. I want to take them all in my arms and say: Your baby is beautiful and so are you. . . . And when you want to be a brain surgeon, call me - I will take care of your baby. -- Toni Morrison

Black American ethnicity has encouraged the intellectual reinforcement of aspects of black life that are just plain rotten. The street culture of petty crime, drug addiction, paternal irresponsibility, whoring, pimping, and superfly inanity, all of which damage and destroy fellow blacks, instead of being condemned by black ethnic leaders has, until recently, been hailed as the embodiment of black soul. -- Orlando Patterson

The most illiterate among them is related, in a way that I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me. Out of their hymns and dances came Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in their full glory -- but I am in Africa, watching as the conquerors arrive. -- James Baldwin

(continued from column at left)

One can empathize and sympathize with the black scholar who said of The End of Racism that the book . . .

". . . is wrong, dead wrong, on almost every topic it discusses and the explanations it offers. Yet it is an entrancing book, and I could not put it down. If I found myself arguing with every sentence, that shows how Dinesh D'Souza compels his readers to reassess their own assumptions."

Animal Farm, by George Orwell
This may be the fourth time I have read Animal Farm; it was published in 1946. I pick up the 118-page novel of social/political comment when I need to take a break from heavier reading. By now, even those who have never read Orwell are familiar with phrases like, "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others" and "Four legs good, two legs bad."

The animals, led by the pigs, revolted, drove their human owner off the farm, and established their own society and government. The last of the Seven Commandments they adopted stated, "All animals are created equal."

As the months and years passed, all except the pigs were puzzled by changes in the rules, by unexplained happenings, by being told that all except the pigs were incorrectly remembering their early history. The pigs moved into the farm house, began to wear clothes -- violating the 3rd commandment; slept in beds (4th); drank alcohol (5th). A "traitor" was executed, violating the Sixth Commandment, "No animal shall kill any other animal." The pigs began to walk erect, and the new slogan became, "Four legs good, two legs better."

Memories and eyesight began failing as the animals aged, so the non-pigs -- watching a card game through the window --noticed without comment that after the head pig and a human had each played an ace of spades simultaneously a loud argument ensued, and the faces of the clothed and erect pigs changed so much that the non-pigs couldn't be sure which in the room were animals and which were human.