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jared_davis's review
I think what bothers some readers, myself included, is how academic Gates' and West's essays are. They're the two greatest-living Black scholars in America, and they take up the legendary W.E.B Du Bois' notion of "The Talented Tenth" with the necessary measure of a century worth of progress, strife, disappointment, triumph, and greif. Gates and West dutifully counter Du Bois knowing full-well that "race" is a pernitious social construct; and they do so knowing how much damage that construct, one among many unhealthy social habits in American society, has done to many people, themselves included. But must Gates and West be so.... dry? Maybe. Or maybe I should look to Dr King, or Malcolm X, or President Obama for inspiration? (each in his own, very different manner and methods, of course).
Style complaints aside, this book serves its purpose extremely well-- a retrospective of the "Talented Tenth" after Brown v Board, after Rosa Parks, after the Freedom Riders, after the Civil Rights Act, after Voting Rights Act, after the War on Poverty, War on Crime, War on Drugs, after affirmative action, and before the first Black President and his, ahem, Orange antithesis.
Style complaints aside, this book serves its purpose extremely well-- a retrospective of the "Talented Tenth" after Brown v Board, after Rosa Parks, after the Freedom Riders, after the Civil Rights Act, after Voting Rights Act, after the War on Poverty, War on Crime, War on Drugs, after affirmative action, and before the first Black President and his, ahem, Orange antithesis.
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