A review by se_wigget
We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Tonya Bolden, Carol Anderson

5.0

 

Picking the book up to begin reading it, I finally noticed this is a YA version of White Rage, which I already read... but that's okay. It's worth reading this version, too, and it's been a while since I read the adult version. 

 

I think the title White Rage is more appropriate, since the book is largely about how white people get enraged in reaction to black success. 

 

This needs to be required reading in all U. S. high schools--along with A People's History of the United States. Admittedly, it's profoundly disturbing to read about lynchings and such, but I think that's what it takes to get it through white people's heads. 

 

I got this book for a book discussion group inspired by the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. We read books on suffragists... followed by books on civil rights (including voting rights and voter suppression). 

 

If Andrew Jackson were alive today, he'd wear a MAGA hat. This shitcountry doesn't change, and I'm ashamed of being white (but not ashamed of being Celtic and Ashkenazi, though officially both are white). 

 

"Black gains, it was assumed, could come only only at white people's expense." WTF. Freedom isn't like a pie, assholes; you don't slice it up and run out of slices. This bizarre belief in scarcity so common in this country of narcissists and sociopaths is really fucking old and makes no fucking sense. Fucking look up the word "interconnected" in a dictionary, assholes. I was utterly baffled when one of my most evil relatives, Aunt Asshole--who made many overtly racist comments--spouting bizarre homophobic drivel that included something about "taking away my way of life." What the fuck?!? Just because, horrors, not everyone is heteronormative doesn't have any fucking thing to do with taking away your narcissistic bigot way of life. Evil, stupid, and insane--those words popped into my head countless times before I went No-Contact with most relatives. 

Okay, I didn't know I was going to make such a long rant--better post this on my blog. 

 

"In addition to blocking access to the polls, the GOP [Gross Old Parasites] disillusioned voters by making the very function of government so distasteful that only the most diehard idealists or craven partisans would even bother to vote." 

--We Are Not Yet Equal, by Carol Anderson 

 

It's whiplash alternating reading history books like this... and reading news about systemic racism and violence against black people happening today. Last week white supremacists shot a black jogger to death, and today a white cop killed a black man. Things need to change drastically.