An accessible introduction to institutional racism in the United States and its ongoing effects.
A psychiatrist explores the legacy of American racism in this second edition of his nonfiction book.
“The problem with America is not that there are too many non-White people,” author D’Agostino asserts. “The problem is that White people are afraid of change and have given up on democracy.” As a white Catholic born in 1940s Chicago, the author notes, he “almost always voted Republican” in Illinois state elections, and he sees himself as “representative of elderly White American males.” After the election of Donald Trump and the growth of the racial justice movement after the death of George Floyd, the author began a journey of self-reflection and contemplation about race in America. The book includes a discussion of how he grappled with Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility (2018), and explicitly offers white readers a “primer” on how America’s racial history continues to affect the present. The book’s emphasis on precise terminology will be useful for readers who are unfamiliar. This well-researched book draws on the work of contemporary academics who challenge the conflation of the term racism with prejudice. Prejudice, they note, refers to an unfavorable opinion towards a group, often based on stereotypes, but racism historically manifests as an institutionalized doctrine through government policy. Much of the book centers on the American history of Black and white people, but D’Agostino also devotes chapters in this updated edition to prejudices against women, immigrants, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ communities.
The author has a solid grasp of U.S. history and uses it to explore such topics as the connection between wartime propaganda and Japanese internment camps, and the role of the eugenics movement in fostering racist policies. Perhaps most convincing is the book’s argument that there’s “both financial and political gain in maintaining inequality, and racial inequality sells best,” noting that for many white men, there’s a “tangible benefit” in preserving the status quo. This is the reason, according to the author, that many white Christians “are willing to give up on democracy” to embrace an “authoritarian government,” as they see it as their “only way to preserve their vision of culture.” The book won’t be revelatory for readers who are already aware of the insidious legacy of racism, but it excels at introducing the subject to its intended audience of skeptical white men. Its concluding chapter, “The White Man’s Dilemma,” offers a poignant reflection on the concept of white guilt, highlighting differences between guilt and shame and reminding readers that the purpose of the latter is to “behave better in the present.” D’Agostino admits that he’s not a scholar on the subject of racism or prejudice, but his background as a medical doctor and former president of the Illinois Psychiatric Society brings a learned approach, which blends nuanced analysis with a down-to-earth, conversational writing style. The stories of his personal history with race and prejudice may not appeal to those whose backgrounds and identities differ from his, but they may offer a valuable perspective to his target audience.
An accessible introduction to institutional racism in the United States and its ongoing effects.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798886546453
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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