Prometheus 6

Now you've got me wanting to read it!

I guess that means I'll have to say something about it when I'm done.I was gonna tgry to instigate and stay above the fray, but…

My interest is waning fast. Skimming through a few favorable reviews of the book I find references to isolated cases of bizarre behavior by members of Ms. Dickerson's demographic bracket (e.g, "ghetto camps"). She lards her book with two dozen examples of anecdotes of Americans behaving so weirdly or perversely no one could possibly approve. She then explain to readers that this represents some idee fixe of the African American community.

I don't see why her book should disturb very many people; I certainly wouldn't expect any educated African American, selected at random, to approve of everthing the community did or failed to do.

Humans will always seek an end to injustice. If the injustice is racial, then the reflex will be every bit as profound. Injustice is intolerable and if ignored, tends to become worse if it is accepted. Personally, I deduced that Ms. Dickerson represents a privileged and sequestered segment of the African American community whose economic and career interests would be served if de facto ethnic segregation were to make a comeback.

I will definitely have to review it.

Having never heard of her, I read the synopsis of the book on her web site and found echoes of some of my own thoughts. That and a longish interview on KPFA inform my approach to the book. The reviews I've read don't even approach what I think is her purpose in writing the book.

I understand but--she rattles off a list of things that whites will "never" do. All the while the proportion of whites and blacks in the US population declines. Hispanics are overtaking blacks and whites (demographically) in the nation's major urban centers; the new "man' (as in, "going to meet the" is as likely to be Korean or Vietnamese as white), and there's the gigantic elephant in the bathroom no one's willing to discuss--the extreme fragmentation in the AA community, something that's been the case since before the Civil War. In 60 years or so the notion of society divided between whites and blacks will be as applicable here as it will be to Pakistan.