Reading Period: August 11 - Present
1. How the Word is Passed (A), by Clint Smith
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55643287-how-the-word-is-passed
Very emotionally resonant book, I could hear Clint's passion in every sentence. I liked Between The World and Me a lot better, a book with similar themes, but this one still packed quite the punch. This book is certainly very good. But it is first worth mentioning that it sustains an extremely high Goodreads rating, and with any book of this topic it's hard to know if this means anything. My worry with picking up a book like this is that I get hit with a book of little intellectual value that maintains high ratings due to audience capture or political signposting. The books of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, for example, have been said to maintain their status not by their inherit merit but by their signaling. As another example, you can imagine not many moderates/leftists reads far-right literature, so reviews of far-right books will be heavily skewed/praiseworthy.
There were a few moments when the book clearly leans into modern political rhetoric, such as this statement: "Which meant he needed significant republican support. These were people who had built careers on political ideas that were harmful to black people." Both "build careers on" and "ideas" here, in particular, strike me as interesting. It is not surprising that Clint thinks modern republicans are bad (pro-policing, anti-DEI, economic status-quo), but Clint claims the "ideas" are harmful. People like Thomas Sowell would disagree, and there is enough nuance here that if not uncharitable, the claim is at the very least rhetorically ineffective. Clint also states that "I asked him if there would ever be an America in which White Americans were not actively working to keep themselves positioned atop the nations racial hierarchy." I am not certain what "actively working" means here, and it seems to convey that Clint sees modern racial issues as explicit oppression (rather than simply passive "working", like being against DEI). This is a totally fine statement for him to make; I include it because once I read it, I understood the book a lot better. The history of slavery has shaped Clint's view of the world, and the book is in a sense grappling with stories that explain to the reader how this legacy survives in the modern era (which is not far removed). Clint also states something along the lines of "did people come together in 1776 and make some pretty radical ideas, yeah", but actually this form of government is not novel and we cannot forgive the sins of the slave-owning founding fathers etc. I think he underrates the concept of individual liberty here, and how the US sparked a surge of democracy and revolution for the oppressed around the world, even if we concede the words here were written by imperfect and perhaps entirely immoral people.
Also, it's distressing to hear the rhetoric of groups like the "Sons of the confederacy" in this book, but one can argue that these people are bottom-of-the-barrel stupid and don't represent any significant slice of the American populace. A better tell for widespread racism is the fact that some crazy high number of white Americans (maybe around ~10%) wouldn't want their child dating someone of a different race. Now some of this may not be as racist as it seems (a Polish grandmother for example wanting to continue the Polish bloodline and not approving a marriage to an Irish-Catholic), but there's certainly a hell of a lot of racism. Clint sees the removal of statues of historical figures with Confederacy/slaveholding ties as important, and is distressed that there is resistance to this. I'd argue most people don't care and many just see it hard to draw the line (and removing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues would seem strange). I'm personally fine with removing Confederate statues, but I don't see it as a very important milestone in the greater fight against injustice, there are many other battles on this front I'd rather be fought. And this is coming from someone who is only lightly opposed to Sherman's March Part II, where us northerners take another victory lap and go through and burn the South once again.
The central error that I believe Clint makes is over-extrapolating historical injustice to political issues he currently cares about. In a society where virtually everybody dramatically and horrifically under-extrapolates this injustice, this is far from a sin. But I actually think it hurts his message quite considerably. In some ways we devalue the horrors of slavery when we equate them to modern criminal justice reform. It's not uncommon to compare the plight of slavery with those on death row, but it should be. I have lawyer friends who have spent countless hours pro-bono in Texas seeking to get innocent people off of death row, and its obvious that a lot of public uproar from these cases tends to be regarding those wrongly convinced. But Clint ignores this aspect, and draws many parallels between guilty criminals and slaves. Clint quotes a prisoner who states he believes he's "going through the very same thing folks fought and died for." Clint also details the gruesome death-penalty-deaths of a variety of individuals, and points out how quickly the jury deliberated on some of these cases as a point to continued current racism. But it's hard to avoid confronting the conservative talking point here. Which is this: guilty people on death row are not slaves, they are there because they murdered innocent women and children; drawing this parallel is unhelpful. I am not making this claim, but Clint makes no effort to counteract this obvious argument. Many of the death row case examples he gives don't survive this "Fox News" style layup: I looked up the most egregious case Clint highlights, and it was for a man who murdered his kids. Now, the current US prison system will certainly be looked upon with horror in future generations. In addition to racial injustice, the mere conditions in which an average prisoner has to endure (even if guilty) are horrific and distressing. In some sense this book is right up my political-viewpoint alley, but I think Clint stretches too much here in order to make a point.
This all being said, the book shines when discussing with unflinching honestly how horrific the institutionalized system of slavery was. And this discussion is so well written and well argued that I'd argue that this book should be required reading in every high school. Clint does a phenomenal job with his historical analysis that its hard not to feel a whiplash of emotions with every page. He states that slavery wasn't simply a dehumanization, it depended on human sentience. It required a subject that could be terrorized, and essentially oppressed and tortured into submission. This wouldn't work with a machine, the slaveholders needed the power dynamic of crushing a human soul in order to maintain such a horrific hellscape of immorality decade after decade. The sheer evil apparent in this system is so baffling, so unbelievably inexcusable, it makes me want to renounce my "humanity," whatever that is.
2. Letter from the Birmingham Jail (P), by Martin Luther King Jr.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203899.Letter_from_the_Birmingham_Jail
"We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is Freedom."
MLK is certainly an incredible writer. Well reasoned, convincing, and inspiring. He states that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere" and "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Similar to Civil Disobedience, MLK states that "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law." He also states that the police officers cracking down on "illegal" protests are using "moral means to preserve immoral ends." What is more immoral, to peacefully protest segregation in the streets, or to arrest and break up these protests in order to uphold a wildly evil and immoral system of institutionalized racism?
I found MLK's religious rhetoric convincing, and resonated with a fairly long criticism he leveled against the church:
"There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought and end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."
3. Sixth of the Dusk (P), by Brandon Sanderson
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23397921-sixth-of-the-dusk
Quite the change of pace. Another great novella from Sanderson, not much else to say.
3. Pale Blue Dot (P), by Carl Sagan
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61663.Pale_Blue_Dot
Took me a while to finish, but overall enjoyed it. The first chapter is incredibly convincing detailing
"On the scale of worlds - to say nothing of stars and galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal."
"If I had to guess - especially considering our long sequence of failed chauvinisms - I would guess that the Universe is filled with beings far more intelligent, far more advanced than we are."
"We lack consensus about our place in the Universe. There is no generally agreed upon long-term vision of the goal of our species - other than, perhaps, simple survival."
"'I... had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before,' wrote Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century explorer of the Pacific, 'but as far as it was possible for man to go.'"
"Not only do we often ignore the warnings of the oracles; characteristically we do not even consult them."
"Their eventual choice, as ours, is spaceflight or extinction."
"Nuclear weapons were invented in 1945. It took until 1983 before the global consequences of thermonuclear war were understood."
"We are sometimes told that this or that invention would of course not be misused. No sane person would be so reckless. This is the 'only a madman' argument. Whenever I hear it (and it's often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really do exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations. This is the century of Hitler and Stalin, tyrants who posed the gravest dangers not just to the rest of the human family, but to their own people as well. In the winter and spring of 1945, Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed - even 'what the people need for elementary survival' - because the surviving Germans had 'betrayed' him, adn at any rate were 'inferior' to those who had already died. If Hitler had nuclear weapons, the threat of a counterstrike by Allied nuclear weapons, had there been any, is unlikely to have dissuaded him. It might have encouraged him."
