Book Review:

Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law

by Leah Rothstein and Richard Rothstein

352 pages. W.W. Norton, 2023. Hardcover, $25.00

In his best-selling book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (W.W. Norton, 2017), Richard Rothstein provided “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to the reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). This book discusses specific instances, strategies, and organizations that are successfully working to reduce housing segregation. According to Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance: Just Action "contains plain, concrete actions we can take to be agents of change in the neighborhoods where we live, moving our nation closer to the ideals upon which it was founded. Just Action is the book America needs for this moment." 

Sources:

https://www.justactionbook.org/

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324093244.

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Action-Challenge-Segregation-Enacted/dp/1324093242

 Book Review

A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal

Elie Wiesel, fwd. Little, Brown and Company: 2009. Pp xvi, 228. $24.99.

This memoir by the late Thomas Buergenthal (1934-2023), a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague as well as in several other human rights courts, tells how his survival of Auschwitz which he entered at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp influenced his long career as a stellar human rights lawyer and advocate. As the Amazon book description concludes: "A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all."

"It was more than luck and the good for­tune of his ​“Aryan” fea­tures that enabled him to sur­vive the war — it was his strength, wis­dom, and enor­mous faith that he would one day sur­vive and be reunit­ed with his parents. Amaz­ing­ly, Thomas was reunit­ed with his moth­er short­ly after the war and then moved to the Unit­ed States and began a career as lawyer and then as a judge. He has ded­i­cat­ed his career to fight­ing against the human rights vio­la­tions that he expe­ri­enced as a child."

*****

Sources:

(1) Amazon book description.

(2) Read the book review in ReformJudaism.org.

(3) Read the December 22, 2011 Jewish Book Council book review.

(4) Photo courtesy of Amazon.com.

 Book Review

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together 

by Heather McGhee 

One World, 2021

448 pages. Hardcover, $28.00

This book is by the former president of the progressive think tank Demos, and current chair of the board of Color of Change, a nationwide online racial justice organization. Read a February 17, 202 NPR interview with the author. McGhee examines both the macro and micro sides of inequality and who is damaged by racism and possible ways to lessen the problems. In addition to the most current statistics and information about racism and its damages, the book has a series of interviews all over the U.S. with those people affected by and those denying racism and its consequences.

Her book has been popular and widely praised because it challenges the actions and opinions of both advocates for dismantling racism as well as those denying problems exist. It was a New York Times bestseller, was longlisted for the National Book Award; won the Porchlight Business Book award; cited as one of the best books of the years by Time, the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal, etc. Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, said “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”

“[McGhee] takes readers on an intimate odyssey across our country’s racial divide to explore why some believe that progress for some comes at the expense of others. Along the way, McGhee speaks with white people who confide in her about losing jobs, homes, and hope, and considers white supremacy’s collateral victims. Ultimately, McGhee—a Black woman viewing multiracial America with startling empathy—finds proof of what she terms the Solidarity Dividend: the momentous benefits that derive when people come together across race. A powerful, singular, and prescriptive blend of the macro and the intimate.” O: The Oprah Magazine.

 Book Review

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation 

by Linda Villarosa. Doubleday: 2022. 288 pages. $30.00, hardcover.

From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the newspaper's 1619 Project*, this book discusses the extent of racial health disparities in the U.S., showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the nation's health. It is a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. Oprah Daily calls it: "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."

Linda Villarosa's 2018 New York Times Magazine article on the poor maternal and infant mortality of black mothers and babies was important because it showed that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education. Many studies had previously linked racial discrimination and  Black Americans' health, but this one revealed the extent of the problem. 

This book examines the forces in the American health-care system and in society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to whites. For example, many of today's medical texts and instruments still assume that Black bodies are basically different from white bodies. 

This book personalizes and adds to the many studies that have documented that there is worse medical treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Because of housing discrimination and income, Blacks live in dirtier, more polluted communities - and contribute to the problems that need solution. 

* The 1619 Project is "an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."

 Book Review

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

By Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields.

Verso, 2022 (2014). 310 pages, $19.95 paperback.

Just out in paperback, this edition of a widely praised work on race and racism is as British historian Robin Blackburn - author of The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation And Human Rights (Versdo, 2013) - has remarked:

“A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in a novel, urgent, and compelling way. The authors dispel this myth by squarely addressing the paradox that racism is scientifically discredited but, like witchcraft before it, retains a social rationale in societies that remain highly unequal and averse to sufficiently critical engagement with their own history and traditions.”

Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue that though most people assume racism comes from a perception of human difference, the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” This is so entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. Racecraft is so much a continuing part of American history, economic doctrine, politics, and daily thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

The authors hold that the reason that the promised post-racial age has not begun is partly because Americans have failed to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. Until this is done, the racial age will continue.

 Book Review

The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives

by Adolph L. Reed, Jr.

Verso, 2022. 160 pages, $24.95 hardcover.

This is an interesting narrative account of the South's long history of Jim Crow as people actually experienced it. This is important to relate because the last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon pass on. The Jim Crow era's segregation order was complex and an apartheid system. This book uses first-hand individual stories and analysis to illuminate its legal framework, systems of power, and the way these systems structured the daily interactions, lives, and fates of ordinary working people. Reed's book includes a foreword from Barbara Fields, co-author of the excellent Racecraft:The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Verso, 2014) - which also is reviewed in this Blog.

The author Adolph Reed Jr. is a leading scholar of race, American politics, and inequality. Reed is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and has held positions at Yale, Northwestern, and the New School. He is a lifelong organizer and public intellectual, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and a frequent contributor to Harpers and The Nation.

Book Review

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality

by Tomiko Brown-Nagin. 512 pages. Pantheon: 2022. Kindle $14.99, Hardover $30.00.

This is the first major biography of one of an extremely influential judges who was an activist lawyer and became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary, serving as a U.S. District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“A must read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill.

The author is the Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin.

Motley (1921-2005) was born to a blue-collar family in New Haven, Connecticut, during the Great Depression. In 1945, during Baker's second year at Columbia Law School, future United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall hired her as a law clerk. She worked on court martial cases that were filed after World War II. After graduating from Columbia's Law School in 1946, Baker became a civil rights lawyer anjd the first female lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). As Associate Counsel to the LDF, she was the lead trial attorney in several early and historically important civil rights cases including representing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers. She visited Rev. King Jr. when he was in jail, as well as spent a night with civil rights activist Medgar Evers under armed guard. In 1950, she wrote the original complaint in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Among other achievements, she was the first black woman to argue a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund then, she defended the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, and was a central force in ending Jim Crow laws in the South. Motley also was the first black woman elected to the State Senate in New York (21st district) and the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President.

*****

Sources:

 "Motley, Constance Baker - Federal Judicial Center". www.fjc.gov.

 Mrs. Motley Inducted as Federal Judge in The New York Times on September 10, 1966 

 "Rep. Rangel Introduces Resolution Recognizing Life, Achievements of U.S. District Court Judge." US Fed News Service, Including US State News, Feb 28, 2007.