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We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon’ Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism.
Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.
Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.
192 pages, Paperback
First published September 13, 2016
About the author
Jeff Chang
25 books379 followersJeff Chang has written extensively on culture, politics, the arts, and music.
His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, won the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Slate named it one of the best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Powell’s’ Books chose it as one of their 50 most important books of the past 50 years. A new revised Young Adult edition of the book—co-written with legendary hip-hop journalist Dave “Davey D” Cook—was published in 2021.
Who We Be: The Colorization of America (St. Martin’s Press) was released on October 2014, to critical acclaim. It was published in paperback in January 2016 under the new title, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America (Picador). The book won the Ray + Pat Browne Award for Best Work in Popular Culture and American Culture and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Books For A Better Life Award. He also edited the book, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop.
We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation (Picador), was published in September 2016 on Picador. It was named the Northern California Nonfiction Book Of The Year, and the Washington Post declared it “the smartest book of the year.” In May 2019, he and director Bao Nguyen created a four-episode digital series adaptation of the book for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. His next project is a cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner/HarperCollins). You can find a list of all his books in print here.
Jeff is featured in the PBS documentary series, Asian Americans. Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke (now the Center for Cultural Power), ColorLines, and the Webby-nominated May 19th Project. Recently he helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.
Jeff has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He was named by The Utne Reader as one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” by KQED as an Asian Pacific American Local Hero, and by the Yerba Buena Center for The Arts to its YBCA 100 list of those “shaping the future of American culture.”
He was named to the Frederick Douglass 200, as one of “200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass.” Recently he helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.
He has also been a winner of the North Star News Prize. With H. Samy Alim, he received the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award at Stanford University.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, he is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, won the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Slate named it one of the best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Powell’s’ Books chose it as one of their 50 most important books of the past 50 years. A new revised Young Adult edition of the book—co-written with legendary hip-hop journalist Dave “Davey D” Cook—was published in 2021.
Who We Be: The Colorization of America (St. Martin’s Press) was released on October 2014, to critical acclaim. It was published in paperback in January 2016 under the new title, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America (Picador). The book won the Ray + Pat Browne Award for Best Work in Popular Culture and American Culture and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Books For A Better Life Award. He also edited the book, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop.
We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation (Picador), was published in September 2016 on Picador. It was named the Northern California Nonfiction Book Of The Year, and the Washington Post declared it “the smartest book of the year.” In May 2019, he and director Bao Nguyen created a four-episode digital series adaptation of the book for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. His next project is a cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner/HarperCollins). You can find a list of all his books in print here.
Jeff is featured in the PBS documentary series, Asian Americans. Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke (now the Center for Cultural Power), ColorLines, and the Webby-nominated May 19th Project. Recently he helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.
Jeff has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He was named by The Utne Reader as one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” by KQED as an Asian Pacific American Local Hero, and by the Yerba Buena Center for The Arts to its YBCA 100 list of those “shaping the future of American culture.”
He was named to the Frederick Douglass 200, as one of “200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass.” Recently he helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.
He has also been a winner of the North Star News Prize. With H. Samy Alim, he received the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award at Stanford University.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, he is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
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September 12, 2023
The xenophobic tirade that Asians have been enduring in the western countries during this COVID-19 pandemic is a plaintive situation. The world dolefully watched the bigotry and desire to tarnish the Asian community by using pejorative words against them by few racist people. Some profligate rapacious bunch is trying to damage the reputation acquired by the extraordinary work done by some great personalities against racism in the past in countries like America. The shooting of six Asian American women in Atlanta was the most recent among those incidents. The Chinese government indeed failed to handle the coronavirus situation intelligently. But killing Asians on that name is ludicrous.
Even though this book was written five years ago, the journalist Jeff Chang's cogent essays ventilate many vital topics. It is also discussing the problems faced by the African Americans and Black Lives Matter movement in detail.
What I learned from this book
1) Racism
Oxford learner's dictionary defines racism as, the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race; violent behavior towards them. The term racism has become the topic of discussion due to recent events. It has become inevitable to analyze racism from an Asian perspective, and Chang chronicles it magnificently through this book.
"Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Glimore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are 'vulnerable to premature death,' whether at the hands of the state or structures that kill."
2) AAPI hate
AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) hate has caused massive campaigns all over the USA. It is where books like this become inevitable to read.
"Protests of moral and historic force begins with people facing extreme vulnerability. For those who have been silenced, rising to active speaking is a high climb indeed. For them, protest is not an expression of fear and doubt but an overcoming of fear and doubt. And when it comes from those at the bottom, it can be often a profound proposition about how to make it better for all. ”
3) The pursuit of happiness in the American suburbs
Affordability, healthier lifestyle, better education, close-knit neighborhoods are all the reasons why many Americans preferred to live in the suburbs. The advantages of living in the neighborhood were high that it eclipsed the few disadvantages like the longer private commute to work. This is the brighter side of the suburban lifestyle.
The darker side of the suburban lifestyle was revealed during the first decade of the 21st century when there was the American foreclosure crisis. Subprime lending and ensuing foreclosures were highly racialized processes. Residential segregation and neighborhoods in the suburbs created a unique group of people who were targeted for risky subprime loans. The pursuit of happiness in the American suburbs proved very costly for the Asian and black population in the USA.
"The foreclosure crisis revealed that high-income blacks were not protected from racist and predatory housing and lending practices, nor were Latino and Asian American home purchasers. So when the crash came, blacks and Latinos were 70% more likely to lose their homes due to foreclosure. A national study that examined almost all the foreclosures between 2005 and 2009 found unequivocally that the highest rates of foreclosure were in racially integrated neighborhoods. Since the single biggest asset for an overwhelming majority of the household of color was their home, the national wealth gap between whites and all other racial groups was larger than ever. Between 2005 and 2009 White household net worth dropped by 16% but plunged 53% for Blacks, 54% for Asians and 66% for Latinos.”
My favourite three lines from this book
“Resegregation matters because it pulls communities and regions downward, and because it impacts us not just right now, but the life chances of those not yet born.”
"A turn in fortune should move us toward empathy and solidarity....But we live in a time when merchants of division draw us away from mutuality and toward the undoing of democracy itself."
"The truth would be difficult to speak, but it would be necessary to begin to right the wrongs done to Blacks and Coloureds. Reconciliation would not be a gift, but an 'exchange for truth.' In other words, peace and justice are inseparable from each other."
What could have been better?
The only complaint I have with this book is that the publishers didn't correctly market this book to ensure that it got the necessary attention it deserved as it is dealing with a vital topic that should be read and discussed in depth.
Rating
5/5 This book is an imperative polemic that everyone should read to prevent further racist attacks and make this world a better place to live.
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February 4, 2018
4.75 stars. So good. My only issue, which isn't all that big of an issue as you can see by my rating, is it was a bit disjointed at times where he'd go back and forth between certain events in different years. Other than that, I really enjoyed this and can see myself re-reading it in the future.
A couple of things this collection of essays covers:
Diversity- its meaning and purpose but ultimate exploitation (continued exclusion while under the illusion of diversity)
Asian Americans- their "in-betweeness" as they are POC but are the most socially accepted by white America and often separate themselves from the "Others" either accidental or to obtain white privilege
White Flight- concentrated areas where white people have put down roots until POC move in, which then leads to mass exodus and allocation of money and resources. Or, as John Oliver once comically put it, "Funding tends to follow white people around the way white people follow the band Phish around." I don't know if that last part is true as I have never heard of Phish
#OscarsSoWhite#NotYourMule- a discussion on solidarity and how to be better at it. I'll just use a quote from the book. "...a misplaced anger about [Chris] Rock's omission, or, worse, an aggrandizing 'what about me' ethnic solipsism, an expression of non-black entitlement. As Kendall put it, 'Solidarity doesn't look like black people taking the risks & everyone else reaping the rewards'... reminded non-black people of color of the central role black protest and creative expression has played in moving us all toward cultural equity." My dad once told me that there is an old saying(apologies in advance about the "yellow" term but that's how the saying went):
If you're white, you're alright
If you're yellow, you're mellow
If you're brown, stick around
If you're black, get back
It depicts a hierarchy of race that continues to exist decades since this saying was first created and the song first sung. While black people have been fighting this fight for a long time it has helped move all of us forward, but a lot of the time black people still remain at the bottom of the totem pole of social acceptance and progress.
Systemic Racism- police brutality, education, housing discrimination which led to resegregation, etc.
Birth of a Movement- new activist groups and how they came to fruition
I especially liked the essay Vanilla Cities and their Chocolate Suburbs: On Resegregation, as Jeff Chang discusses gentrification among other factors that come into play. I liked it because I can relate to it, and I can relate to it because he uses the San Francisco Bay Area as his point of reference and I'm from the Bay Area so I've been seeing and experiencing these changes firsthand. An overall great; short read that might make you do what I did which is read 30 pages of the library book, realize you can't resist the temptation to use sticky notes, and immediately drive to the bookstore and buy your own copy.
A couple of things this collection of essays covers:
Diversity- its meaning and purpose but ultimate exploitation (continued exclusion while under the illusion of diversity)
Asian Americans- their "in-betweeness" as they are POC but are the most socially accepted by white America and often separate themselves from the "Others" either accidental or to obtain white privilege
White Flight- concentrated areas where white people have put down roots until POC move in, which then leads to mass exodus and allocation of money and resources. Or, as John Oliver once comically put it, "Funding tends to follow white people around the way white people follow the band Phish around." I don't know if that last part is true as I have never heard of Phish
#OscarsSoWhite#NotYourMule- a discussion on solidarity and how to be better at it. I'll just use a quote from the book. "...a misplaced anger about [Chris] Rock's omission, or, worse, an aggrandizing 'what about me' ethnic solipsism, an expression of non-black entitlement. As Kendall put it, 'Solidarity doesn't look like black people taking the risks & everyone else reaping the rewards'... reminded non-black people of color of the central role black protest and creative expression has played in moving us all toward cultural equity." My dad once told me that there is an old saying(apologies in advance about the "yellow" term but that's how the saying went):
If you're white, you're alright
If you're yellow, you're mellow
If you're brown, stick around
If you're black, get back
It depicts a hierarchy of race that continues to exist decades since this saying was first created and the song first sung. While black people have been fighting this fight for a long time it has helped move all of us forward, but a lot of the time black people still remain at the bottom of the totem pole of social acceptance and progress.
Systemic Racism- police brutality, education, housing discrimination which led to resegregation, etc.
Birth of a Movement- new activist groups and how they came to fruition
I especially liked the essay Vanilla Cities and their Chocolate Suburbs: On Resegregation, as Jeff Chang discusses gentrification among other factors that come into play. I liked it because I can relate to it, and I can relate to it because he uses the San Francisco Bay Area as his point of reference and I'm from the Bay Area so I've been seeing and experiencing these changes firsthand. An overall great; short read that might make you do what I did which is read 30 pages of the library book, realize you can't resist the temptation to use sticky notes, and immediately drive to the bookstore and buy your own copy.
September 5, 2022
I liked this book and wanted more from it at the same time. In this essay collection, Jeff Chang writes about a variety of racial topics including police violence and Black Lives Matter, the lack of diversity and representation in media (e.g., #OscarsSoWhite), and resegregation and gentrification. I found his analysis accurate and generally compelling and appreciated that as an Asian American, he delved into topics such as anti-Black racism instead of being silent on the issue.
One thing I wanted more from this book was a deeper analysis of Asian American identity and politics. He does a nice job of naming how expansive “Asian America” is as well as the growing, burgeoning conservative, oftentimes anti-Black movement within some subpopulations of Asian Americans. I desired more from his analysis though, like I wished he included more tangible steps Asian Americans can take to fight anti-Blackness both within and outside of our communities (like some of the resources here) instead of only naming the issue. The whole section on Asian American identity felt a bit distanced because of his choice to use the second person “you” throughout that part instead of the first person. On a separate note, while the information he includes about anti-Black racial injustices is super important, I didn’t feel that they added much beyond what Black writers and artists have already articulated. I may have felt this way because the book came out in 2016 – since then, I think we have moved more toward solutions such as defunding/abolishing the police, reparations, and dismantling racial capitalism.
One thing I wanted more from this book was a deeper analysis of Asian American identity and politics. He does a nice job of naming how expansive “Asian America” is as well as the growing, burgeoning conservative, oftentimes anti-Black movement within some subpopulations of Asian Americans. I desired more from his analysis though, like I wished he included more tangible steps Asian Americans can take to fight anti-Blackness both within and outside of our communities (like some of the resources here) instead of only naming the issue. The whole section on Asian American identity felt a bit distanced because of his choice to use the second person “you” throughout that part instead of the first person. On a separate note, while the information he includes about anti-Black racial injustices is super important, I didn’t feel that they added much beyond what Black writers and artists have already articulated. I may have felt this way because the book came out in 2016 – since then, I think we have moved more toward solutions such as defunding/abolishing the police, reparations, and dismantling racial capitalism.
April 14, 2017
It's hard for me to know what I can say about a book like this that will do it justice. I think literally every American should read this book, and the more you feel like you don't want to, the more you probably should. "The side of love requires that we are uncomfortable."*
September 15, 2017
See my full review: https://youtu.be/nd87beQ941A
Read
January 10, 2017I began this book before the election and felt then that it was an important book, but after the election, it began to feel absolutely essential. It’s an essay collection on race in America and covers debates about diversity, histories of student protest, Black Lives Matter, race and the Oscars, what it means to be Asian American, and a thorough retelling of everything that happened in Ferguson. Chang is an excellent writer — clear, incisive, and moving. Anybody who wants to understand America better needs to read this.
–Rebecca Hussey
from The Best Books We Read In November 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/12/01/the-be...
–Rebecca Hussey
from The Best Books We Read In November 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/12/01/the-be...
January 7, 2017
I was blown away by how good these essays are - concise, easy to follow, and a touch lyrical. Chang is so smart and so good at articulating why true equity matters (spoiler alert: it’s love, and everyone, oppressor and oppressed and in between, deserves it) without getting sentimental. He uses timely headlines (#OscarsSoWhite, Bay Area gentrification, Ferguson, Fresh Off the Boat) as a starting point to show how we got here. The central premise is that when it comes to the push for racial equality, the US has been caught in repeating cycles of extreme crisis, reaction, and then backlash, leading us back to an environment where the next crisis is inevitable. Guess where we are right now?
Another main theme is that diversity in its current form has been commodified at the expense of true equity, while resegregation has crept back into education, the arts, and of course, housing. Within the collection of essays, the piece on Ferguson and Black Lives Matter then functions as the boiling point and the starkest illustration of the impact of inequality. It hurts to read, which it should, e.g., we get a glimpse of the existential, universal questions Mike Brown was mulling over minutes before he was shot by police.
I also appreciated that nothing in Chang’s essays is simple or distilled down to black and white; the notion of micro-aggressions and being in between permeates throughout. The last essay, The In-Betweens, on the weirdness of Asian-American privilege through omission, the often nullifying experience of being neither black nor white in the U.S., is also a good call to action for everyone, both to get off the fence and not to transfer inequity onto someone else’s shoulders.
Despite its title, the book is slim on hope, but another common thread in each essay is where Chang pushes us to imagine how we could be better:
To be honest, it bothers me a lot that this book has been so under the radar. Seriously, why isn't everyone reading this? Yes, it’s uncomfortable and puts us all on the hook, but that’s where we belong. It’s also really fun to read a smart take on Lemonade.
Since Chang is the most articulate advocate for reading his book, here are some excellent interviews he did:
Author Jeff Chang Says People 'Really Want To Have' Conversations On Race
Here's a Really Smart Take on Racial Politics in America Right Now: A Stanford historian interrogates today's tensions
Another main theme is that diversity in its current form has been commodified at the expense of true equity, while resegregation has crept back into education, the arts, and of course, housing. Within the collection of essays, the piece on Ferguson and Black Lives Matter then functions as the boiling point and the starkest illustration of the impact of inequality. It hurts to read, which it should, e.g., we get a glimpse of the existential, universal questions Mike Brown was mulling over minutes before he was shot by police.
I also appreciated that nothing in Chang’s essays is simple or distilled down to black and white; the notion of micro-aggressions and being in between permeates throughout. The last essay, The In-Betweens, on the weirdness of Asian-American privilege through omission, the often nullifying experience of being neither black nor white in the U.S., is also a good call to action for everyone, both to get off the fence and not to transfer inequity onto someone else’s shoulders.
Despite its title, the book is slim on hope, but another common thread in each essay is where Chang pushes us to imagine how we could be better:
The real benefit of a vital, equitable culture lies well beyond the money there is to be made. It offers us a sense of individual worth, bolsters our collective adaptability, and forms a foundation for social progress. In that sense, cultural diversity is just like biodiversity—at its best, it functions like a creative ecosystem. The final product of culture is not a commodity, it is society.
But we are far from that ideal. If cultural activism and justice movements can succeed in decentering whiteness and improving access and representation—and all the evidence suggests that the odds on that are still very long—we will still need to address the ways in which we see each other. Perhaps one day we may no longer need an #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. But we will still have to deal with the kinds of inequities that made #NotYourMule. What, then, will a culture of transformation look like?
To be honest, it bothers me a lot that this book has been so under the radar. Seriously, why isn't everyone reading this? Yes, it’s uncomfortable and puts us all on the hook, but that’s where we belong. It’s also really fun to read a smart take on Lemonade.
Since Chang is the most articulate advocate for reading his book, here are some excellent interviews he did:
Author Jeff Chang Says People 'Really Want To Have' Conversations On Race
Here's a Really Smart Take on Racial Politics in America Right Now: A Stanford historian interrogates today's tensions
February 7, 2017
Required reading for Americans, with Missouri at the center of two essays, suggested ways forward from where we're at, and a fresh way to look at our young. Chang's yet to write a merely good book. I'll follow where he (and the regular, exceptional people he chronicles) want to take me.
September 5, 2016
when a natural disaster tears apart a village, the human tendency is for one neighbor to help another, regardless of whatever feelings they may have had for one another before the catastrophe. but we live in a time when merchants of division draw us away from mutuality and toward the undoing of democracy itself.a series of essays on race and resegregation, jeff chang's new book, we gon' be alright, is a thought-provoking, measured, and perceptive look at post-ferguson america. exploring a variety of subjects, including the 2016 primaries, affirmative action, campus protests, the black lives matter movement, under-representation in the arts, "geographies of inequality," gentrification, displacement, white flight, poverty, racial effects of the great recession, beyoncé's lemonade lp, and the author's own asian-american heritage, chang (author of the incomparable can't stop won't stop: a history of the hip-hop generation ) provides an incisive glimpse into our cultural/national struggles to overcome and contend with our racist past and present. eschewing a polemical approach, we gon' be alright instead chronicles our current social milieu with a patient yet incisive eye, espying clearly the many challenges we face collectively and bringing a critical approach to issues of race, racism, and resegregation. chang's new book is a wonderful, necessary addition to (more personal) recent works exploring race in america (including ta-nehisi coates and mychal denzel smith).
each of us is left with the question: can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way toward freedom for all?
September 11, 2022
one thing that i want to continually challenge myself is to read powerful texts like, 'we gon' be alright' so i can learn and listen to the contemporary voices who bring light to issues of injustice and fucked up shit that are plaguing communities of color, but especially Black and Brown folks.
the last chapter on the 'in-betweeness' of asian americans left me with more questions than answers, but maybe that's the point. it made me reflect on the positionality of my race and privilege in the broader discourse of race. it's complicated, not black and white, but i need to be uncomfortable and be willing to dig deeper--this book was a blatant reminder of that.
anyways, my takeaway is that twitter can only do so much to educate me but this book expands the topics that we've seen/haven't seen.
but read it! please!
the last chapter on the 'in-betweeness' of asian americans left me with more questions than answers, but maybe that's the point. it made me reflect on the positionality of my race and privilege in the broader discourse of race. it's complicated, not black and white, but i need to be uncomfortable and be willing to dig deeper--this book was a blatant reminder of that.
anyways, my takeaway is that twitter can only do so much to educate me but this book expands the topics that we've seen/haven't seen.
but read it! please!
August 28, 2016
We Gon’ Be Alright is a hopeful demand for liberation, not just for those who are oppressed, but also the liberation of the oppressors. Chang believes that we need the grace of truth and love. He finds his inspiration in the works of James Baldwin and the idea that love is not an emotion, but an action. Love must be the motivation for revolution. Black people must love themselves enough to demand liberation not just for them, but also their oppressors. As Baldwin wrote, “To love all is to fight relentlessly to end exploitation and oppression everywhere, even on behalf of those who think they hate us.”
In spite of the search for grace, We Gon’ Be Alright is not even in the slightest a kumbaya, can’t we just all get along, sort of book. It is a collection of essays asking serious questions about how we have gone from 65% of the American people supporting the Civil Rights Act in 1965 to the current process of resegregation that allows many to ignore and disregard black experience.
It opens with noting the hapless cycle of crisis, reaction, backlash, complacency and crisis. There is an outrage. People demand action. Those in power assert the status quo by invoking fear. Interest subsides into denial or helplessness, and then there is another crisis. Every crisis reinforces complacency because the status quo remains. This raises the question, are we “gon’ be alright?”
From there, Chang looks at the shift from affirmative action to diversity. Thanks to the Bakke decision, efforts to increase opportunities for people of color have been made more difficult. It’s as though in the midst of an experiment, the Supreme Court intervened and forced everyone to use the placebo. Justice Powell “disappeared racial exclusion from the history of higher education, and redirected discussion of affirmative action into a decontextualized present. He radically flattened difference. You’re a farm boy. You’re a violinist. You’re a Louisianan. You’re Black. You’re Chicano. He had affirmed that diversity really was for white people.”
He celebrates student protest and makes an eloquent argument for safe spaces and speech codes, reminding us that the reason students of color are demanding this is because they have been assaulted with racist slurs and symbols while school administrators looked away, allowing harassment to continue with impunity. It is a significant indictment of these institutions of higher learning that the demands of today are similar to the demands students have been making for thirty years.
In another essay he discusses the loss of cultural equity and the privatization of culture, a process that erases experience. “An inequitable culture is one in which people do not have the same power to create, access, or circulate their practices, works, ideas, and stories. It is one in which people cannot represent themselves equally. To say that American culture is inequitable is to say that it moves us away from seeing each other in our full humanity. It is to say that the culture does not point us toward a more just society.” #OscarsSoWhite is inadequate to the effacement of those on the downside of power.
One of the most important essays is Vanilla Cities and Their Chocolate Suburbs. He points out that it is not just gentrification, it’s resegregation. It is about white flight and white colonization. It is about black removal being marketed as urban renewal. This leads of course, into the segregated communities like Ferguson, black communities run by white people to extract all the money they can to finance city services through over-policing, fines and assessments.
And over-policing leads to violence and state-sanctioned murder and now, finally, and gloriously, Black Lives Matter. It is emblematic of the power of racism that something so simple as asserting that lives of black people count is seen as dangerous and insurrectionist. We have so completely accepted the right of police to kill black people, that questioning their power is a revolutionary act, shocking and frightening to those in power. We are so accustomed to absolute police power that asking for police accountability is perceived as an existential threat. The reaction to the simple idea that black lives matter indicts white America. Protesters are saying “Black lives matter too” but reactionaries hear “Black lives matter more.” That they cannot hear the humanity of “black lives matter” demonstrates who little black lives have mattered for a very long time.
Chang writes about the founding of Black Lives Matter and how it differentiates itself from previous civil rights movements. It recognizes that the time for respectability politics is past. Respectability politics in the face of the murders of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner is inexcusable. He also challenges the misunderstanding of Black Lives Matter as a leaderless movement, quoting Montague Simmons, “One of the things that falls real heavy on us when we hear it is that it’s a leaderless movement. That’s not true. We would say it’s a leader-full movement.”
Another essay focuses on his own identity as Asian American, an identity he did not acquire until he moved to the mainland for college from Hawaii. Perhaps because it was a new imposed identity, he has a different perspective, seeing the challenge of uniting people from all sorts of different ethnicities and histories into one classification. He checks the community for exploiting anti-black racism to advance and promotes the idea of centering civil rights activism on fighting anti-blackness. Many of his ideas are similar to those promoted by RaceFiles and #Asians4BlackLives.
The broad scope of We Gon’ Be Alright makes this a difficult book to review. I think I highlighted about three or four thousand words that I thought were important, that I thought would be nice to include in a book review that might end up as long as the book. I guess the point is that you just have to read the book. What is truly amazing though, is that this is a relatively short book, written with an urgent and fast-moving pace that propels you through the book, unable to look away. Set aside some time when you sit down, because you won’t want to stop until you finish.
Let me finish as Jeff Chang finishes, with his question we must ask ourselves. “Each of us is left with the question: can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way towards freedom for all?”
We Gon' Be Alright will be released on September 13th. I received an advance e-galley from Macmillan Picador though NetGalley.
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In spite of the search for grace, We Gon’ Be Alright is not even in the slightest a kumbaya, can’t we just all get along, sort of book. It is a collection of essays asking serious questions about how we have gone from 65% of the American people supporting the Civil Rights Act in 1965 to the current process of resegregation that allows many to ignore and disregard black experience.
It opens with noting the hapless cycle of crisis, reaction, backlash, complacency and crisis. There is an outrage. People demand action. Those in power assert the status quo by invoking fear. Interest subsides into denial or helplessness, and then there is another crisis. Every crisis reinforces complacency because the status quo remains. This raises the question, are we “gon’ be alright?”
From there, Chang looks at the shift from affirmative action to diversity. Thanks to the Bakke decision, efforts to increase opportunities for people of color have been made more difficult. It’s as though in the midst of an experiment, the Supreme Court intervened and forced everyone to use the placebo. Justice Powell “disappeared racial exclusion from the history of higher education, and redirected discussion of affirmative action into a decontextualized present. He radically flattened difference. You’re a farm boy. You’re a violinist. You’re a Louisianan. You’re Black. You’re Chicano. He had affirmed that diversity really was for white people.”
He celebrates student protest and makes an eloquent argument for safe spaces and speech codes, reminding us that the reason students of color are demanding this is because they have been assaulted with racist slurs and symbols while school administrators looked away, allowing harassment to continue with impunity. It is a significant indictment of these institutions of higher learning that the demands of today are similar to the demands students have been making for thirty years.
In another essay he discusses the loss of cultural equity and the privatization of culture, a process that erases experience. “An inequitable culture is one in which people do not have the same power to create, access, or circulate their practices, works, ideas, and stories. It is one in which people cannot represent themselves equally. To say that American culture is inequitable is to say that it moves us away from seeing each other in our full humanity. It is to say that the culture does not point us toward a more just society.” #OscarsSoWhite is inadequate to the effacement of those on the downside of power.
One of the most important essays is Vanilla Cities and Their Chocolate Suburbs. He points out that it is not just gentrification, it’s resegregation. It is about white flight and white colonization. It is about black removal being marketed as urban renewal. This leads of course, into the segregated communities like Ferguson, black communities run by white people to extract all the money they can to finance city services through over-policing, fines and assessments.
And over-policing leads to violence and state-sanctioned murder and now, finally, and gloriously, Black Lives Matter. It is emblematic of the power of racism that something so simple as asserting that lives of black people count is seen as dangerous and insurrectionist. We have so completely accepted the right of police to kill black people, that questioning their power is a revolutionary act, shocking and frightening to those in power. We are so accustomed to absolute police power that asking for police accountability is perceived as an existential threat. The reaction to the simple idea that black lives matter indicts white America. Protesters are saying “Black lives matter too” but reactionaries hear “Black lives matter more.” That they cannot hear the humanity of “black lives matter” demonstrates who little black lives have mattered for a very long time.
Chang writes about the founding of Black Lives Matter and how it differentiates itself from previous civil rights movements. It recognizes that the time for respectability politics is past. Respectability politics in the face of the murders of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner is inexcusable. He also challenges the misunderstanding of Black Lives Matter as a leaderless movement, quoting Montague Simmons, “One of the things that falls real heavy on us when we hear it is that it’s a leaderless movement. That’s not true. We would say it’s a leader-full movement.”
Another essay focuses on his own identity as Asian American, an identity he did not acquire until he moved to the mainland for college from Hawaii. Perhaps because it was a new imposed identity, he has a different perspective, seeing the challenge of uniting people from all sorts of different ethnicities and histories into one classification. He checks the community for exploiting anti-black racism to advance and promotes the idea of centering civil rights activism on fighting anti-blackness. Many of his ideas are similar to those promoted by RaceFiles and #Asians4BlackLives.
The broad scope of We Gon’ Be Alright makes this a difficult book to review. I think I highlighted about three or four thousand words that I thought were important, that I thought would be nice to include in a book review that might end up as long as the book. I guess the point is that you just have to read the book. What is truly amazing though, is that this is a relatively short book, written with an urgent and fast-moving pace that propels you through the book, unable to look away. Set aside some time when you sit down, because you won’t want to stop until you finish.
Let me finish as Jeff Chang finishes, with his question we must ask ourselves. “Each of us is left with the question: can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way towards freedom for all?”
We Gon' Be Alright will be released on September 13th. I received an advance e-galley from Macmillan Picador though NetGalley.
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
October 30, 2017
This is a book to read and then read again. Although the first one or two chapters required concentration, by time I got to the chapter "Hands Up: On Ferguson" I was having strong, visceral reactions - "WHAT?", "OMG", "Oh no, they didn't" and more. I am not someone who is fearful of the police, but if I lived in Ferguson, and saw armoured vehicles and swarms of SWAT officers firing non-lethal but debilitating and painful rounds into crowds, I would be angry at President Obama. He reportedly called for the end of Black-on-Black crime, and argued he was proof the system worked without recognizing the depth of what was going on. To be fair, I should go back and read details accounts of his response. And I applaud the hundreds of African American Congressional staffers who staged a walkout and stood on the steps of the Capitol with their hands up.
Chang who grew up in Hawaii and identifies (at least in this stage of his life) as African American wrote an intense and conflicted chapter "The In Betweens: On Asian Americans" about the painful history of people of Asian origin in this country, but the wish of many to turn their backs on African Americans and "side" with Whites in the "ethnic wars" (my term).
This is must reading for all concerned with social justice. I learned about it from Rincey Reads who gave it 5 stars (very very rare for her). I will read it again, and probably soon because it's just that important!
Chang who grew up in Hawaii and identifies (at least in this stage of his life) as African American wrote an intense and conflicted chapter "The In Betweens: On Asian Americans" about the painful history of people of Asian origin in this country, but the wish of many to turn their backs on African Americans and "side" with Whites in the "ethnic wars" (my term).
This is must reading for all concerned with social justice. I learned about it from Rincey Reads who gave it 5 stars (very very rare for her). I will read it again, and probably soon because it's just that important!
January 16, 2018
I love that the last words in this book are of love and reconciliation. Lots of processing to do.
March 26, 2017
If you have ever thought to yourself “but…All Lives Do Matter…” If you casually said to a friend “I get protesting, but why do they have to disrupt traffic…” If you have ever made the argument “but the person shot was no angel…” Please, read this book.
We Gon’ Be Alright is a poetically written and meticulously researched series of essays that explore the most fraught racial issues of our time. Jeff Chang sheds light on the false promise of shallow “diversity,” campus protests, media representation, resegregation, Ferguson… he explores how Trump’s rhetoric taps into long held white insecurities and fuels fears to motivate support. How very clearly some who support him feel that “Make America Great Again” really means “Make America White Again.”
He chronicles grass root activism, street art, internal tension between perspectives, and history’s influence; tackling each issue from a broad range of angles to paint a more complete picture on these topics than I have seen anywhere else.
In the course of his book, Chang introduced me to historical events that I had never before heard of, like the East St Louis Massacre of 1917- in which a mob of white men and women attacked a black community killing 100 – 200 black residents and burning down the homes of 6,000.
He introduced me to statistics I hadn’t known, like that Blacks and Latinos, regardless of income, were more highly targeted for subprime loans and thus were 70% more likely to lose their home in foreclosure during the 2008 housing crash.
He highlighted passages of documents that I will probably never read in full, like the “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” by the US Department of Justice that said:
“Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence… The result is a pattern of stops without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression as well as retaliation for protected expression in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” US DOJ “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” (March 4, 2015)
He put it into context, showing that it was against this backdrop that Michael Brown was killed and our nation erupted. When men and women are systematically discriminated against by a militarized body of the state, resulting in economic and social hardship and even the loss of their very lives… how can you not cry out for justice? #BlackLivesMatter #SayHerName
It is an excellent resource for any who want to get, or stay, woke.
We Gon’ Be Alright is a poetically written and meticulously researched series of essays that explore the most fraught racial issues of our time. Jeff Chang sheds light on the false promise of shallow “diversity,” campus protests, media representation, resegregation, Ferguson… he explores how Trump’s rhetoric taps into long held white insecurities and fuels fears to motivate support. How very clearly some who support him feel that “Make America Great Again” really means “Make America White Again.”
He chronicles grass root activism, street art, internal tension between perspectives, and history’s influence; tackling each issue from a broad range of angles to paint a more complete picture on these topics than I have seen anywhere else.
In the course of his book, Chang introduced me to historical events that I had never before heard of, like the East St Louis Massacre of 1917- in which a mob of white men and women attacked a black community killing 100 – 200 black residents and burning down the homes of 6,000.
He introduced me to statistics I hadn’t known, like that Blacks and Latinos, regardless of income, were more highly targeted for subprime loans and thus were 70% more likely to lose their home in foreclosure during the 2008 housing crash.
He highlighted passages of documents that I will probably never read in full, like the “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” by the US Department of Justice that said:
“Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence… The result is a pattern of stops without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression as well as retaliation for protected expression in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” US DOJ “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” (March 4, 2015)
He put it into context, showing that it was against this backdrop that Michael Brown was killed and our nation erupted. When men and women are systematically discriminated against by a militarized body of the state, resulting in economic and social hardship and even the loss of their very lives… how can you not cry out for justice? #BlackLivesMatter #SayHerName
It is an excellent resource for any who want to get, or stay, woke.
December 14, 2016
I wanted to like this, but it was just a bunch of disjointed essays about Ferguson and then about being asian and a bunch of other stuff. Some good thoughts throughout, but I didn't get much from it
Read
July 17, 2017I'm not quite sure to make of this book, but the chapter on Ferguson is excellent.
December 22, 2016
We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation by Jeff Chang (2016)
“Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Gilmore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are ‘vulnerable to premature death,’ whether at the hands of the state or the structures that kill.
We know now that implicit bias, stereotype threat, and the empathy gap are real things. People harbor subconscious biases that are hard to root out but can be unlearned. Social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, for example, has argued that training police to see the way in which people subconsciously associate criminality with Black faces can reduce rates of racial profiling.” (3)
“”When students protested, it was not anti-free speech, it was the practice of free speech. Critics drew a direct line between protest and censorship, but speaking up about injustice is exactly what democracy is supposed to look like. What Jelani Cobb called ‘the free speech diversion’ was meant to shut down the intended discussion.
Over the last quarter century of student protest against racism, the act of calling out so-called political correctness has become the standard strategy for silencing. The legal scholar Mari Matsuda reminds us that racial attacks and hate speech, as well as ‘anti-PC’ defense of them, are proof that free speech is not a neutral good equally available to all. ‘The places where the law does not go to redress harm have tended to be the places where women, children, people of color, and poor people live,’ she has written. ‘Tolerance of hate speech is not tolerance borne by the community at large. Rather, it is a psychic tax imposed on those least able to pay.’”
But even liberals who pride themselves on their anti-racism have their own ways of trying to get the protesters to turn down, as it were. They draw false equivalencies—equating student protests against institutional racism with the ending of free speech, as if calling out racism were the same thing as issuing a racist call to extremism. At least the conservative critics don’t pretend to be ignorant of how power works.” (35)
“Culture, like food, is necessary to sustain us. It molds us and shapes our relations to each other. An inequitable culture is one in which people do not have the same power to create, access or circulate their practices, works, ideas, and stories. It is one in which people cannot represent themselves equally. To say American culture is inequitable is to say that it moves us away from seeing each other in our full humanity. It is to say that the culture does not point us toward a more just society.” (56)
“Black Lives Matter challenged not only the content but the form of respectability politics—the traditional, charismatic Black messiah that typically privileged straight male leadership and top-down, hierarchical infrastructures, such as those of the Black church. Instead, the movement drew on the methods and examples of Bayard Rustin, the gay man who had led the mobilization of the 1963 March on Washington while eschewing the spotlight; Ella Baker, the woman who had trained generations of organizers while strongly advocating modes of decentralized leadership; and Assata Shakur, the Black Panther activist exiled to Cuba who was still on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and had written the lines they adopted as their mantra: ‘It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.’” (109-110)
On Reverend Osagyefo Sekou
“Sekou was a third-generation Pentecostal preacher with an unusual pedigree. He had studied under Kwame Toure, who had given him his African name, and trained him to be ready for revolution. In his twenties he had been hired to teach teenagers at the Cochran Gardens City, but he would say that he had studied under them too. From the teens, he learned that the hip-hop he had loved as a youth could catalyze consciousness in a new generation. In 2004, he became a key organizer for the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.
Ten years later, he was the formation and justice pastor of First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where he led a spoken-word and hip-hop ministry for queer youths of color. He was not easy on his peers and elders. It wasn’t about age, he insisted, it was about attitude. ‘What do you fundamentally believe about young people?’ he asked them. ‘Do you believe that they have value? Are you more concerned about their profanity than about the profane conditions that they live in?’“ (123)
On Beyonce’s “Lemonade”:
“The climax of the film begins quietly—a gathering of beautiful young women for pictures and a feast. ‘So how we s’posed to lead out children into the future?’ an elder asks. ‘Love.’ Then a procession of powerful images begins: young women holding pictures of men who may be their fathers or grandfathers; the mothers of the fallen—Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; Lezley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown—holding pictures of their sons.
As Camry Wilborn said of the scene, ‘For black women, even grief is political.’” (164)
“Finding grace is an individual process that changes the social. It is about seeing each other in the world and seeing one’s own place in the world anew. In that way grace can counter the lies, refusals, and aggressions that drive us towards segregation. We live in serious times, in which we need to be roused to the inequity in our neighborhoods, our schools, our metro areas, our justice system, our culture. Ending resegregation is about understanding the ways we allow ourselves to stop seeing the humanity of others. It is about learning again to look, and never stopping.” (167)
“Racism is not merely about individual chauvinism, prejudice, or bigotry. Ruth Gilmore reminds us that it is about the ways different groups are ‘vulnerable to premature death,’ whether at the hands of the state or the structures that kill.
We know now that implicit bias, stereotype threat, and the empathy gap are real things. People harbor subconscious biases that are hard to root out but can be unlearned. Social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, for example, has argued that training police to see the way in which people subconsciously associate criminality with Black faces can reduce rates of racial profiling.” (3)
“”When students protested, it was not anti-free speech, it was the practice of free speech. Critics drew a direct line between protest and censorship, but speaking up about injustice is exactly what democracy is supposed to look like. What Jelani Cobb called ‘the free speech diversion’ was meant to shut down the intended discussion.
Over the last quarter century of student protest against racism, the act of calling out so-called political correctness has become the standard strategy for silencing. The legal scholar Mari Matsuda reminds us that racial attacks and hate speech, as well as ‘anti-PC’ defense of them, are proof that free speech is not a neutral good equally available to all. ‘The places where the law does not go to redress harm have tended to be the places where women, children, people of color, and poor people live,’ she has written. ‘Tolerance of hate speech is not tolerance borne by the community at large. Rather, it is a psychic tax imposed on those least able to pay.’”
But even liberals who pride themselves on their anti-racism have their own ways of trying to get the protesters to turn down, as it were. They draw false equivalencies—equating student protests against institutional racism with the ending of free speech, as if calling out racism were the same thing as issuing a racist call to extremism. At least the conservative critics don’t pretend to be ignorant of how power works.” (35)
“Culture, like food, is necessary to sustain us. It molds us and shapes our relations to each other. An inequitable culture is one in which people do not have the same power to create, access or circulate their practices, works, ideas, and stories. It is one in which people cannot represent themselves equally. To say American culture is inequitable is to say that it moves us away from seeing each other in our full humanity. It is to say that the culture does not point us toward a more just society.” (56)
“Black Lives Matter challenged not only the content but the form of respectability politics—the traditional, charismatic Black messiah that typically privileged straight male leadership and top-down, hierarchical infrastructures, such as those of the Black church. Instead, the movement drew on the methods and examples of Bayard Rustin, the gay man who had led the mobilization of the 1963 March on Washington while eschewing the spotlight; Ella Baker, the woman who had trained generations of organizers while strongly advocating modes of decentralized leadership; and Assata Shakur, the Black Panther activist exiled to Cuba who was still on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and had written the lines they adopted as their mantra: ‘It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.’” (109-110)
On Reverend Osagyefo Sekou
“Sekou was a third-generation Pentecostal preacher with an unusual pedigree. He had studied under Kwame Toure, who had given him his African name, and trained him to be ready for revolution. In his twenties he had been hired to teach teenagers at the Cochran Gardens City, but he would say that he had studied under them too. From the teens, he learned that the hip-hop he had loved as a youth could catalyze consciousness in a new generation. In 2004, he became a key organizer for the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.
Ten years later, he was the formation and justice pastor of First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where he led a spoken-word and hip-hop ministry for queer youths of color. He was not easy on his peers and elders. It wasn’t about age, he insisted, it was about attitude. ‘What do you fundamentally believe about young people?’ he asked them. ‘Do you believe that they have value? Are you more concerned about their profanity than about the profane conditions that they live in?’“ (123)
On Beyonce’s “Lemonade”:
“The climax of the film begins quietly—a gathering of beautiful young women for pictures and a feast. ‘So how we s’posed to lead out children into the future?’ an elder asks. ‘Love.’ Then a procession of powerful images begins: young women holding pictures of men who may be their fathers or grandfathers; the mothers of the fallen—Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; Lezley McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown—holding pictures of their sons.
As Camry Wilborn said of the scene, ‘For black women, even grief is political.’” (164)
“Finding grace is an individual process that changes the social. It is about seeing each other in the world and seeing one’s own place in the world anew. In that way grace can counter the lies, refusals, and aggressions that drive us towards segregation. We live in serious times, in which we need to be roused to the inequity in our neighborhoods, our schools, our metro areas, our justice system, our culture. Ending resegregation is about understanding the ways we allow ourselves to stop seeing the humanity of others. It is about learning again to look, and never stopping.” (167)
September 12, 2017
3.75 and rounded up. It's a compelling collection of essays about race, but it felt a little disjointed. If you see this in a bookstore, just take 20 minutes out of your day to read the Ferguson chapter. It's excellent.
April 29, 2020
Oh man, oh my. Jeff Chang’s collection of essays are powerful, eye-opening and show just how much more work needs to be done in modern day society to address racism and to stop the progression of resegregation. A must read.
December 31, 2017
This is another must-read. I especially appreciated the chapter on Ferguson and the one about how cities have been racially constructed.
October 21, 2022
A week of being very sick allowed me to pluck this off my bookshelves after years. The events are dated but the observations unfortunately still relevant. A post-2020 update marking all that hasn’t changed would probably depress more than it would enlighten.
The In-Betweens held up the best. A personal political history alongside a mini Asian American history primer written in the second person and with the fatigue of a person who’s tired of having the same damn conversations over and over, and the disgust of seeing Asian Americans’ political crusades morph into something coarse and purely self-interested.
I read that essay and thought of The Known World, which was introduced to me as a novel about people who occupy an in between space.
The In-Betweens held up the best. A personal political history alongside a mini Asian American history primer written in the second person and with the fatigue of a person who’s tired of having the same damn conversations over and over, and the disgust of seeing Asian Americans’ political crusades morph into something coarse and purely self-interested.
I read that essay and thought of The Known World, which was introduced to me as a novel about people who occupy an in between space.
May 22, 2019
What an eye-opening book on the subject I seem to know some but understand little. As a minority living in this great melting-pot of diverse groups of peoples I could relate to some of stories mentioned in the book. Besides, I am thankful that I was also able to see my own biases and misunderstandings on many other cultures, communities and their people. Ultimately, I sincerely believe we gon’ be alright...
“Culture, like food, is necessary to sustain us. It molds us and shapes our relations to each other.”
“History reminds us that desegregation is not a destination; it is a constant struggle.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” -
Martin Luther King Jr
- MLK illustrated the gist of the entire book beautifully in the quote mentioned above.
“I was served lemons and I made lemonade.” -
Jay-Z’s grandma
“Each of us is left with the question: Can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way toward freedom for all?”
- Can we?
“Culture, like food, is necessary to sustain us. It molds us and shapes our relations to each other.”
“History reminds us that desegregation is not a destination; it is a constant struggle.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” -
Martin Luther King Jr
- MLK illustrated the gist of the entire book beautifully in the quote mentioned above.
“I was served lemons and I made lemonade.” -
Jay-Z’s grandma
“Each of us is left with the question: Can we, given all the pain that we have had inflicted upon us and that we have inflicted upon others, ever learn to see each other as lovers do, to find our way toward freedom for all?”
- Can we?
December 2, 2016
I found this really informative and a well-researched and well-rounded account of the events and movements discussed. I found Jeff Chang's essay on Ferguson enlightening, as it gave a 360-view of the incident and resulting movement, not just what was shown through the news. I initially found the In-Betweens essay to be confusing but eventually eye-opening. I especially appreciated the essay on gentrification, seeing it happen in real-time here in DC and hearing about it at home in the Bay Area. My one problem with books like this is that the problem(s) are/is described but the author provides no suggestions for solutions. Perhaps it's not in the scope of the book, but I would have liked to hear more regarding specific legislative or political actions that could be taken to address inequality and systemic discrimination and oppression.
This is a really important and incredibly relevant book for all to read. I'll be sharing my copy.
This is a really important and incredibly relevant book for all to read. I'll be sharing my copy.
Read
September 24, 2016After Ferguson, a small library-I forget the name- published a book list entitled "Ferguson Book List". This list contained literature, from children's books to biographies to fictional stories, all of which helped the reader understand historically and culturally all that is going on. To gain a deeper knowledge, to help the converation. This book should be added to that list.
Jeff Chang address the issue's that have occured through Ferguson and the ideas that have sprung from it, drawing a little from history, but talking most from the present moment. This is a must read for better understanding of the cultural movement #BLACKLIVESMATTER as well as to become a better human. Read on.
Jeff Chang address the issue's that have occured through Ferguson and the ideas that have sprung from it, drawing a little from history, but talking most from the present moment. This is a must read for better understanding of the cultural movement #BLACKLIVESMATTER as well as to become a better human. Read on.
February 18, 2018
The first two thirds of this book are an overview of racism-related topics (mostly focusing on Ferguson, which was interesting). Then the author does an abrupt left turn and takes a fascinating deep dive into Asian-American racism. Then he takes another turn and inexplicably describes Beyonce's Lemonade video in detail.
November 14, 2016
Review TBA
January 2, 2017
A small book that packs a very large punch.
January 9, 2017
The way Jeff Chang weaves historical and data research into current shits is amazing. He brings that local, conversational talk story tradition to his writing that's rare these days.
October 19, 2017
Race is an issue that I'm working on educating myself more thoroughly in, given the issues of the times, and I think that this was a good choice in that quest. As a white girl who grew up in a small white town, race was something that I rarely had to think about as a child and young adult, which makes it very important for me to seek out information now. Thankfully, there are wonderful people like Jeff Chang out there to help me out.
This basically is a collection of standalone essays that are each loosely organized around the theme of race. Each essay has a lot of good information, although I did feel like it started stronger than it finished. The description mentions some of the topics covered, but for me, the most engrossing of the essays dealt with affirmative action, Ferguson, and Asian-American identity. (I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't tell you exactly which chapters those are, unfortunately, but it should be fairly self-evident.)
Of those three, I most appreciated the information on Ferguson. The affirmative action essay had good information, but it felt a bit like preaching to the choir for me, as I already agreed with what Chang was saying, and didn't really feel like I learned too much from it. Asian-American identity was honestly something I had never considered before, so that essay was very eye-opening, although I didn't love the perspective that it's written in. The perspective made me a bit confused about what was going on for a while, although that may just have been me being dense.
But the Ferguson essay was definitely the most eye-opening for me, much though I'm ashamed to admit it. I mean, this is an event that is very recent, and yet I didn't know anywhere near the level of detail that Chang presents. Prior to reading this, even though I knew it was a derailing tactic, I still couldn't help but think of riots in connection to Ferguson. So I'm very thankful to Chang for laying out events in such an easy-to-understand manner and with so much detail. I feel like I'm much more knowledgeable now, and knowledge is always a good thing in my book.
Of course, there are also other issues covered in the book, but these were the ones that stood out the most to me. I will comment that the the final chapter (epilogue) was the hardest for me to read, as it's pretty much an analysis of Beyonce's Lemonade, which I've neither seen nor listened to, so that was pretty much lost on me. But that's more about my lack of knowledge than anything else. Over all, I really enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone else who, like me, is looking to become more educated in issues of social justice and race.
This basically is a collection of standalone essays that are each loosely organized around the theme of race. Each essay has a lot of good information, although I did feel like it started stronger than it finished. The description mentions some of the topics covered, but for me, the most engrossing of the essays dealt with affirmative action, Ferguson, and Asian-American identity. (I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't tell you exactly which chapters those are, unfortunately, but it should be fairly self-evident.)
Of those three, I most appreciated the information on Ferguson. The affirmative action essay had good information, but it felt a bit like preaching to the choir for me, as I already agreed with what Chang was saying, and didn't really feel like I learned too much from it. Asian-American identity was honestly something I had never considered before, so that essay was very eye-opening, although I didn't love the perspective that it's written in. The perspective made me a bit confused about what was going on for a while, although that may just have been me being dense.
But the Ferguson essay was definitely the most eye-opening for me, much though I'm ashamed to admit it. I mean, this is an event that is very recent, and yet I didn't know anywhere near the level of detail that Chang presents. Prior to reading this, even though I knew it was a derailing tactic, I still couldn't help but think of riots in connection to Ferguson. So I'm very thankful to Chang for laying out events in such an easy-to-understand manner and with so much detail. I feel like I'm much more knowledgeable now, and knowledge is always a good thing in my book.
Of course, there are also other issues covered in the book, but these were the ones that stood out the most to me. I will comment that the the final chapter (epilogue) was the hardest for me to read, as it's pretty much an analysis of Beyonce's Lemonade, which I've neither seen nor listened to, so that was pretty much lost on me. But that's more about my lack of knowledge than anything else. Over all, I really enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone else who, like me, is looking to become more educated in issues of social justice and race.
May 23, 2022
This book was small but mighty! A challenging read for sure, but one that really made me think about plenty of things, some even about my own identity as an Asian-Canadian person. This centres around race relations, particularly in the USA, (in)justice, activism, political movements, tragic moments in history, and other topics. Definitely glad to have read this, specifically the chapter called “The In-Betweens,” since it discussed Asian American identity and how Asian Americans have always struggled to fit into the narrative. I really resonated with a lot of what was said in that chapter specifically.
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