Book Review: The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, by Charles M. Blow (2021)

 

Author Charles M. Blow, and the cover of his 2021 book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto.

I’ve been a fan of Charles M. Blow’s op-ed pieces for The New York Times for a few years now. When I heard last summer that he had a book coming out, I was looking forward to reading it. (Late last year I read Blow’s memoir Fire Shut Up In My Bones, which I reviewed here.)

The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, puts forth Blow’s ideas about how Blacks in the United States can gain more political power. In short, Blow thinks that Blacks should move to the South and attempt to consolidate their political power in these Southern states. The cities Blow specifically mentions are: Shreveport, Jackson, Birmingham, Atlanta, Columbia, Charlotte, Richmond, Baltimore, and Wilmington.

Blow writes about wanting to launch a movement of Black resettlement that would in some ways reverse the trend of the Great Migration of Blacks who moved North during the 20^th century. It’s an interesting idea, and a migration that might indeed end up consolidating Black political power, as Blow posits.

Blow’s call for migration would presumably lead to a block of Democratic Senators from the South. However, a fact that Blow never mentions in his book is that Donald Trump won more Black voters in 2020 than he did in 2016. To cite just one example from the exit polls, Business Insider’s data shows that Trump won 6% more of the Black male vote, and 5% more of the Black female vote than he did in 2016. Yes, Biden still trounced Trump soundly among Black voters, but by a smaller margin than Hillary Clinton did. That doesn’t mean that Republicans will suddenly start winning the Black vote, but it will be interesting to see if Republicans continue their gains among Black voters in the 2024 Presidential election, or if Trump’s gains in 2020 were just an anomaly.

The Devil You Know loses momentum during the book’s second half, after Blow has explained his theory. A review I read suggested that Blow might have written more about what is happening in these Southern cities right now. I think that’s an excellent point, and it’s something the book lacks.

I’d also be interested to learn more about Blow’s experiences as a Black man living in New York City. There’s a bit sprinkled throughout the book, and then a few more details on the last page or two, but I would have been interested in reading a whole chapter about Blow’s time in New York City.

The Devil You Know makes a compelling argument, and it will be interesting to see if Blow’s ideas gain traction in the years to come.

Book Review: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo (2018)

 

Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, 2018.

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, has been a best-seller since it was published in 2018. As a white person, I felt like I needed to read it this summer. White Fragility is an uncomfortable book for liberal white people like me to read. First off, no one wants to be called “fragile.” Fragility equals weakness, and no one wants to be thought of as weak. “I’m not fragile about race! That might be how other white people act, but not me!” (Puts down book, storms out of the room.) “You’re being fragile again.” “No, I’m not!” (Pause) “Okay, yeah, I guess I am.”

In all seriousness, DiAngelo makes an important point when she writes about the good/bad dichotomy regarding race. The prevailing view for a long time has been you’re either a racist, or you’re not. Well, every white person who’s learned anything wants to be considered NOT a racist. Racists are those ignorant white people you see in newsreels of the South in the 1950’s and 1960’s. But of course, as DiAngelo demonstrates, racism is more complicated than that. Because we haven’t been more honest and exact in our conversations about race, most times racism becomes an either/or proposition, and no one wants to be a racist. But that simple dichotomy shuts down a more honest look at the unexamined prejudices that white people may have.

There is a certain truth behind the idea that white people can’t talk about race, because honestly, most of us have never experienced the kind of racism that other people have. White people are the group that has the power in the United States, and thus, they can’t experience the kind of systemic prejudice that minorities encounter daily. Sure, white people might brush up against it occasionally, but we don’t really know.

One takeaway from White Fragility is that white people need to do a much better job of realizing how their language and actions can make other people feel. That might make us uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s the very least that we can do, and a necessary first step in learning empathy. White Fragility is a good introduction to race in the United States, but don’t make it the last book you read about race.

Book Review: The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin (1963)

Reissue paperback cover of The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin, 1963.

Author James Baldwin, 1924-1987.

James Baldwin was a gifted writer of fiction, essays, plays, and poems. Born in 1924, Baldwin was a member of a generation of American writers that produced an astonishing number of public intellectuals-figures like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Jr., William Styron, and Kurt Vonnegut. By 1963 he had established a reputation as one of America’s most talented young writers, and that year he would appear on the cover of Time magazine.

James Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time was an unvarnished look at race in America, and it’s a book that influenced Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2015 book Between the World and Me. (I reviewed Between the World and Me here.) I’ve owned a copy of The Fire Next Time for many years, but after reading Coates’ book last month, I decided it was the right time to read Baldwin’s book as well. 

The Fire Next Time is comprised of two essays. The first, titled, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” is a short piece written to Baldwin’s 15 year old nephew. The bulk of the book is the second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” in which Baldwin addresses the pertinent racial issues of the day, including Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam. 

In “Down at the Cross,” Baldwin describes his upbringing in Harlem, and his brief career as a teenage preacher. Baldwin’s language is evocative and memorable throughout the book. Baldwin describes his spiritual crisis at the age of fourteen thus:

“Matters were not helped by the fact that these holy girls seemed rather to enjoy my terrified lapses, our grim, guilty, tormented experiments, which were at once as chill and joyless as the Russian steppes and hotter, by far, than all the fires of Hell.” (p.17)

One of the passages that struck me the most was Baldwin’s assessment of being black in America:

“The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.” (p.30)

Baldwin is blunt and to the point, and these sentences are unfortunately as relevant in 2016 as they were in 1963: “When a white man faces a black man, especially if the black man is helpless, terrible things are revealed. I know.” (p.53) 

Another quote that I found very perceptive about race relations was: “Most Negroes cannot risk assuming that the humanity of white people is more real to them than their color. And this leads, imperceptibly but inevitably, to a state of mind in which, having long ago learned to expect the worst, one finds it very easy to believe the worst.” (p.68)

Eventually, Baldwin lost his religious fervor and moved away from the church. In the second half of “Down at the Cross,” Baldwin describes a meeting he had in Chicago with the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, as he was always referred to, the leader of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist movement that had come to prominence in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Elijah Muhammed’s message of black pride and black nationalism was spread by his charismatic national spokesman, Malcolm X. Baldwin’s meeting with Elijah Muhammed occurred before Muhammed’s split with Malcolm X in 1964. Baldwin is intrigued by the Nation of Islam, but not willing to convert to all of their ideas. 

One of the reasons for Malcolm X’s split with Elijah Muhammed was the revelation that Muhammed had fathered several illegitimate children, and there are a couple of passages in The Fire Next Time that are somewhat humorous given what we now know about Elijah Muhammed’s behavior that James Baldwin didn’t. Baldwin describes the women in Elijah Muhammed’s house as being “…much occupied by a beautiful baby, who seemed to belong to the youngest of the women.” (p.61) One can only wonder if that was one of Elijah Muhammad’s illegitimate children. Baldwin also writes that Muhammed “teased the women, like a father, with no hint of that ugly and unctuous flirtatiousness I knew so well from other churches, and they responded like that, with great freedom and yet from a great and loving distance.” (p.63) Well, it wasn’t so great a distance as Baldwin thought.

Ultimately, Baldwin still believes in integration, and during the dinner says to himself, but not to Elijah Muhammad, “’I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn’t love more important than color?’” (p.71) At the conclusion of the book, Baldwin repudiates the Nation of Islam’s separatist philosophy, writing, “To create one nation has proved to be a hideously difficult task; there is certainly no need now to create two, one black and one white.” (p.97) 

The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me cover some of the same ground, but I would argue that Baldwin’s message is easier to swallow than Coates’, as Baldwin was in favor of integration, and Coates never gives the reader any easy answers to the continuing issue of race in America. I prefer Baldwin’s more elegant prose to Coates’ plain and unadorned style. However, both books have many important things to say and are essential reading for anyone interested in the issues that America faces.