Claud Anderson

This is not “positive” in the conventional sense, but it is a popular—though not trashy at all, popular in the best sense—treatment of an important or “good” topic. It’s not that classic-era MLK stuff that people either love, pretend to love or get tired out by: Martin himself was actually a great Capricorn, really, not that I want to get into that in detail, but many 60s radicals weren’t “natural” agitators, if you like: a lot of those old white Midcentury thinkers actually held themselves a lot more human and ethereal than the rest of us, even the pro-MLK ones—but yeah, sometimes you just need to spit out a few facts about the badness instead of staring off into the middle distance.

Of course, whitey here didn’t feel labeled or whatever, which is the other side of the whole string-of-facts vs Grand Narrative of Abstract Truth thing. I guess in the future I’ll try to read more romance & business “positive” things than history & mainstream religion & ‘good’ literature “negative” things, but if I read more diversity history I guess I’ll keep in mind that sometimes a ‘ordinary/normal’ person wants to rip out a little bit (In 1869, John Henry got whopped by the KKK in Sweet Home, Kentucky! It was safe to kill Negroes!) instead of…. I don’t know, instead of being like an Obama, as great as they are. Sometimes a little negativity is part of the popular view, and if you’re going to look at history and the ‘great’ things, you still don’t have to be subtle and magnificent every time, you know.

I guess at this point in my life, if I were to try to read bell hooks again, I still wouldn’t appreciate the whole left-of-John Lennon-y The Thing You Have To Understand About Whitey Is That He’s The Grand Plague narrative thing, but I think I would have a lot more patience for the general negativity/sexuality/popular stance, you know…. Although there are still some radio songs I don’t like, those admittedly being the white guys who are hopelessly mired in a unique and unremitting world of pain and suffering, that they can only ameliorate by having an orgasm balanced on their mother’s face, you know. The really extreme bullshit, right. I guess I can handle the ordinary bullshit now. After all, the real formal stuff is bullshit too.

…. I don’t always agree fully with his interpretations, but he does find meaningful facts about Black history, and the book really does have some merit, despite being negative, if you like. It’s an odd word, of course. I wouldn’t keep a friend forever who was always and only negative, or read only negative books, but also part of not isolating/not being perfectionist/demanding—to use a less colorful word; there are colorful words for people who forcefully reject negativity; it’s not the best thing sometimes, right—is that you sometimes receive people who are often or sometimes negative, as long as you have agency and it’s not getting you sick, right. Likewise, reading some books that are negative that cover meaningful events about people’s restricting or hostile environments isn’t necessarily something that’s going to make you feel like agency/non-victimhood is unavailable, but is really just, done in the right way, an appropriate display of compassion.

And also not every book has to win an award. To be honest, again, sometimes I wonder how those famous books won their awards. A lot of award committees were pretty inbred, to be polite about it.

…. And the information can be useful. Since I was basically acculturated, far before high school let alone college and youth or whatever, in northern-style racism where we “just” try to keep the censoreds out if we can manage it, I haven’t always understood the whole thing with the old-South-style racism (or that part of that spectrum) where you have Aunt Jemima or whatever…. It just wasn’t the kind of racism I grew up with, you know. It’s hard to explain.… (more)

My father wanted me to read this book. It's a recap of where african americans are today economically and socially. But the bulk of the book deals with the history of slavery. I wish the author had left off most of the history and delved into the current ideas on economic development in detail and gave the concrete examples of how blacks can extricate themselves from poverty. Also I despise categorizing people: but the author has a definite bias against what he refers to as "black conservatives": these diatribes against them detract from the potential of the book.

It just so happens I'm reading this book along with reading about technology and globalism; and it's blowing my mind because I see how far many of the socio-economically disadvantaged african americans have to go to catch up with the rest of the world who is more technologically advanced.… (more)