The Karma of Brown Folk

i thought i was going to love this book because at first the premise was fascinating - how white supremacy has made black into the worst of the races (for their purposes) and so how other brown folk (specifically for this book the south asians) have allowed positive stereotypes of themselves to be part of the narrative, effectively pitting them against black people, to save themselves from the worst of the racism that they'd otherwise face, and how that helps perpetuate all racism (not that he was faulting them for it). (whew.) but i found most of the book to not be about that, or to be about it peripherally, and to be much to much about numbers or specific examples, and less about theory. there is a giant section basically refuting show more deepak chopra and his line of thinking and pandering. which makes sense for his thesis but it went on so long it seemed more a personal grudge at some point. i actually ended up skimming most of the book once i got about halfway. even the chapter "on antiblack racism" toward the end, and that i was most looking forward to, wasn't as engaging as i had hoped. but. the thesis is powerful and the beginning where he presents his case is excellent. i won't rate it because maybe i was expecting something that it wasn't, and that's not the author or book's fault. also there's real value here.

"Many folks feel, it seems, that to make positive statements about what they consider to be a race is just fine; racism in this light becomes the use of negative statements about a people. In my mind, the very conceptualization of a people as having discrete qualities is an act of racist thought, whether the resulting statements be charitable or not. ... These are not only statements of admiration. Apart from being condescending, such gestures remind me that I am to be the perpetual solution to what is seen as the crisis of black America. I am to be a weapon in the war against black America. Meanwhile, white America can take its seat, comfortable in its liberal principles, surrounded by state-selected Asians, certain that the culpability for black poverty and oppression must be laid at the door of black America. How does it feel to be a solution?"

"The state may want to be impartial and may indeed see itself as impartial, but it cannot be impartial if the social relations that found it are partial." show less

class and race