Carol Anderson (2)Reseñas

The most damaging mythology found in American History books is the myth that the darkest periods of our country have an end date, that somehow the entire nation somehow changed for the better without atonement. Those of us who grew up in communities with a reflexive attempt to rewrite history to either minimize or undo progress - knew parts of this story. But Dr. Anderson tells the story of just how pervasive the sickness of racism, so much that people would choose poison over family and over opportunity - and provides an abundance of footnotes. This is a hearbreaking but necessary book and it's a good beginning for separating truth from mythology.

This was a really great, there's a lot of history that Anderson dives into and explains how racism has pervaded the American system ever since the end of slavery to deny blacks their rights. I think this should be taught in every single school. It's so important to our history. That being said, the only reason I'm giving this 4.5 instead of 5 stars really comes down to preference. I listened to this on audiobook and at times it felt like listening to a lecture in a history class or listening to a textbook. History was never one of my favorite subjects in school, so it brought back some feelings of being in history class, but overall it did do a pretty good job at keeping me engaged.

This is an intense read, delving into just the surface level of racism in American society and how it came to be where it is at now. It includes many events that get left out of history classes, but is crucial to understanding our society today. The book leaves a lot to think on, as well as ways in which we can move forward from the continuing prevalence of racism. It is one of those books that I will have to reread in a few months to continue to grow and learn new things from.

Start on p 28

An eye-opening book on the relationship between the 2nd Amendment and racism. Carol Anderson shows how racism is embedded in the Amendment, and thus in the Constitution, and the cruelty that went with racism and the hypocrisy regarding how the 2nd Amendment was used or not used in American courts of law to benefit Whites and how it was used against Blacks to control them. The author very convincingly starts from America's founding to today, showing the role played by racism in the formulation and ratification of the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment. A required read for all who cherish the ideals embedded in the U.S. Constitution without hypocrisy and, especially, the 2nd Amendment, while not a divine right, yet a right that should be for all American citizens, white and black and every color in-between.

This should be required reading. It is not an easy read, but even having a degree in political science, I learned things that I didn’t know (probably because of the ethnocentrism of our education system). Excellent book.

I think I put this book in my list of "everyone should read" category, along with The New Jim Crow and Just Mercy. If you think voter fraud is a problem or have friends that tout that line, read this book. Now with Covid-19 as an excuse, voter suppression will be at an all time high. We all need to be vigilant, stay informed and Get Out The Vote!

Well researched look at 'democracy in action' in particular the way that voting is conducted in the United States...or rather the way it is misconducted. Without question, the poor and people of color (not generally mutually exclusive) are systematically disenfranchised through various 'legal' means like gerrymandering (redrawing political district lines), removal of voting sites, and increased stipulations on what kinds of ID can be used (keeping in mind that birth certificates incur a cost and DMV locations may be few and far between). Those are just a few of the ways that city and state governments have managed to gain a majority in states where in actuality they are only the minority of the population.

This is a great companion to The New Jim Crow which goes in-depth about the inequalities of the U.S. Justice System.

“The second amendment was, thus, not some hallowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with Black bodies.”

The ‘right’ to bear arms was really a push to disarm Black people in the newly created United States, especially in the South, where whites feared armed slave uprisings. The militia, as mentioned in the Second, could not take on an invading army. George Washington knew that. But, a militia could take down slave revolts.

This book lays out the history of what has happened to Blacks in the United States up to, and after, the Second Amendment. And I believe the argument that the author is dead on. From the 'founding fathers' until 2022, the 'right to bear arms' has not applied equally to all. And it isn't just 'ancient history'. Just look at two recent cases.

The difference between the cases of Kyle Rittenhouse and Tamir Rice.

Trevor Noah - "...The cops are called into a situation. They see a black person. And immediately they shoot?" "How many times have we seen a shooter who is white and a man get talked down?"

And finally, from the author - "The Second is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use."

A very well written book about a very important topic.
It's not an easy read and it shouldn't be.

You should read this.
We should reflect on this.
We should change.

Despite some accurate but misleadingly presented information (eg, on p 124, data about PhDs in the natural sciences), this book presents a compelling and accessible argument that systemic racism exists in the US and that it is intentional. I'm left with a few ideas for action, including supporting causes that seek to increase voter registration and turnout and promoting more equitable resource allocation in my area's public schools. I look forward to talking about this one with my teen and my middle schooler.

(The section I mention from page 124 reads, "In 2004, fifty years after Brown, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported that not one black person earned a PhD in astronomy or astrophysics, for example. In fact, of the 2,100 PhDs awarded in forty-three different fields in the natural sciences, not one went to a black person."

This quote, while accurate according to the source cited in the Notes, makes it sound as though no black students earned PhDs in the natural sciences because it leaves out two paragraphs of data from the source---https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/50_black_doctoraldegrees.html:

"A major weakness is that blacks earned 13, or about 1 percent, of the nearly 1,200 doctorates in physics. In computer science, blacks won 0.7 percent of all Ph.D. awards. In the atmospheric sciences, less than 1 percent of all doctorates went to blacks. In chemistry, only 2.3 percent of Ph.D.s went to blacks. In the earth sciences such as geology, oceanography, and the atmospheric sciences, blacks were 1.3 percent of all doctoral recipients, down from 2.3 percent in 2003. In the ocean and marine sciences, only one of the 190 Ph.D.s in the discipline was awarded to an African American. In 2004, 148 African Americans were awarded a Ph.D. in the biological sciences. But they were only 2.5 percent of all doctorates awarded in the discipline. Black Ph.D. awards in the biological sciences did increase by 37 percent from 2003. That year, blacks were awarded 1.9 percent of all doctorates in the biological sciences.

The field of engineering also shows serious weakness in black doctoral student participation. Blacks also trail whites by a large margin in Ph.D.s in engineering. In 2004, 7.0 percent of all white doctorates were earned in the field of engineering. For African Americans, only 4.5 percent of all their doctorates were in engineering. In 2004 blacks earned a mere 1.6 percent of all engineering Ph.D.s. This was a slight improvement over 2003. The huge shortfall in engineering is serious because engineering is a field in which hundreds of thousands of Americans achieve high-income status and middle to upper social status."

Anderson's argument stands even with the more complete information because if there were racial equity in the upper levels of science education, black students awarded PhDs should at least match the percentage of black people in the population and the actual percentages are much, much lower, but the way it's written reminds me of the ways that data can be employed and omitted to make an argument seem stronger and that I need to be more careful about looking up an author's sources if I want a more complete picture.)

Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage.
Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

As we hear from so many in conservative circles, the Constitution is law and it's the defining document everything should flow from. OK, I think in a broad sense we can all agree that's where our country took the first shaky step towards the vision of a Democratic Republic. Yet, almost from the time the Equal Protection Clause was enshrined to protect our right to votes as citizens for those we want to represent us in Congress and elsewhere, it was attacked, undermined, avoided, and even openly ignored by those in power and wanted to stay that way.

One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson does an incredible job by showing the immediate relevance to the election of Donald Trump, then takes it all the way back to the Jim Crow South where the Democratic former slave owners and other white folks who openly vowed to keep African Americans in their place, which was most certainly not in the voting booth.

The right to vote is completely colorblind, but the results of disrupting and destroying that right is admittedly racist. If you could find in history where a county or district was redrawn to actually lower the amount of eligible white voters, you can be sure underneath the veneer are ripples from that decision directed solely at squashing the minority vote.

Anderson lifts every rock and opens the door to politician's closets long since gone to detail and display how all the efforts wind together into a single rope binding those they deem 'unworthy', 'unclean', and 'unAmerican.' Here are some examples that only scratch the surface, but they will prove the length of time and depth of inhumanity employed in these efforts:

"Senator Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), one of the most virulent racists to grace the halls of Congress, boasted of the chicanery nearly half a century later. "What keeps 'em [blacks] from voting is section 244 of the [Mississippi] Constitution of 1890...It says that a man to register must be able to read and explain the Constitution or explain the Constitution when read to him." Mississippi, the senator bragged, "then wrote a constitution that damn few white men and no n*****s at all can explain.""

That rule in the Mississippi Constitution was over 120-years ago. Today is only different in the language, but not the intent:

"He [Brian Kemp (R-GA)] has displayed a tendency to consistently err on the side of disenfranchisement: such as "when his office lost voter registrations for 40,000 Georgians, the vast majority whom happen to be people of color"; and when his office leaked social security number and driver's license data of voters not once but twice; and when he refused to upgrade the voting machines throughout the state that received an F rating because they were easily hackable and "haven't been updated since 2005 and run on Windows 2000." Kemp had also "crusaded against" and "investigated" voter registration drives by Asian Americans and predominantly black groups. He actually launched a criminal inquiry into the registration of 85,000 new voters, "many of them minorities," but "found problems with only 25 registrants, and "not surprisingly, after all the time, money, and publicity, "no charges were filed.""

Democrats created the beast of voter disenfranchisement with voter intimidation and violence, but when the GOP came in during the Southern Strategy, they realized quickly the unpalatable terms and manner of think could no longer survive. Hence the appearance of "voter fraud" and a gaggle of new "voter ID" laws to protect the integrity of our elections. The GOP took the beast and let it gorge through the advent of innocuous sounding legislation all over the country. One of the crowning achievements of their current "voter ID" white knight, Kris Kobach (R-KS), was the creation of Crosscheck, and interstate program that would collect voter data and double-check them with other states looking for those evildoers who were registered in two different places.

In case you were thinking people like that would get run out of office, the truth is far sadder. Kris Kobach is running for Governor of Kansas, Brian Kemp is running for Governor of GA in the 2018 midterms. Kemp was endorsed by Trump and won the primary and will now go up against Stacy Adams (D-GA) who could very well become the first black woman to sit in the governor's chair. Kobach is still championing the totally unverified and clear straw man argument of "immense voter fraud" and his online baby, Crosscheck, which when studied has a failure rate of over 99%. As of comments I read only today, folks inside the White House are crossing fingers and toes Trump does not endorse Kobach because the Don Quixote of voting trickery has become almost as toxic as Trump himself.

One Person, No Vote should be sent to the offices of every politician in Congress, and every state legislature to remind them and warn them of the breadth of how much damage this programs and crooked politicians have already done. Everything you need to arm yourself and others against losing your Constitutionally protected right is in the book. Read it, read it again, then take action.

DNFed at 15%.
No rating or review.
I might pick this one up again; I wasn’t in a great mindset when I first picked it up

Meticulously researched and documented by Emory Professor and Departmental Chair Carol Anderson, White Rage chronicles how blacks have been systemically abused by white America and the anger that their ongoing insistence on fairness and equality has provoked.

"Reconstructing Reconstruction" shows the many ways in which the Emancipation Proclamation was crippled for a century, including the insidious Black Codes, which made seeking jobs impossible due to charges of vagrancy and peonage, where sharecroppers were economically forced back into slavery.

"Derailing the Great Migration" goes on to describe how attempts to recruit Southern blacks to populate northern factories were met with violence, enormous fines, interfering with interstate transportation, and banning the distribution of the Chicago Defender newspaper. Overcrowding in the North led to deplorable living conditions, and violence when blacks tried to move into white neighborhoods, even marginal ones.

"Burning Brown to the Ground" details how the 'separate but equal' doctrine ratified in Plessy vs. Ferguson case in the late 1800s did nothing of the sort, and how the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1954 Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education was often ignored by state rights advocates, local school authorities, even State universities for 50 years or more in some cases, citing numerous examples and statistics, including spending per student.

"Rolling Back Civil Rights" shows the extent to which the Nixon and Reagan administrations demonized black leaders, and created a war on drugs (to fund the Contras), targeting the lowest strata of society, including making the penalties for crack possession 100 times more stringent than cocaine possession (i.e., 5 grams of crack was equal to 1.1 pounds of coke), leading to mass incarceration of blacks, Hispanics, etc.

"How to Unelect a Black President" speaks to the ways in which indigent, black and Hispanic voters were excluded from voting over completely unjustified claims of voter fraud, which are about one in a million statistically. Requiring state-issued IDs, which are expensive or administratively burdensome or impossible to acquire was a common scheme.

Much to consider in this book.

Carol Anderson has written an enraging account of how the vote has been systematically stripped and rendered meaningless for people of color, especially black people, in the United States. She begins with a brief history of how states tried to keep people from voting before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 24th Amendment, the created myth of rampant voter fraud, and then continues through the steps taken to keep people off the rolls today: voter ID, voter roll purges, redrawing boundaries to dilute minority votes, and gerrymandering. The results have been devastating. Contrary to pundit claims, the "enthusiasm gap" in the 2016 election was less important than the number of African-Americans who did not vote.

Anderson has chosen to keep the book concise, which makes it an easy read, but there's probably an even longer book to be written here. The notes are extensive, which makes it possible to track various specific issues if you want. Understandably, given that Anderson is an African-American studies professor, African American voters are her primary focus. She does discuss Latino vote suppression, but I felt that a little more exploration of that issue would have been welcome, especially since politicians seem less likely to cloak their racism when holding out the specter of non-citizen voting.

With only a month to go till the election, this is essential reading--especially since Brian Kemp is singled out for his history of vote suppression in Georgia.

This is an excellent and well written survey of key periods in black advancement and how, each time, whites have used the system to push back and ensure that black Americans would not get the rights due to them.

The only caveat is that it's short, and covers a lot of ground. It's a good overview, but there are so many key events covered that it could easily be four times as long, and events can't be covered with good depth. It does an excellent job at showing the big picture and sequence of events, but you may find yourself wanting more.

Read May 2021 - excellent cataloging of the white backlash that undermined every legislative act passed to provide rights to Blacks - emancipation, 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments, Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1800's and 1900's, Brown vs Board of Education, etc.

Interesting look at how many advancements in Civil Rights were soon after rolled-back in sneaky ways.

RGG: Clear, straight forward, compelling. Perhaps a little repetitive. Reading Interest: 13-YA.

Voter suppression is a strategy used to discourage or prevent individuals and/or entire groups from voting. Intended to influence the outcome of an election, tactics include both mental and physical intimidation. Voter suppression is illegal, but it still occurs in the United States and around the world.
Read the recently published young adult adaptation, then learn more at the website:
ONE PERSON, NO VOTE by Carol Anderson is a young adult adaptation of the award-winning adult work of nonfiction. The author explores how voter suppression negatively impacts democracy. It is divided into five parts representing themes such as as voter ID and voter rolls. Within each section, chapters explore specific historical and contemporary examples. The book concludes with discussion questions, ways to get involved, and notes.
11 BARRIERS TO VOTING from the Carnegie Corporation is a web-based project describing the most common approaches to voter suppression. For more in-depth information, readers can explore the full-report and learn how to advocate for voting rights.
To learn more, go to https://bit.ly/3gYvG4F.
ARC courtesy of Bloomsbury.

Incredibly well-researched. clearly organized, clearly written. Especially good how she ties the past strategies of voter suppression to current ones. Could have been a depressing read but instead an energizing one because so many people have always been fighting against it, and better to know exactly what and why we are fighting. Makes an indisputable argument.

A painful read, comprised of what felt like an endless litany of shameful behavior based on white rage. Rage at people who dared to question, to aspire, to sit at the front of the bus! So much wasted energy, money, and lives, all to keep people in their place. We can do better. I think we can.

An enlightening and enraging read. I have much more to say but am still forming my thoughts.