Review by Kirkus Book Review
A critical examination of weak points in American democracy. Johnson, author ofWhen the Stars Begin To Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America (2021), served as a White House Fellow, military professor, and speechwriter. From a churchgoing culture he learned that everything happens for a reason and that there is always an explanation when God's will doesn't make sense-- "The Lord works in mysterious ways." These credos also apply to democracy, he says. When it seems comfortable "coexisting with slavery and oppression and dispossession and state violence--well, that is just democracy working in mysterious ways." Except for banning slavery, legal barriers to Black equality were not eliminated until the civil rights acts of the 1960s, which proved a bonanza to Republicans as most white Southern Democrats switched parties, eliminating the minority status that Republicans had held since before the New Deal. It's no secret that Black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic and that while only half of white people identify as Republicans, they account for 95% of the party's congressional members. There is no shortage of Black conservatives, including Johnson's father, who advocate self-help and suspicion of government, but they rarely vote Republican. No radical, Johnson writes that America remains more or less a land of opportunity where energetic members of its historical minority, like himself, do well, but most can't escape traditional if extralegal pressures of hostile white institutions--police et al. Asian Americans, meanwhile, have outclassed many whites, who resent their superiority in education and income but hold them up as a "model minority." Johnson paints a lucid picture of how minorities negotiate values we are supposed to share and reframes issues like voting and policing to reveal warning signs of problems that reasonable citizens both white and Black are nowhere near solving. Evenhanded and astute essays on race. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
