Review: The Future We Want : Radical Ideas for the New Century

The Future We Want

“The Future We Want : Radical Ideas for the New Century” is a collection of essays from an eclectic group of young writers and activists. They look at all the problems we normally think about, education, inequality, racism, a justice system that lacks justice, and societal bias over sex and gender. As an example of that last I need to point out that on the book the authors are listed as Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara. The online citation I found for the book, “Sunkara, Bhaskar. The Future We Want : Radical Ideas for the New Century. City: Henry Holt & Co, 2013.”, lists Sunkara, the male, as primary author. The book did open my eyes to a few problems that I have just begun to notice, “bad science”, the way financial interests are twisting what research we do as well as the outcomes of that research. .

As a lifelong liberal I wanted to like this book and, for the most part I did. Almost every goal mentioned in the book has my full support but, unfortunately, the book offers little, almost nothing, in the way of a roadmap to achieving these goals. We need a color blind justice system? Duhh. We need a justice system blind to color and wealth but how do we get there? A book I reviewed earlier, “Unfair: the new science of criminal injustice”, explains the problems in detail and gives a list of very doable corrections. Perhaps the problem is that each of these problems needs a full length treatment by an expert in the field to offer sufficient insight to allow a vision on solving them.

The one glaring problem I had with the book was its naive view of economics. Yes, today’s economy needs major reform but capitalism, Adam Smith’s capitalism not the “Free Market” Ayn Rand God is Greed, Austrian and Chicago school capitalism, is still the least bad of all economic systems. People do really work the best when they are working for their own improvement. That means that poverty wages do not inspire the best work, even with the whip of homelessness and starvation driving the workers. Regulating for living wages and safety nets for the calamities that naturally befall everyone are needed to, frankly, benefit the employers to ignorant or greedy to act in their workers and their own best interests.

The book is a good examination of what young liberals see as our current problems but it lacks any reasonable ideas to fix them. For that we have to look elsewhere. At least for ideas on repairing the broken criminal justice system I can recommend Adam Benforado’s “Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice”.

Review: The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

“If not for Mrs. Parks nobody would have ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr.” – E.D. Nixon

After reading Jeanne Theoharis’ “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” I have to say that if not for Mrs. Parks there is a lot we never would have heard of and the world today would be a worse place for it. Growing up, and well into adulthood all I knew about Rosa Parks was the popular myth, she was a tired seamstress who was tired and refused to give up her seat. Earning a degree in history I learned that that story was a simplification of the real story. Reading Theoharis’ book i discovered that what I learned in college was a simplification of the truth.

I don’t know why some books are harder for me to review and with other books the review almost writes itself. This is one of the difficult ones. It is a great book. I think it could be the best book I read this year and I read some very good books this year. That could be part of my problem. It is good on many levels. I learned Mrs. Rosa Parks life story as well as can be written until the last archive of her papers is opened to researchers. I also learned about classism and the power of showing up.

I have to recommend this book to anyone interested in the Civil Rights Movement or American culture. It is well written, well researched, and well reasoned. I hope it gets wide exposure, the country could use some of Mrs. Parks tenacity and hope.

Review: Democracy in Black

Democracy in Black

Eddie Glaude’s “Democracy in Black” convinced me of one thing I have long suspected. The best decision I ever made was to be born white and male. Except that I never made that decision, no one does, so why on Earth should I profit from it? Why in a nation formed from Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” argument that heredity proves nothing, not even the son of a King can be counted on to be a good leader, or even a good man. But it does. Thanks to my fortuitous choice of parents I can drive a little sloppy, I have been able to count on finding work when I need it, I can be disrespectful to a police officer and live.

Although when I requested to review this book I expected more of a history than an essay it was definitely not a disappointment. Glaude exposes the way things are in a blunt manner that I think we should hear more. He explores enough modern history to make it clear who he means when he discusses black political leaders and how they have allowed their focus to drift away from improving the community to self improvement and ego building. Then he exposes, explains, how the black community has disintegrated. Thanks to this there is no training ground for new leaders to develop who can unite the community and lead them to rise to the challenges of our times. I would point out that the same community disintegration has happened in the white community but that is not the topic of this book.

The main topic is what I alluded to in the first paragraph. The unfortunate fact that in the United States white lives are believed to matter more than the life of any person of color, most obviously the lives of black men and women. I understand the history of how our color, or lack of it, has been used from Colonial times to divide and control the work force but I am always amazed at how many people that look like me buy into it. I am not rich and I am not good looking but the (lack of) color of my skin is not the only thing I can be proud of. How pathetic are those who only have that lack of color as evidence of their own worth?

Glaude was adamant that the attitude that white lives matter more needs to change but he was relentless in pointing out the failures of past attempts to change America’s attitude on “race”. When he pointed out that the leaders of Ferguson’s protests had no faith in the power of the vote I started to lose hope. Thankfully he managed to find some reason to be optimistic by the end of the book. Unfortunately it will not be easy to finally get to where all Americans act as though they believe these words from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”