Brothers,
We’re just weeks away from the release of Charles Blow’s second book. “The
Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto” will hit the shelves on Jan. 26th.
Take a look at the first book review - as the basketball players say: ALL NETS!
I’m certain it’s the first of many positive reviews coming his way. I can’t
wait to read it.
CONGRATS, PAPI. SO PROUD OF YOU!
(BTW)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/charles-m-blow/the-devil-you-know-black-power/
<https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/charles-m-blow/the-devil-you-know-black-power/>
The distinguished New York Times columnist offers a daring but utterly sensible
plan to advance Black civil rights.
The devil that Black Americans know all too well is racism, and, as Blow notes
from the outset, it is not confined to the South: “Black people fled the
horrors of the racist South for so-called liberal cities of the North and West,
trading the devil they knew for the devil they didn’t, only to come to the
painful realization that the devil is the devil.” Though George Floyd’s murder
at the hands of Minneapolis police was roundly protested—and with Whites often
outnumbering Blacks at demonstrations around the country—soon after, Jacob
Blake suffered the same fate, in Milwaukee, by bullets rather than
asphyxiation, but with “no similar outpouring of outrage.” What Blow calls
“white liberal grievance” is useless in the face of a racist system that will
not change. Or will it? Given that Georgia is at the crux of the 2020
presidential election and that Stacey Abrams’ get-out-the-vote campaign brought
in hundreds of thousands of voters to turn the state blue, Blow considers the
state “proof of concept” that Black voters can indeed sway elections. He adds
that the entire South could follow suit if only Blacks would reverse the path
of the Great Migration to the North during Jim Crow and remake the electoral
map by forming a solid majority. As he writes, if just half of Black residents
elsewhere moved South, it would establish that majority from Louisiana all the
way across the Southern heartland to South Carolina, “a contiguous band of
Black power that would upend America’s political calculus and exponentially
increase Black political influence.” It would also end White supremacy in that
intransigent region. “The South now beckons as the North once did,” he urges in
his resounding conclusion. “The promise of real power is made manifest. Seize
it. Migrate. Move.”
Valuable as a thought experiment alone but also an “actual plan” for effecting
lasting political change.
