The Black Male Experience in White America: Challenges, Identity & Social Dynamics | Race Relations & Cultural Insights" 使用场景: Ideal for sociology students, researchers, and readers interested in racial identity, social justice, and cultural studies.

This book contains (unlucky) 13 chapters on aspects of black men in the United States. Many books on black men and black male activists have lamented about how black men fare in education, the workforce, and the prison-industrial complex. This book covers those familiar (played out?) topics. However, it touches on novel topics such as black male expression in the theater and black men in journalism. This book gives a tolerable nod to diversity among black men by discussing boys, MSM, and the foreign-born.On a positive note, I think everyday readers could pick up and understand this book. On the other hand, this book is RIDDLED with typographical errors. I am almost sure that a typist typed up these articles and the editor never bothered to assign someone to proofread the anthology. As a result, black men with fancy academic degrees are made to look like freshman in high school or other people that have never had exposure to a typewriter or don't know about "spell check" in their computer programs. Trust me, there are enough errors here that it conspicuously interrupts the flow of the book.Throughout this book, the authors try to emphasize that race and gender must both be juggled; one issue can't be dropped in thinking of the plight of black males. This group is often compared to black females and white males for comparative purposes. Comparisons to white females are hardly brought up. I am sure that the editor did not want to "play the oppression sweepstakes" and imply that somehow racism is more pervasive than sexism. LatinOs and LatinAs are brought up occasionally as well.Unfortunately, this book is men's studies by naiveté. Any topic that even tangentially discusses black men is brought up here. For example, one writer details the similarities between the late artist Equiano and the living artist George C. Wolfe. Black masculinity is not brought up; this chapter is just here because it happens to discuss black men. The same is true on the chapters about foreign policy, journalism, and the sciences. Male privilege, male rituals, and rigid masculinities are never brought up. Most men's studies authors are much more conscious of these matters than the authors here. I wonder if authors approached the editor and begged to be included just to avoid the "publish or perish" rule at universities.The author provides a weak introduction and conclusion for the book. This book breaks down starkly into three areas: 1) lists of black male achievers, 2) statistics on black males, and 3) policy recommendations for black men. Thus, I wonder why the author did not divide the book into parts. The authors here are BIG on role models. Just by mentioning that black male individuals have thrived before is their proof that others can carry that torch. The suggestions at the end of the book are helpful, but unrealistic at a time when the party that "promotes self-reliance" and decries "big government" is in power.I just absolutely disagree with much of what is said in this book. One author gives Joe Jackson, father of the Jackson 5, as an example of "strong" black fatherhood. In reality, his sons have spoken openly of how abusive their father was. Later, a man celebrates Bill Clinton's appointment of blacks to high offices. He never mentions that Clinton shamefully fired Jocelyn Elders and he doesn't mention Lani Guinier (and Clinton's backstabbing of her) at all. A chapter on Caribbean and African men in the US implies that they are all PhD's and entrepreneurs. Trust me, there are plenty of foreign black men in the US who are not class-privileged or upwardly mobile economically. The chapter on black MSM never spells out if MSM are different from openly gay men and it makes a predictable statement that any person on the street could have made about preventing HIV among this populations.The book is the size and length of a required text for a college course. However, I could not imagine any professor using this as his core book on a syllabus. While it is nice that the cover does not contain something predictable like a male symbol or a drawing of Africa, I wonder why the editor chose a Mondrian-inspired cover. Did he want readers to ask, "What's black and white and red all over?"