★★★★★ 4
Why do black people . . .
Format: Hardcover
I purchased this book because I had many questions I wanted answered. Most of them were questions of "Why?". My biggest question was why we as black people have so many unhealthy habits in how we treat each other.
As a young African American male who was raised by his mother in a predominantly white suburban area, I wanted to know why, when I encountered other black youth in more urban areas, they would tell me I "talk white." What is "talking white?" Basically, talking white means I was talking like I have an education. Why do so many members of the black community (those without an education) reject me for valuing education? Why is it that when one black person fidns a way out of the ghetto, it seems the whole neighborhood, church included, condems that person for leaving "his/her people" and wanting to live in the suburbs with the whites? Why don't we support one-another in this society that has always held us from achieving our full potential?
I wanted to learn why we seem to have no clue of who we are, and so many of us, young and old, strive to "prove" we are "black enough." So talking a certain way makes us black? Or is it eating certain foods that makes us "black"? Listening to only certain kinds of music? We lack a firm sense of cultural identity. We take rebellious pride in being at the bottom, and equate success with "whiteness." We denounce the achievements of any black person and ostracize him from the community. We work to pressure our own to stay at the bottom.
In this very interesting book, the author, Dr. Joy Degruy Leary, proposes a number of explanations for why the African American community has developed these and other unhealthy cultural habits. Leary examines this very real "crabs in the barrel" mentality, as well as many other self-destructive habits which plague the black community. Leary establishes a diagnoses, and calls it Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Leary presents a very strong argument that the behaviors are all symptoms that have been passed down through the generations of African American people from the dawn of the trans-atlantic slave trade to today. Leary uses her own observations to support her theory of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
This book is a very thoughtful read. The reason I give this work only four stars is because I truly feel that Leary's argument would have been much more affirmed and effective if she had included a visual timeline to help the reader to better understand the timeframes and chain of events in history discussed in the book. The argument also would have been more effective if the author spent more time on each point. At times it seems she's just getting started before summarizing all that was just said and moving on. Scholarly sources are cited and research is used, but the book does not explore any one study or statistic in great depth. It is a fast read.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2012
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