This is one of the most fascinating and mind-blowing I have read in a long time. I listened to it, actually, or else I would have been underlining things on every single page and I would have so many more things to say about it than I have right now. I have thought about this book at least once a day since finishing it six weeks ago; so many of the stories he told and the points he made are so fresh, even when he was talking about things that happened three hundred years ago in America. The main thing he made me believe was that the only thing wrong with black people is that we think there's something wrong with black people--and I never really understood what that meant until he explained it throughout the book, over and over again. He started at the beginning of our American history and used five crucial American thinkers and how they dictated and represented the racist (or anti-racist) ways Americans thought and have thought at the time. I could not believe all of the parts of our history that he wrote about that I did not know or which I'd never understood in the way he shared. Like, the fact that after the Civil War, in the beginning of Reconstruction, there were black Congressmen from the South, who were slowly pushed out by the South as they reclaimed their hold over Black people through Jim Crow and anti-voting laws. I had no idea. I feel ashamed that I didn't know about all of the Black activists who have been making a difference to change political and public opinions for centuries in our country--I knew many, but they were represented here in such a more complete way that I learned so much. This book was definitely the best book I've read/listened to all year, and I feel like I might buy a copy so that I can read it again and remember better what I've learned.
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