Black AF History

Black AF History
By Michael Harriot
William Morrow, 2023. 426 pages. Nonfiction

It's important for us, as humans, to remember that what we think of as "history" is usually just one person/group's version of the events. "A searingly smart and bitingly hilarious telling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights; after all, history was written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. In this book, Michael Harriot combines unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the pioneering work of Black historians, scholars and journalists," states the publisher. The book begins in the year 1400 with The Age of Discovery of European exploration, and demonstrates clearly how the slave trade was human trafficking, plantations were "forced labor enterprises," Jim Crow was American apartheid, and lynch mobs were serial killers and ethnic cleansers. 

My favorite chapter was on Ida B. Wells, who helped found the NAACP, among other amazing things. The author's conversational tone peppered with occasional sarcasm makes the history come alive. According to the author, Wells was "allergic to white nonsense and patriarchy," which sounds like the kind of woman I'd want to know. This history book makes it very clear that the United States became wealthy from a race-based human trafficking system that enshrined the laws of property and white supremacy, which reduced people to chattel through violence. No matter how difficult it feels to learn about our country's true history, we owe it ourselves to bring the truth to light and deal with it, together, head-on. This book is an incredible resource for that journey and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

If you liked Black AF History, you might also like:

Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man 
By Emmanuel Acho
Flatiron Books, 2020. 244 pages. Nonfiction

This book takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, that many white Americans are afraid to ask; yet, which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With open-hearted generosity, the author explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and "reverse racism." In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader's curiosity -- but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.

The New Jim Crow

By Michelle Alexander

New Press, 2012. 312 pages. Nonfiction

With engaging candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial cast in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting Black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control--relegating millions to a permanent second-class status--even as it formally adheres to the principles of colorblindness. This book is a call to action.

Between the World and Me
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Spiegal & Grau, 2015. 152 pages. Nonfiction.

This book takes the form of a letter to the author's teenage son and it comes to grips with what it means to be Black in America in the twenty-first century. It attempts to answer questions like: what is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? The stories Coates shares, beautifully woven from his personal narrative, "clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward."

LKA