marceloperezantivilo

This is a remarkable book about the massive migration of almost six million black people out of the south to the north and west from 1915-1970. It focuses on three real people who migrated, one to California, one to Harlem, and one to Chicago, and alternates their stories with narrative summaries about how their experiences reflect or highlight overall trends. The book struck me as remarkable in it's honesty; I did not feel that people, conditions, and experiences were manipulated to be worse or better than they actually were. Which is not to say the book shyed away from how genuinely horrifying and awful living in the south was for a black person. I really cannot comprehend living in a place that on the word of any random white person, I or my family member could be killed with no hope of any justice coming to the murderers. And that is to say nothing of the sickening, dehumanizing, relatively petty injustices that were part of every day life. The book does a remarkable job of dramatizing how impossibly suffocating and terrifying life under Jim Crow laws could be for a black person. And it illustrates that just because people believe with their whole hearts that something is right, in this case that black people are inherently inferior, and they argue in terms of apple pie and protecting the children and in defense of all that is holy and right et cetera, it doesn't mean that they aren't hateful, twisted people who are dead wrong. But things weren't all peaches and cream up north or out west, either. I mean, at least if a white person raped or killed your daughter you might have some legal recourse, which is not to be underrated, but there was plenty of prejudice and injustice to go around. The troubles that many of the black migrants found in the northern cities are still reflected in our urban troubles today. They were forced to live in certain neighborhoods, where they paid about 60% higher rent than white people paid for similar housing, while being paid less than white counterparts in the worst possible jobs. It is not surprising that this situation created it's own problems. I am reminded of Lincoln's second inaugeral speech given in the middle of the Civil War, which makes me feel slightly uneasy and sad every time I read it for it's truth and prescience: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."" The war is over, but in so many ways it seems our country is still paying the price in blood for the horrors and injustices inflicted under slavery. It's a very readable, enjoyable book. There were a few things I found a bit irritating, one being Wilkerson's affinity for referring to any house occupied by a black person as a shotgun house every time she mentions it (perhaps to make it sound more dramatic?). Another is her apparent goal of making any given section of text easily excerptable, thus requiring her to repeat information you might have read just a few pages before. But overall, she does an excellent job of detailing in an engaging way this important story.

2022-09-29 20:57