WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT RACE?

Keith Boykin’s new book sets out Informed rebuttals of false claims about Black Americans in presenting  25 arguments about race that won’t go away. These are set out in five chapters: Erasing Black History; Centring White Victimhood; Denying Black Oppression; Myths of Black Inferiority and Rebranding Racism. 

Though set against the Black American experience, the 25 arguments and rebuttals can easily be mirrored to the British Black experience, as Boykin illustrated on his recent book tour stop over in Birmingham at the University of Birmingham;s Exchange on 25th April to a packed house.

Boykin, the founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and author of Race Against Time, delivers a series of arguments that target misconceptions about the realities of Black life in America and the persistence of white supremacy. The brief chapters, written in an accessible style and often including personal anecdotes, are divided into five broad themes: the erasure of Black history, the insistence on white victimhood, the denial of Black oppression, the promotion of myths of Black inferiority, and the masking of racist rhetoric. 

The author debunks familiar but flawed reasoning across a range of contentious topics, including the rationale behind affirmative action, the fate of Confederate monuments, the racial content of school curricula, and the significance of Barack Obama’s presidency. As Boykin credibly suggests, the persistence and popularity of bogus logic in debates about race can often be attributed to a reluctance among white Americans to acknowledge responsibility for long standing injustices. The most insightful and memorable chapter engages the controversy surrounding critical race theory and the vagueness of the attacks directed against it. 

Also helpful is the author’s demolition of the argument that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, or that slavery itself is merely a historical artefact, without profound and continually unfolding consequences. Boykin could have done more to connect discussions of anti-Black racism with other forms of white supremacist ideology; for instance, he only mentions in passing deeply held prejudices against Native Americans and Asian Americans. Nevertheless, the author furnishes a useful guide to confronting misconceptions about Black America and makes a convincing case that race matters in so many conversations because it has always been a defining—if often poorly understood—feature of national life.

Overall the book provides a clarifying set of arguments about Black lives past and present.