If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
-Frederick Douglass
One statement in the first few pages really set the tone of this book, for good or ill: Sethi writes:
"We must begin by acknowledging that this country was built on a hate crime. The Native people of this land were displaced and exterminated to make room for Christians and Europeans."
Different than many of the other books I've read about recent times, this one is a compilation of interviews collected by the editor, who has had his own brushes with discrimination. It chronicles individual stories of a diverse group of people who describe their struggles in living in their own American communities. Nigh on the third decade of the twenty-first century, the realization of how little we've really progressed toward equality, and, more generally, simple respect and a basic sense of civility is disheartening. The book also not only includes the stories of the persons affected, and how hate has impacted their lives and communities, but it also describes the tools used to propagate hate, which increasingly involves social media.
I'm glad I read the stories of the individuals who have been directly affected, but the book was excessively political for my taste. I might have rated it higher had it not really sought to focus specifically on what people believe "Trump" has done to the US. I appreciate that the interviewees describe how things have changed for them, but, to me, most poignantly, the accounts demonstrate how things have NOT really changed all that much, frankly, as most of these brave souls describe discrimination throughout their lives, both in and outside the US. Most also point to gruesome violence in their own homelands as well, which is just another type of hate, something there is globally just too much of.
One interviewee stated their belief that a particular hate group "now act[s] with impunity, and think they have license to hurt others," but this has been much the situation for the history of the US, sadly. I recall with dismay one report which stated that the threats against a black president had increased some (?) 400 percent, which suggests that it isn't really the current administration which is inciting further hate and violence. I remember the climate in the US just after 9/11, which many younger people just *don't*. I think, similarly, a series of world events and terror attacks have affected people's outcome toward certain groups in general, misguided though it may be, so it may well have to do more with world events endlessly paraded and sensationalized by mainstream media rather than a single individual.
For example: the editor states that "boys and men are parroting the President," with the result that one in six girls now complains of being groped in school. There are a couple of ways to conceptualize this statistic, however: I think we also need to look at the incidence of reporting. In an era where kindergartners can sexually harass, the changing definition might have something to do with the dramatic increase. I'm not so certain that this hasn't been the case previously, but it was so much more normalized in the past that no one really thought to report inappropriate touching as sexual assault or harassment.
Example: I've had two friends who experienced what I think would be called today "precocious puberty" in junior high school, and were subjected to what I would legitimately call almost incessant sexual harassment and even occasional assault (i.e., "groping"), but no one at the schools (in two different states, mind you, one of them California, a liberal bastion extraordinaire) took it seriously or really took any action at all, having the attitude that "boys will be boys." One teacher (!) even told my friend that "if you don't let it bother you and they see that it doesn't bother you, they'll stop doing it." Fortunately, I think that this type of attitude has changed, which is the first step to changing attitudes and behavior at large. At least it's now being called out.
As such, I think it's simplistic to blame any one person or group, and we need to look much deeper at the roots of hate, in order to also understand the perspectives of the people who are perpetrating it, to try to avoid more people becoming like them. Sethi likewise argues that the solution must come from the bottom up, rather than the top down in the form of a leader serving as an example, but that wouldn't hurt either: it was discouraging to see the rather laissez-faire attitude of my fellow Americans during the Clinton sex scandal, where a known rapist attained the office of the president and continued to perpetrate misconduct, literally inside the Oval Office, with very few repercussions. Clearly, misconduct among those in high places isn't going to improve for the foreseeable future, but We the People should at this point be able to regulate ourselves, and empathizing with people brave enough to tell their stories is a good way to go about it.
-Frederick Douglass
One statement in the first few pages really set the tone of this book, for good or ill: Sethi writes:
"We must begin by acknowledging that this country was built on a hate crime. The Native people of this land were displaced and exterminated to make room for Christians and Europeans."
Different than many of the other books I've read about recent times, this one is a compilation of interviews collected by the editor, who has had his own brushes with discrimination. It chronicles individual stories of a diverse group of people who describe their struggles in living in their own American communities. Nigh on the third decade of the twenty-first century, the realization of how little we've really progressed toward equality, and, more generally, simple respect and a basic sense of civility is disheartening. The book also not only includes the stories of the persons affected, and how hate has impacted their lives and communities, but it also describes the tools used to propagate hate, which increasingly involves social media.
I'm glad I read the stories of the individuals who have been directly affected, but the book was excessively political for my taste. I might have rated it higher had it not really sought to focus specifically on what people believe "Trump" has done to the US. I appreciate that the interviewees describe how things have changed for them, but, to me, most poignantly, the accounts demonstrate how things have NOT really changed all that much, frankly, as most of these brave souls describe discrimination throughout their lives, both in and outside the US. Most also point to gruesome violence in their own homelands as well, which is just another type of hate, something there is globally just too much of.
One interviewee stated their belief that a particular hate group "now act[s] with impunity, and think they have license to hurt others," but this has been much the situation for the history of the US, sadly. I recall with dismay one report which stated that the threats against a black president had increased some (?) 400 percent, which suggests that it isn't really the current administration which is inciting further hate and violence. I remember the climate in the US just after 9/11, which many younger people just *don't*. I think, similarly, a series of world events and terror attacks have affected people's outcome toward certain groups in general, misguided though it may be, so it may well have to do more with world events endlessly paraded and sensationalized by mainstream media rather than a single individual.
For example: the editor states that "boys and men are parroting the President," with the result that one in six girls now complains of being groped in school. There are a couple of ways to conceptualize this statistic, however: I think we also need to look at the incidence of reporting. In an era where kindergartners can sexually harass, the changing definition might have something to do with the dramatic increase. I'm not so certain that this hasn't been the case previously, but it was so much more normalized in the past that no one really thought to report inappropriate touching as sexual assault or harassment.
Example: I've had two friends who experienced what I think would be called today "precocious puberty" in junior high school, and were subjected to what I would legitimately call almost incessant sexual harassment and even occasional assault (i.e., "groping"), but no one at the schools (in two different states, mind you, one of them California, a liberal bastion extraordinaire) took it seriously or really took any action at all, having the attitude that "boys will be boys." One teacher (!) even told my friend that "if you don't let it bother you and they see that it doesn't bother you, they'll stop doing it." Fortunately, I think that this type of attitude has changed, which is the first step to changing attitudes and behavior at large. At least it's now being called out.
As such, I think it's simplistic to blame any one person or group, and we need to look much deeper at the roots of hate, in order to also understand the perspectives of the people who are perpetrating it, to try to avoid more people becoming like them. Sethi likewise argues that the solution must come from the bottom up, rather than the top down in the form of a leader serving as an example, but that wouldn't hurt either: it was discouraging to see the rather laissez-faire attitude of my fellow Americans during the Clinton sex scandal, where a known rapist attained the office of the president and continued to perpetrate misconduct, literally inside the Oval Office, with very few repercussions. Clearly, misconduct among those in high places isn't going to improve for the foreseeable future, but We the People should at this point be able to regulate ourselves, and empathizing with people brave enough to tell their stories is a good way to go about it.
