Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? [Hardcover] by Charles Barkley [Hardcover]

book (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2005

The thing about race, Charles Barkley says, is we talk about it only when something bad happens and tempers are high, and so all we do is shout at one another across a chasm that's wide and getting wider. The rest of the time we try to pretend that the chasm isn't there. The way to get real about things, Barkley demonstrates in this book, isn't to shout and point fingers, but to expose all the hypocrisy and phoniness that keep us from talking about the way things really are, and even to find the humor in all the crazy disconnects and misunderstandings between the different races in America. It's time someone did, because things aren't getting better, as he's here to show us. Racism has just gone underground: Sure, celebrities like him get the white-glove treatment, but in the meantime, we're living in a country that's growing steadily more racially segregated. If you're white, what are the odds you live or work with a significant number of black people? The odds are low and getting lower. When news of the Kobe Bryant case broke, 70 percent of whites polled thought he did it; 70 percent of blacks polled thought he was innocent. What's that about?, Charles Barkley wants to know. Until we learn to see into one another's minds and hearts a little more and, crucially, to laugh with one another, we're just going to keep living the lie that racism has gone away just because it's out of plain sight.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: The Penguin Press (2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0641760930
• ISBN-13: 978-0641760938
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,779,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Interviews: Little to do with Charles Barkley, April 16, 2005

By 

Jeffery Ashton "Jeffrey Ashton" (Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? (Hardcover)

In this book you really do not hear from Charles Barkley so much. When he writes it is very simple and to the point, with very little humor (which is what he is known for). It is fascinating to read opinions and personal stories from Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Obama, and many other famous peronalities on their ideas about race and other issues in America. This book has very little to do with Charles Barkley, and if I were to read it blindly I would have never guessed that he wrote it. This book has a great compilation of contributors and it is worth reading just to learn more about them alone.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good book to just read!, April 22, 2005

By 

Teresia K. Adams "Kippie" (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? (Hardcover)

OK, I understand that some look at this as some celebrity interview book, but I see it as more. Sir Charles is always himself and his opinions are well stated. I happen to agree with a lot of what this book has to say. It has a pop culture edge but that is ok. Does everything have to be academic? It is enjoyable and has a good heart.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not me!, April 1, 2008

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? (Paperback)

Until now, I was not much of a of Charles Barkley fan. I always saw him as a "washed up bully" and ex-basketball superstar, still trying to cash-in on his name recognition and tying to keep it in the "limelight" by saying outlandish and provocative things. I no longer think that after reading this book, which I bought after seeing it, and Barkley "unceremoniously put down" in Larry Elders incredibly ill conceived, confusing and poorly written book called "Stupid Black Men."

My thinking was that if Larry Elders didn't like Charles Barkley, then there must still be something good and redeeming about him that I had not yet discovered. And sure enough, there was: This book, which is a miniature masterpiece. Barkley is no "Stupid Black Man," as Elders has portrayed him to be.

Rather incredibly, this book is the missing dialogue on race that America has never had, and may never have. It is just the opposite of Elders' "Stupid Black Men" and the "Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint two-man road show:" "Come on People," in which both take the fashionable "low road of least resistance: "Just attack Black men, and you are safe: America will love you, but nothing will ever be done, and nothing will ever change:

End of the American dialogue on race.

Perhaps for the first time in American history, we get a collection of what fourteen successful and well-known people have to say about race in America -- rather than mindless ideological tripe, oozing out as more "Christianized racism," from the likes of Armstrong Williams and Larry Elders. And what these fourteen people (most of whom are black) have to say will not only surprise Cosby, Pousaint and Elders, but the rest of America as well.

Hear what Tiger Woods, Ice Cube, Barack Obama, George Lopez, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, and many others both black, white and other colors, have to say about the racism that still exists across the American landscape in every industry and in every town.

Rather than steal the book's thunder, I will simply say this: If one wants to know what the racial situation is like in America, they would be wise to interview some successful black people and others who understand and know the consequences of racism rather than listen to the "hired conservative media hit men" who all speak the same language: "Uncle Tom-speak."

Five Stars