The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other [Hardcover]

Randall Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2002

In The Reckoning, Robinson provides startling insights into prominent Americans' roles in the crime and poverty that grip much of urban America, and rallies black Americans to speak out-and reach back-to ensure that the largely forgotten poor of black America get their chance at the American dream. The Reckoning grew out of Robinson's work with gang members, ex-convicts, and others profoundly scarred by environments of extreme poverty and its unshakable shadow-crime. The Reckoning pays homage to residents of these neighborhoods waging heroic struggles to free their communities from economic blight and social pathology. Robinson calls on black Americans of all ages and classes to join this crucial battle to bring the residents of America's inner cities to safe harbor.

"Randall Robinson is an authentic hero and a true patriot. He loves his country but is unafraid to rebuke or expose its sins. America is indebted to her black people, and Randall makes the case for why we must not and cannot accept a check marked 'insufficient funds.'" (Tavis Smiley, author and host, BET Tonight)

"Randall Robinson is the greatest pro-Africa fighter of his generation in America. His powerful and poignant story of personal and political struggle is one of vision, courage, and sacrifice." (Cornel West, Harvard University professor and author of Race Matters)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With the bestselling The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, Robinson, founder of the policy group TransAfrica, became a prominent voice for U.S. slavery reparations. Rather than a follow-up to The Debt, this book reads like a similarly impassioned extension of it. Robinson, in his powerful, polemical style, finds that "246 years of slavery and the century of government-embraced racial discrimination" have produced a devastating legacy for young African-Americans: "We are still slaves. The chains are inside us now. They turn our spirits mean, our hearts into metallic chambers.... They render our memories empty, our vision short, our song coarse, our fathers broken, our mothers bereaved." His prime example here is the criminal justice system, and the spine of this rather diffuse book is the story of Pee Wee Kirkland, who became a criminal (and basketball legend) growing up poor in 1950s Harlem, but who ultimately reformed. Along the way, Robinson makes some compelling points: the criminal justice system is disproportionately black and poor, prisons benefit poor white communities and Caucasian white-collar criminals get treated more gently than black convicts from the street. He criticizes fellow blacks for supporting politicians like Bill Clinton who he thinks furthered such injustices. As with the previous book, Robinson is short on practical analyses, but despite being less about what blacks owe each other than about the injustices continually in the offing, this book-length lament may further liberation. (Feb.) Forecast: Though post-9/11 concerns may diminish attention paid to this book, Robinson will be listened to, especially by the core constituency that read The Debt. He will soon join a class action suit against the U.S. government for reparations on behalf of the descendants of slaves.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Robinson rounds out work he did in Defending the Spirit and The Debt, arguing that all blacks must work to assure a better life for the inner-city poor.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (January 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052594625X
• ISBN-13: 978-0525946250
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,043,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable and no wonder, March 13, 2007

By 

World Music Fan - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Reckoning (Paperback)

No wonder this guy quit America and left, I plan to do the same. Meanwhile, I do find it odd and suspect that I could not find this book on Amazon by searching the title; in all three pages of search results, this book was not among the list, but "Dead Reckoning" was, despite it's not "'The' Reckoning." It finally came up when I searched Robinson's name. I've never had that problem on this website.

Regardless, this is a stellar book. What Mr. Robinson writes here is reality, despite that those here who gave it one star refuse to either learn that or fess up, fess up meaning they are clearly the problem. It is a must read for anyone who is truly interested in understanding the truth about why this country is spiraling downward in a rapid pace. Our priorities are all wrong, money ranks above everything here, and way above everything. This book is extremely well written, the information and statistics are those we should all be reciting instead of some sports tool's batting average, but obviously people here in this country like living in a police state and living behind the barrel of a gun that's pointing to every other country on the planet as well as at the inner cities.

The fact is, the only industry we haven't farmed out to third world countries yet is the Security industry, it's becoming the fastest growing industry we have, even surpassing pharmaceutical. There's good reason for the fear tactics, it's big business. Prisons alone are becoming a $60 billion dollar industry, detention centers are adding to that goldmine, pretty soon they'll be running out of black and brown folks to build that goldmine and then they'll be after the white folks because the monster is growing and it's hungry, so I wouldn't be so quick to discount what this guy is warning.

Oh, and by the way, I'm one of those European American types, otherwise known as "white" but I read this book as merely human, same as the author.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's about time, January 23, 2002

By 

Kimberley Wilson (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other (Hardcover)

Now this is the book I was hoping Randall Robinson would write. The topic of what blacks owe each other has been discussed in other books but Robinson's work is bound to have a wider audience. It didn't seem as passionate as THE DEBT and it doesn't go far enough but this book will get you thinking about how black people treat and see each other.

Kimberley Lindsay Wilson, author of Work It! The Black Woman's Guide to Success at Work.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Idea, but confusing execution, January 30, 2002

By 

Andre M. "brnn64" (Mt. Pleasant, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other (Hardcover)

I finished reading this last night. Perhaps I should read it more than once to "get it." The premise of Blacks uniting to solve the current problems of massive imprisonment and fratracide among the youth is a sound one that needs much attention. However, this is dealt with in a series of meandering and confusing essays that just don't seem to hang together and lessen the effectiveness of its message.

For example, one essay deals with the spectualtion of what life would be like in the Black America of 2076 with Robinson's great-granddaughter and the problems she faces. Obviously written before 9-11, this minimizes the effectiveness on today's readers as the fictional descendant reads newspaper clippings from 2000 and 2001 to where America went wrong. This kind of fictional specualtion is more Derrrick Bell's forte than Robisnon's.

The essays with the hip-hopper "New Child" and Robinson's 50 -year old "homeboy" from Richmond Va, whose life of crime Robinson tries desperately to understand contains too much stream of -consciousness type dialougue and obscure symbolism to have much of an effect on the reader. A more straightforward rendering, as James Baldwin did with similar material in "Nobody Knows My Name" and "The Fire Next Time." would have certainly helped in getting his point across.

Robinson's points about the unwillingless and inability of so called Black "leaders" of today to solve the true (as opposed to symbolic) problems of African-Americans are sound and he is to be commended for bringing up the issue of our supposed leaders "selling out" to the political parties. Unfortunately, the job could have been done better by dealing with these issues in a straightforward fashion without the confusing stories, such as Earl Ofari Hutchinson's "Disappearance of Black Leadership."