Customer Reviews

We Ain't What We Ought To Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama

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This is a useful narrative based on a variety of secondary sources of what has come to be called the "long civil rights movement", over two hundred years of activism. One might disagree with certain points of emphasis, by overstatement or understatement, but in a study of such breadth that may be unavoidable. What is not unavoidable--- and here the editors (at Harvard University Press, no less)should take as much blame as the author--- is the frequent repetitiousness, some of which is due to history's simply being not quite that linear, but is at times simply careless. There is one point where the same, relatively insignificant quotation appears, identically, on two successive pages.

Covering the entire history of Black resistance (and at times, surrender) to white supremecy since emancipation, this is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the racial components to U.S. politics and culture. Well written, the book reads easily. As a white kid from Oregon with little exposure to blacks over my life until I moved to the D.C. Metro area, this so far has been a remedy to what I would call a default racism that one learns through the sensationalized media porrayals of blacks as murdered and rapists, which I learned has always been part and parcel of white supremacist ideology.

This put into context for me the gap between blacks and whites economically as much of the book describes race riots and federal policies that have stripped blacks of wealth and earning potential, such as the administration of CCC programs, etc., which benefited whites over blacks, gender relations, the denial of sufferage to black women and lack of gender solidarity, and on and on. I can't say if this would be anything new or insightful to those who have more knowledge of black history that I. But for someone that was fairly ignorant beyond the very brief exposure to Ida Wells, Marcus Garvey, MLK, and Harriet Tubman in middle school history classes, this is an excellent volume.

The book is well-written, and is "the book" for those looking to quickly get up to speed on the developments in understanding "Civil Rights" as a narrative without losing the social, economic, and cultural nuances.

When I sit down and revise/write a paper/essay on the civil rights movement, I generally use this book as a point of reference, especially for historical perspectives that might come up in class/grading. There's also a website based on the title (weaintwhatweoughttobe) that makes studying easier , that has key concepts, people, etc. for a period, which is pretty rare for a non-textbook.

This is a solid read, and a good update/foil to older, more lyrical works like Sitkoff's Struggle for Black Equality or Cook's Sweet Land of Liberty that tend to focus in on key snapshot events apart from the context.