Customer Reviews

Why Black People Tend to Shout: Cold Facts and Wry Views from a Black Man's World

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book was a scream! It was full of anecdotes that most of us as Blacks folks have experienced. The stories were funny but they were also disturbing because so many of the situations were blatantly racist. Black people do have to shout just to be heard. Then people wonder what all the shouting is about. This book is an easy and fast read. You are left shaking your head but with a smile on your face.

As a white female teacher in a mostly black area, I often discover that the students are the worst stereotypers of each other. They call intelligent well-spoken kids "whitey," and often try not to see that there is value in education and knowledge. Ralph Wiley shows intellect, a gift of satire, and gets into their heads to vocalize what many feel but can't say. I teach his essays in English and encourage my students to use them in dramatic reading competitions, "freaking out" the middle class kids who also attend. My students and I admire his honesty, wit and in-your-face attitude. He not only "calls out" whites, but blacks who hold themselves down and who hold down others as well. As they remind me, he "keeps it real!"

When I was a young man in my early teens, I encountered this text as one of the first reads that my mother allowed me to pull from the shelves of African American literature at some local Waldenbooks or Barnes and Noble. It remains my favorite collection of essays for both nostalgia's sake along with how well it lent itself as the basis for a great deal of my early opinions and philosophical investigation. Wiley struck me as the curious and opinionated sort which are not bad qualities for a journalist and sportswriter. This is the sort of thing that was necessary for me who had spent much of his time seated in the company of more adults than children offering my views on current events.

As I review the text again with new eyes as I find myself doing with all previously studied works, there is much that finds itself outdated about the text. These essays live entombed in time where they were written and for what purpose they were intended. Not unlike any other published collection of column writings, but if one is a student of history as am I, they can find some wonderful gems in here which will connect readily with other points of study. Along the way, you will laugh and wince and occasionally feel odd shaped or uncomfortable for Wiley is witty and humorous and solemn and honest all throughout.

Social critique in the era of the blogosphere is fast becoming an undervalued art as everyone imagines that they are capable of doing such a thing, but here lies a study in a classical method of critique knowing that your ultimate goal is to assist your audience with understanding and comprehending the unfamiliar if they are daring enough to walk with you to the end. If we are not both made a little uncomfortable by the journey, we will not be able to readjust readily to one another's presence in a way that is fair and just to the both of us.

Ralph Wiley's insight and intellect about African American and the larger caucasian cultures is varied and skillfully rendered in this book.
As a "Sports Reporter", one might expect Mr. Wiley to write primarily about sports and the African American affect; well he does write about one sports personality - among others - John Thompson, former college basketball coach and commentator; but he also about former newspaper writer H.L. Mecken, socialist writer, Karl Marx and movie director Francis Ford Coppola among others.
He also writes in a compelling and comprehensive style that is easy to understand and appreciate.

I enjoyed this collection -- it was thought-provoking. I like Wiley's work a lot, and getting his take on topics unrelated to sports was a change. He's not compelled to find an answer for every problem, and he doesn't try to be fair to everyone all the time. Someone called Ralph Wiley "an authentic voice," and this collection justifies the description.

Ralph Wiley is a genius! This book had me laughing and inspired all at the same time. I wrote to Mr. Wiley and congratulated him on his straight talk. He responded to me in good time. I was even more impressed. His passing caught me by surprise. I purchased his second book, What Black People Should Do Now. It was also good.

The book was provacative. It clarified issues for me and helped me to see the fallacies in our culture. Ralph Wiley is my favorite author and contemporary voice. Problem is that now I live in the Midwest and I can't catch Powerpoint. He is the bomb!

Ralph Wiley is a Genius.his writing is on point&very honest.it pulls no punches about Race&the injustices.the Book hits you with Humor but also Realness that can't be ignored out here.a very important read.

While members of ITCOMS did not agree with all of Mr. Wiley's ideas, we could not stop taking about the book. The book raises questions that need discussion. Maybe that is what the book is all about: raising awareness, thinking along different lines, and talking and exchanging ideas.

Understandably defensive about his unfocused and rambling writing style, the late Ralph Wiley used his limited talents to lower the standard of discourse on race relations in America. Wiley's various conspiracy theories, which comprise the bulk of "Why Black People Tend To Shout," don't withstand scrutiny, and they offer no solutions. His book has value only as a sociological example of one African American male's mindset in the late 20th century. The most accurate review comes from a paraphrasing of Wiley's own words: "A very unoriginal human being, this [Ralph Wiley]. Poisoned by the deciders in his youth, he learned his hate, and also learned how to pass off his own inadequacies on other people. If he didn't get something, it was somebody else's fault, not his. [Ralph Wiley] didn't leave such thinking behind in the seventh grade, like most everybody else. He had hit upon a business."