It can seem frightening when one realizes the extent to which the left has succeeded in alienating America's black community from the rest of the country.
Once a week, the New York Times Sunday Book Review features an interview with a published writer. Called By the Book and featuring a painting of the respective author by Rebecca Clarke, some of the questions are personal to the subject of the interview — which often seems to be done by email — while a handful of other questions features the exact same basic recurring inquiries, such as "What’s the last great book you read?" and what's "Your favorite book no one else has heard of?"
A number of writers are black, which is not a problem, needless to say, far from it, but you might have second thoughts and wince a mite (whatever the color of your skin) when you see the race-baitin' books that sometimes inspired the authors and notice to what degree they are exclusively, or mainly (but far from always), by other black writers (although sometimes by other minority authors, but invariably by leftists).
For instance, the favorite novelist of all time for Tiya Miles is "Toni Morrison — for her sheer bravery, breathless wordsmithing, intellectual range and incomparable understanding of our emotional and social realms. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins came to mind as a close second. Her best-known novel [was] “Contending Forces” (published in 1900)".
A previous post on a(n in)famous football quarterback who authored a picture book was asked this question
Which books or authors inspired you as an activist?
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” by Alex Haley, Malcolm X and Attallah Shabazz; “Revolutionary Suicide,” by Huey P. Newton; “The Wretched of the Earth” and “Black Skin, White Masks,” by Frantz Fanon; “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” by Paulo Freire; “Black Awakening in Capitalist America,” by Robert L. Allen; “Women, Race and Class” and “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle,” by Angela Y. Davis; “I Write What I Like,” by Steve Biko; “Slave Patrols,” by Sally E. Hadden.
Thus, that post ended with this sentence of mine:
There you have it: … Colin Kaepernick seems to have no interest in any author (in any human?) who ain't black.
As for the question that almost invariably ends the By the Book interview in the NYT's Sunday Book Review section each week — "You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?" — Toni Morrison and James Baldwin are ubiquitous, returning again and again and again. (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)
Here are some of the black authors' actual replies: for Reginald Dwayne Betts the answer is "Lucille Clifton, Harold Bloom, Toni Morrison", for Brontez Purnell it's "Sappho, Anton LaVey and Maya Angelou", and for the rapper Common it's "James Baldwin, Nas, and Kahlil Gibran", while the aforementioned Colin Kaepernick answers "James Baldwin, Alexandre Dumas and Toni Morrison."
As for Morgan Parker, the author of “Magical Negro” wanted to invite six people, not three, and not one of them not African-American:
June Jordan, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin — but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t get just as much fun and fulfillment from a night with Angel Nafis, Danez Smith and Saeed Jones.
Regarding Glory Edim (who "created the Well-Read Black Girl book club"), she only wants four people, but needless to say, they can hardly be described as run-of-the-mill realists:
Toni Morrison, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Trevor Noah. There would be whiskey, shared laughter and candid commentary on everything. If I could add one more person, it would be Ta-Nehisi Coates!
Who can deny that Nikole Hannah-Jones, Trevor Noah, and Ta-Nehisi Coates would engage in nothing but objective, neutral, and "candid commentary"?!
“Lovely One: A Memoir” allowed the Times to interview Ketanji Brown Jackson (otherwise known as a Supreme Court justice), and she does list two whites ("Heather McGhee. Atul Gawande. Brad Meltzer.") for her ideal dinner party, but apart from that, it's blacks and/or leftists all the way through (Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s biography, “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” “Born a Crime,” by Trevor Noah, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,” by Justice Stephen Breyer, “All That She Carried,” by Tiya Miles, in addition to a stack of memoirs — by Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis, Michelle Obama, Sonia Sotomayor).
What’s the last great book you read?
Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s biography, “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” is probably the last full book I’ve read outside of work. I was just so grateful that this extraordinary woman’s experiences and contributions finally got the attention they deserved.
Indeed, Ketanji Brown Jackson adds that it "was crucial for me to maintain a relatively good relationship with my daughters. Doing that well is the essential challenge of working motherhood." Who knows? Maybe she does know what a woman is, after all!
