Essays on Anti-Blackness in the United States

‘Keepin’ It Real’ by Elwood Watson

Passengers on train by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

If you’re looking for a broad overview of issues facing Black people in the United States in recent years, one book to consult is Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America (Intellect, 2019).

In this essay collection, Elwood Watson, Ph.D. discusses many events from the late 2010s, including:

• In March 2015, Starbucks had a campaign “to encourage baristas to discuss the issue of race with customers.” It lasted a week. “Having Starbucks baristas serve as goodwill ambassadors” was “dead on arrival,” he explains. USAmericans “are all too aware of racism and its potentially debilitating effect on our lives. Having nice, polite conversations about race have not solved such ills in the past, and there is certainly no reason to believe they will do so now.” Nonetheless, white USAmericans must “begin to have the conversation among themselves” as a first step.
• In April 2015, Professor Michael Eric Dyson strongly criticized Professor Cornel West. This touched off a meta-debate over whether “Black folk publicly disagreeing with one another” ends up “as an amusing spectacle to White bigots and does a great disservice to the larger Black community.” However, Watson expects anti-Black people to “keep on reveling in their hate” whatever…