How to Be an Antiracist (28 page)

the kids of working-class White families
:
For a good study on the transformation in New York City, see Walter Thabit,
How East New York Became a Ghetto
(New York: NYU Press, 2005).

“Blacks must understand and acknowledge”
:
“Transcript of President Clinton’s Speech on Race Relations,” CNN, October 17, 1995, available at
www.cnn.com/​US/​9510/​megamarch/​10-16/​clinton/​update/​transcript.html
.

the Black body was as devilish as any people
:
John Smith, “Advertisements: Or, The Path-way to Experience to Erect a Planation,” in
Capt. John Smith, Works, 1608–1631
, ed. Edward Arber (Birmingham, UK: E. Arber, 1884), 955.

“make yourself infinitely Blacker than you are already”
:
See Cotton Mather,
A Good Master Well Served
(Boston: B. Green, and J. Allen, 1696).

“the Cruel disposition of those Creatures”
:
Mary Miley Theobald, “Slave Conspiracies in Colonial Virginia,”
Colonial Williamsburg,
Winter 2005–2006, available at
www.history.org/​foundation/​journal/​winter05-06/​conspiracy.cfm
.

federal “appropriations for protecting…against ruthless savages”
:
“A Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union,” Texas State Library and Archives Commission, February 2, 1861, available at
www.tsl.texas.gov/​ref/​abouttx/​secession/​2feb1861.html
.

“The poor African has become a fiend”
:
Albert B. Hart,
The Southern South
(New York: D. Appleton, 1910), 93.

“criminal display of the violence among minority groups”
:
Marvin E. Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti,
The Subculture of Violence: Toward an Integrated Theory in Criminology
(New York: Routledge, 2001), 264.

“The core criminal-justice population is the black underclass”
:
Heather Mac Donald,
The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe
(New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 233.

Americans today see the Black body as larger
:
John Paul Wilson, Kurt Hugenberg, and Nicholas O. Rule, “Racial Bias in Judgments of Physical Size and Formidability: From Size to Threat,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
113:1 (July 2017), 59–80, available at
www.apa.org/​pubs/​journals/​releases/​psp-pspi0000092.pdf
.

I considered joining the Zulu Nation
:
I did not identify the Zulu Nation as a gang then; neither did its members. But I decided to add that term for clarity. Here is an article on the debate over the term as well as what the Zulu Nation was facing in the mid-1990s in NYC: “Hip-Hop Club (Gang?) Is Banned in the Bronx; Cultural Questions About Zulu Nation,”
The New York Times,
October 4, 1995.

in 2015, Black bodies accounted for at least 26 percent
:
See
The Washington Post
database on police shootings, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​graphics/​2018/​national/​police-shootings-2018/
.

Unarmed Black bodies
:
See “Fatal Police Shootings of Unarmed People Have Significantly Declined, Experts Say,”
The Washington Post,
May 7, 2018, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​investigations/​fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/​2018/​05/​03/​d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html
.

Republicans called those items “welfare for criminals”
:
Debate on 1994 Crime Bill, House Session, August 11, 1994, C-SPAN recording, available at
www.c-span.org/​video/​?59442-1/​house-session&start=12042
.

Twenty-six of the thirty-eight voting members
:
“Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?,”
The New York Times,
April 13, 2016, available at
www.nytimes.com/​2016/​04/​13/​opinion/​did-blacks-really-endorse-the-1994-crime-bill.html
.

their fear for my Black body—and of it
:
See James Forman Jr.,
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017).

“put politics and party above law and order”
:
“Crime Bill Is Signed with Flourish,”
The Washington Post,
September 14, 1994, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​archive/​politics/​1994/​09/​14/​crime-bill-is-signed-with-flourish/​650b1c2f-e306-4c00-9c6f-80bc9cc57e55/
.

John J. DiIulio Jr. warned of the “coming of the super-predators”
:
John DiIulio, “The Coming of the Super-Predators,”
The Weekly Standard,
November 27, 1995, available at
www.weeklystandard.com/​john-j-dilulio-jr/​the-coming-of-the-super-predators
.

In 1993, near the height of urban violent crime
:
“Urban, Suburban, and Rural Victimization, 1993–98,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, National Crime Victimization Survey, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2000, available at
www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​usrv98.pdf
.

In 2016, for every thousand urban residents
:
“Criminal Victimization, 2016: Revised,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2018, available at
www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​cv16.pdf
.

more than half of violent crimes from 2006 to 2010 went unreported
:
“Report: More Than Half of Violent Crimes Went Unreported to Police from 2006–2010,” RTI International, August 13, 2012, available at
www.rti.org/​news/​report-more-half-violent-crimes-went-unreported-police-2006-2010
.

more dangerous than “war zones”
:
“Donald Trump to African American and Hispanic Voters: ‘What Do You Have to Lose?,’ ”
The Washington Post,
August 22, 2016, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​post-politics/​wp/​2016/​08/​22/​donald-trump-to-african-american-and-hispanic-voters-what-do-you-have-to-lose/
.

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
:
Delbert S. Elliott, “Longitudinal Research in Criminology: Promise and Practice,” paper presented at the NATO Conference on Cross-National Longitudinal Research on Criminal Behavior, July 19–25, 1992, Frankfurt, Germany.

the 2.5 percent decrease in unemployment between 1992 and 1997
:
William Julius Wilson,
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
(New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 22.

Sociologist Karen F. Parker strongly linked the growth of Black-owned businesses
:
“How Black-Owned Businesses Help Reduce Youth Violence,” CityLab, March 16, 2015, available at
www.citylab.com/​life/​2015/​03/​how-black-owned-businesses-help-reduce-youth-violence/​387847/
.

43 percent reduction in violent-crime arrests for Black youths
:
“Nearly Half of Young Black Men in Chicago Out of Work, Out of School: Report,”
Chicago Tribune,
January 25, 2016, available at
www.chicagotribune.com/​ct-youth-unemployment-urban-league-0126-biz-20160124-story.html
.

Black neighborhoods do not all have similar levels
:
See “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime,”
Evidence Matters,
Summer 2016, available at
www.huduser.gov/​portal/​periodicals/​em/​summer16/​highlight2.html
.

the highest rates of unemployment of any demographic group
:
For a statistical graph, see
fred.stlouisfed.org/​series/​LNS14000018
.

a term coined by psychologist Robert Williams in 1973
:
Robert L. Williams,
History of the Association of Black Psychologists: Profiles of Outstanding Black Psychologists
(Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008), 80. Also see Robert L. Williams,
Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks
(St. Louis: Institute of Black Studies, 1975).

“the legitimacy and richness” of Ebonics as a language
:
“Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics (Original Version),”
Journal of English Linguistics
26:2 (June 1998), 170–79.

Jesse Jackson at first called it “an unacceptable surrender”
:
“Black English Is Not a Second Language, Jackson says,”
The New York Times,
December 23, 1996.

modern English had grown from Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots
:
See Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable,
A History of the English Language
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); and Tamara Marcus Green,
The Greek & Latin Roots of English
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

“In practically all its divergences”
:
Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
(New York: Harper, 1944), 928.

as President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1905
:
“At the Lincoln Dinner of the Republican Club, New York, February 13, 1905,” in
A Compilation of the Messages and Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1905,
Volume 1, ed. Alfred Henry Lewis (New York: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1906), 562.

with those racist Americans who classed Africans as fundamentally imitative
:
As an example, see Lothrop Stoddard,
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 100–101.

“This quality of imitation has been the grand preservative”
:
Alexander Crummell, “The Destined Superiority of the Negro,” in
Civilization & Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South
(Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 51.

Jason Riley…did not see us or our disciples
:
Jason L. Riley,
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
(New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 51.

“If blacks can close the civilization gap”
:
Dinesh D’Souza,
The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society
(New York: Free Press, 1996), 527.

“outward physical manifestations of culture”
:
Linda James Myers, “The Deep Structure of Culture: Relevance of Traditional African Culture in Contemporary Life,” in
Afrocentric Visions: Studies in Culture and Communication
(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1998), 4.

“North American negroes…in culture and language”
:
Franz Boas,
The Mind of Primitive Man
(New York: Macmillan, 1921), 127–28.

“It is very difficult to find in the South today”
:
Robert Park, “The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures with Special Reference to the Negro,”
Journal of Negro History
4:2 (April 1919), 116.

“Stripped of his cultural heritage”
:
E. Franklin Frazier,
The Negro Family in the United States
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 41.

“the Negro is only an American, and nothing else”
:
Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan,
Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963), 53.

“we are not Africans,” Bill Cosby told the NAACP
:
“Bill Cosby’s Famous ‘Pound Cake’ Speech, Annotated,”
BuzzFeed,
July 9, 2015, available at
www.buzzfeednews.com/​article/​adamserwer/​bill-cosby-pound-for-pound
.

African cultures had been overwhelmed
:
See Boas,
The Mind of Primitive Man
.

“the deep structure of culture”
:
See Wade Nobles, “Extended Self Rethinking the So-called Negro Self of Concept,” in
Black Psychology
(2nd edition), ed. Reginald L. Jones (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).

Western “outward” forms “while retaining inner [African] values”
:
Melville J. Herskovits,
The Myth of the Negro Past
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 1, 298.

Hip-hop has had the most sophisticated vocabulary
:
“Hip Hop Has the Largest Average Vocabulary Size Followed by Heavy Metal,”
Musixmatch,
December 3, 2015, available at
lab.musixmatch.com/​vocabulary_genres/
.

“rap retards black success”
:
John H. McWhorter, “How Hip Hop Holds Blacks Back,”
City Journal,
Summer 2003, available at
www.city-journal.org/​html/​how-hip-hop-holds-blacks-back-12442.html
.

“You can’t listen to all that language and filth”
:
See “Gunning for Gangstas,”
People,
June 26, 1995, available at
people.com/​archive/​gunning-for-gangstas-vol-43-no-25/
.

Nathan Glazer, who lamented the idea
:
Nathan Glazer,
We Are All Multiculturalists Now
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

“That every practice and sentiment is barbarous”
:
James Beattie,
An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, In Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism
(Edinburgh: Denham & Dick, 1805), 308–11.

“All cultures must be judged in relation to their own history”
:
Ashley Montagu,
Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 150.