Charles Blow’s uncommonly specific and clear remedy for overcoming racial injustice in America is provocative, intriguing, innovative, and insightful. You won’t read another contemporary book on race as powerful as this bold work by one of the nation’s most compelling writers.” — Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy
"In cogent arguments bound together by his customary incandescent prose, Blow explores how the white backlash towards the Great Migration that never really ended has created a situation where racism in these Northern 'destination cities' of the Great Migration makes life untenable for Black Americans.... [Weaves] together deeply thought out analysis and in-depth sociological and historical research.... 'In a society and system in which white supremacy is ubiquitous and inveterate, Black people need fierce advocates to help restore the balance in the first instance,' writes Blow. Throughout his legendary career in journalism, Charles Blow has long been that voice." — NPR
“Blow is in fact making an argument, not just offering a lament.... The Devil You Know reminds that America’s mobility has not always meant progress, that alongside the allure of movement are the tears and disappointments that keep us moving, always seeking a new place where we can and must belong.” — Washington Post
"Searing.... A helpful introduction for those seeking to make sense of fractious political debates about race and voting rights in the South, and the broken promises of American democracy." — New York Times
“A must-read in the effort to dismantle deep-seated poisons of systemic racism and white supremacy.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“In his provocative manifesto Charles Blow gives us one of the most thrilling experiences as readers: the challenge of imagining an alternate future. Writing in a long tradition of Black visionaries who’ve wrestled with the political implications of place and power, he exhorts African Americans to reconsider the possibilities of home against an historical backdrop of past migrations. Blow is one of our most penetrating thinkers and brilliant essayists, and in The Devil You Know he is putting it all on the line.” — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
“Renders an unflinching diagnosis of the ravages of white supremacy and a rousing prescription for Black Americans to eliminate its harms…. This is daring work, accessible and easily digested by a wide audience…. There’s a sense of urgency to it that resonates. One doesn’t often expect a work of nonfiction to be this propulsive and exciting…. Both as polemic and as proposal, The Devil You Know is convincing — powerful and enticing arguments buoyed by accessible and pressing prose.” — The Grio
“Daring…. Valuable as a thought experiment alone but also an “actual plan” for effecting lasting political change.” — Kirkus, starred review
“A compelling argument on how a second migration back to the South could prove a way forward for Black America.” — Library Journal
“Blow’s provocative call for action contains much food for thought…. He paints a devastating picture of how white liberals have failed to match rhetorical support for Blacks with action, and buttresses his political arguments with painful personal experiences.” — Publishers Weekly
“Blow's powerful writing is always stirring, but perhaps never more than in this timely, often personal call for the building of a better tomorrow.” — Town & Country
Charles Blow’s uncommonly specific and clear remedy for overcoming racial injustice in America is provocative, intriguing, innovative, and insightful. You won’t read another contemporary book on race as powerful as this bold work by one of the nation’s most compelling writers.
Renders an unflinching diagnosis of the ravages of white supremacy and a rousing prescription for Black Americans to eliminate its harms…. This is daring work, accessible and easily digested by a wide audience…. There’s a sense of urgency to it that resonates. One doesn’t often expect a work of nonfiction to be this propulsive and exciting…. Both as polemic and as proposal, The Devil You Know is convincing — powerful and enticing arguments buoyed by accessible and pressing prose.
In his provocative manifesto Charles Blow gives us one of the most thrilling experiences as readers: the challenge of imagining an alternate future. Writing in a long tradition of Black visionaries who’ve wrestled with the political implications of place and power, he exhorts African Americans to reconsider the possibilities of home against an historical backdrop of past migrations. Blow is one of our most penetrating thinkers and brilliant essayists, and in The Devil You Know he is putting it all on the line.
"Searing.... A helpful introduction for those seeking to make sense of fractious political debates about race and voting rights in the South, and the broken promises of American democracy."
A must-read in the effort to dismantle deep-seated poisons of systemic racism and white supremacy.
Blow is in fact making an argument, not just offering a lament.... The Devil You Know reminds that America’s mobility has not always meant progress, that alongside the allure of movement are the tears and disappointments that keep us moving, always seeking a new place where we can and must belong.
01/11/2021
New York Times columnist Blow (Fire Shut Up in My Bones) proposes a radical path toward Black empowerment in this impassioned call for “as many Black descendants of the Great Migration as possible” to return to the South “with moral and political intentionality.” This mass resettlement, Blow argues, would allow African Americans to “colonize and control the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.” He paints a devastating picture of how white liberals have failed to match rhetorical support for Blacks with action, and buttresses his political arguments with painful personal experiences of racism, including the time a cop pulled a gun on his son, a student at Yale. But Blow doesn’t discuss potential challenges to his plan, including the likelihood of increased gerrymandering and voter suppression by Republican lawmakers to blunt the impact of such a demographic shift, nor does he offer much support for his belief that the Republican Party would be forced “to court not the Negrophobe, but the Negro” in order to win the presidency or control the Senate. Though Blow’s provocative call for action contains much food for thought, readers will wish for a more realistic way forward. (Jan.)
Blow is in fact making an argument, not just offering a lament.... The Devil You Know reminds that America’s mobility has not always meant progress, that alongside the allure of movement are the tears and disappointments that keep us moving, always seeking a new place where we can and must belong.
"In cogent arguments bound together by his customary incandescent prose, Blow explores how the white backlash towards the Great Migration that never really ended has created a situation where racism in these Northern 'destination cities' of the Great Migration makes life untenable for Black Americans.... [Weaves] together deeply thought out analysis and in-depth sociological and historical research.... 'In a society and system in which white supremacy is ubiquitous and inveterate, Black people need fierce advocates to help restore the balance in the first instance,' writes Blow. Throughout his legendary career in journalism, Charles Blow has long been that voice."
A must-read in the effort to dismantle deep-seated poisons of systemic racism and white supremacy.
Blow's powerful writing is always stirring, but perhaps never more than in this timely, often personal call for the building of a better tomorrow.
01/22/2021
One truth of elections in the Unites States that cannot be stated enough is that the majority of white people have voted Republican at least twice, from Gerald Ford through the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Any discussion of civil rights and racial equity needs to acknowledge a historic and continued lack of support from white America, argues New York Times columnist Blow, in this newest book after Fire Shut Up in My Bones. In this latest work, Blow suggests that the way to give Black America a real voice in politics means undoing the Great Migration. The book develops this thought experiment on how a repopulation of Southern states by even half of the Black population could turn the South into a Black power bloc. Blow uses the examples of anti-war protesters in Vermont and the 2021 Senate runoff in Georgia as proofs of concept. While the account evades some of the tougher questions on economic development and the dismantling of entrenched voter suppression, Blow does provide a compelling argument on how a second migration back to the South could prove a way forward for Black America. VERDICT Blow, who has followed his own advice and moved to the South, will find a readership in like-minded individuals who are seeing his argument play out in Georgia.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston
★ 2020-12-01
The distinguished New York Times columnist offers a daring but utterly sensible plan to advance Black civil rights.
The devil that Black Americans know all too well is racism, and, as Blow notes from the outset, it is not confined to the South: “Black people fled the horrors of the racist South for so-called liberal cities of the North and West, trading the devil they knew for the devil they didn’t, only to come to the painful realization that the devil is the devil.” Though George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police was roundly protested—and with Whites often outnumbering Blacks at demonstrations around the country—soon after, Jacob Blake suffered the same fate, in Milwaukee, by bullets rather than asphyxiation, but with “no similar outpouring of outrage.” What Blow calls “white liberal grievance” is useless in the face of a racist system that will not change. Or will it? Given that Georgia is at the crux of the 2020 presidential election and that Stacey Abrams’ get-out-the-vote campaign brought in hundreds of thousands of voters to turn the state blue, Blow considers the state “proof of concept” that Black voters can indeed sway elections. He adds that the entire South could follow suit if only Blacks would reverse the path of the Great Migration to the North during Jim Crow and remake the electoral map by forming a solid majority. As he writes, if just half of Black residents elsewhere moved South, it would establish that majority from Louisiana all the way across the Southern heartland to South Carolina, “a contiguous band of Black power that would upend America’s political calculus and exponentially increase Black political influence.” It would also end White supremacy in that intransigent region. “The South now beckons as the North once did,” he urges in his resounding conclusion. “The promise of real power is made manifest. Seize it. Migrate. Move.”
Valuable as a thought experiment alone but also an “actual plan” for effecting lasting political change.
