Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?: 25 Arguments That Won't Go Away

by Keith Boykin

Overview

Fight back against misinformation and ignorance as New York Times bestselling author Keith Boykin debunks 25 of the most common claims used to refute America’s racist past and present.
 
The most toxic racial arguments share one of five traits. They try to erase Black history, prioritize white victimhood, deny Black oppression, promote myths of Black inferiority, or rebrand racism as something else entirely. They’re all designed to distract society from racial justice, but now we have the tools to debunk them.
 
With a mixture of personal experience, reportage, and extensive research, Keith Boykin takes a wrecking ball to twenty-five of the most widespread deceptions about race, such as:

• The Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery
• Affirmative action is reverse discrimination
• Critical Race Theory is indoctrinating children to hate one another

 
and shows us how to refute lies, myths, and misinformation with history, knowledge, and truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541703315
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	12,711
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

"A clarifying set of arguments about Black lives past and present."—Kirkus

"Boykin's approach underscores the pervasive role race plays in America and how and why anti-Blackness and systemic racism persist…Readers seeking books in Black Studies, civil rights, and issues of discrimination will find this one thought-provoking and crucial to understanding and dismantling the anti-Black consciousness that endures in American society."—Booklist

From the Publisher

2023-10-20
Informed rebuttals of false claims about Black Americans.

Boykin, the founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and author of Race Against Time, delivers a series of arguments that target misconceptions about the realities of Black life in America and the persistence of white supremacy. The brief chapters, written in an accessible style and often including personal anecdotes, are divided into five broad themes: the erasure of Black history, the insistence on white victimhood, the denial of Black oppression, the promotion of myths of Black inferiority, and the masking of racist rhetoric. The author debunks familiar but flawed reasoning across a range of contentious topics, including the rationale behind affirmative action, the fate of Confederate monuments, the racial content of school curricula, and the significance of Barack Obama’s presidency. As Boykin credibly suggests, the persistence and popularity of bogus logic in debates about race can often be attributed to a reluctance among white Americans to acknowledge responsibility for longstanding injustices. The most insightful and memorable chapter engages the controversy surrounding critical race theory and the vagueness of the attacks directed against it. Also helpful is the author’s demolition of the argument that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, or that slavery itself is merely a historical artifact, without profound and continually unfolding consequences. Boykin could have done more to connect discussions of anti-Black racism with other forms of white supremacist ideology; for instance, he only mentions in passing deeply held prejudices against Native Americans and Asian Americans. Nevertheless, the author furnishes a useful guide to confronting misconceptions about Black America and makes a convincing case that race matters in so many conversations because it has always been a defining—if often poorly understood—feature of national life.

A clarifying set of arguments about Black lives past and present.

Kirkus Reviews