We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide

by Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden

Overview

This young adult adaptation of the New York Times bestselling White Rage is essential antiracist reading for teens.

An NAACP Image Award finalist
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
A NYPL Best Book for Teens

History texts often teach that the United States has made a straight line of progress toward Black equality. The reality is more complex: milestones like the end of slavery, school integration, and equal voting rights have all been met with racist legal and political maneuverings meant to limit that progress. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with Jim Crow laws; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration was limited when blacks were physically blocked from moving away from the South; the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to laws that disenfranchised millions of African American voters and a War on Drugs that disproportionally targeted blacks; and the election of President Obama led to an outburst of violence including the death of Black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri as well as the election of Donald Trump.

Including photographs and archival imagery and extra context, backmatter, and resources specifically for teens, this book provides essential history to help work for an equal future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781547602520
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	107,119
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. She is the author of many books and articles, including Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960 andEyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights: 1944-1955. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tonya Bolden is a critically acclaimed award-winning author/co-author/editor of more than two dozen books for young people. They include Crossing Ebeneezer Creek, which received five starred reviews; Finding Family which received two starred reviews and was a Kirkus Reviews and Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year; Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl, a Coretta Scott King honor book and James Madison Book Award winner; MLK: Journey of a King, winner of a National Council of Teachers of English Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children; Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty, an ALSC Notable Children’s Book, CBC/NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People, and winner of the NCSS Carter G. Woodson Middle Level Book Award. Tonya also received the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC’s Nonfiction Award. A Princeton University magna cum laude baccalaureate with a master’s degree from Columbia University, Tonya lives in New York City.
www.tonyaboldenbooks.com

Editorial Reviews

. . . [D]ocuments centuries of techniques designed to limit progress in the black community. Although some of the material may be upsetting, this is a book that should absolutely be included in the curriculum.” —Starred review, School Library Connection

“[A]n accessible narrative form, showing young people through pivotal historical events the ways in which white rage has been able to effectively undermine black-led social movements for equality and justice.” —Starred review, Kirkus Reviews

“. . . [A] well-articulated and neatly contextualized examination of the roots of American racism . . .” —VOYA

“A sobering primer on the myriad ways African American resilience and triumph over enslavement, Jim Crow and intolerance have been relentlessly defied by the very institutions entrusted to uphold our democracy.” —Washington Post

“[White Rage] is an extraordinarily timely and urgent call to confront the legacy of structural racism bequeathed by white anger and resentment, and to show its continuing threat to the promise of American democracy.” —Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review

“White Rage is a riveting and disturbing history that begins with Reconstruction and lays bare the efforts of whites in the South and North alike to prevent emancipated black people from achieving economic independence, civil and political rights, personal safety, and economic opportunity.” —The Nation

“An unflinching look at America's long history of structural and institutionalized racism, White Rage is a timely and necessary examination of white anger and aggression towards black America . . . A compelling look at American history, White Rage has never seemed more relevant than it does today.” —Bustle, “17 Books On Race Every White Person Needs To Read”

“White Rage belongs in a place of honor on the shelf next to other seminal books about the African-American experience such as James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.” —Santa Barbara Independent

“[A] powerful survey of American history as seen in the violent white reactions to black progress, from Reconstruction to the great migration to the current political landscape.” —Boston Globe

“Anderson has shown, with her well-sourced (she has several hundred detailed footnotes) and readable book, why the fights over race and access to the perquisites of American citizenship grind on . . . White Rage lends perspective and insight for those of us who are willing to confront, study and learn from the present situation in this country.” —St. Louis Dispatch

“In every episode of White Rage Anderson amplifies and elongates this initial claim [white America's seething resistance to African Americans' sociopolitical advancements] into a striking argument about the nation's failure to recognize African Americans as full members the citizenry. Though stretching a stand-alone essay into an extended study doesn't work very often, White Rage operates efficiently and elegantly, offering readers new intelligence about American experience. Following Anderson, one gains insight by accrual.” —Lit Hub

From the Publisher

09/01/2018
Gr 9 Up—Prolific and celebrated author Bolden has adapted Anderson's White Rage for YA audiences. The text guides readers through an analysis of the relentless attacks on the protected rights and social mobility of black Americans by white people through legislative and judicial acts. It outlines the repeated obstructions, from their passage into the present decade, of the 14th and 15th amendments, and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1960s. The work details countless cases and includes paths to further research in its establishment of the undeniable legislative and judicial roots of systemic racism, including the criminalization of black people in the 1980s during the crack epidemic. Students are also presented with an account of the Southern Manifesto in 1956, when just two years after Brown vs. Board of Education, 101 members of Congress "stalled and defied" educational equity. Teens will gain insight into the roles of dissenting Supreme Court Justices, like Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in speaking out against blatant attacks, state after state and case after case, on equitable education, nondiscrimination, and voting rights. Using this easy-to-follow informational text with a robust list of citations, readers can witness 150 years of continuous systemic racism and deeply understand the mechanism by which federal protection is given then taken away by special agency, state, or local political action. VERDICT A needed resource for YA nonfiction collections.—Sara Lissa Paulson, City-As-School High School, New York City

School Library Journal

★ 2018-07-30

"It is time to rethink America."

Adapted from Anderson's bestselling White Rage (2016), this book summons young people to bear witness to the devastatingly expansive strategies white citizens have taken up to preserve the racialized violence that emerged from the founding of the nation. What is white rage? White rage works "subtly, almost imperceptibly" in American halls of power, utilizing an array of policy assaults, legal contortions, and physical violence to punish black resolve and block efforts toward full and equal citizenship. Anderson writes in an accessible narrative form, showing young people through pivotal historical events the ways in which white rage has been able to effectively undermine black-led social movements for equality and justice. It begins with the rise of the 19th-century Black Codes and the emergence of Jim Crow during the betrayal of Reconstruction. It continues into the Great Migration, when many black families chose to move North for opportunities and were met with extreme racist violence from white hate groups. The text carries us up to the current president and is enhanced by archival photographs. In her foreword, celebrated young adult author Nic Stone (Odd One Out, 2018, etc.) reminds us that it's not just about exposing the roots of American racism, but what we do about it now.

Revealing our racialized past and arguing that we must refashion our nation in pursuit of a new, beloved, and just society. (discussion guide, sources, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Reviews