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 This past Saturday I received a beautiful e-mail from Stephen Steinberg* in New York, a colleague and admirer of Bob, going way back. He is one of the few academics who has been kind enough :) to give me periodically advice on matters of Bob’s legacy. I like to share because his letter is so eloquently written! With quotes, Steve highlights the insightful and poignant new foreword by Gerald Early who throws his net of wisdom wide, leaving the reader breathless, ready to dive into Black, Lives White Lives.

Dear Karina,  

Thank you for sending a copy of Black Lives, White Lives. I am overwhelmed by Gerald Early's foreword. He reaches deep into the cognition and emotions that prompted Bob to take on this laborious project in the first place. Early captures the brute reality when he writes: "Whiteness was a gift and privilege; Blackness was a stigma, a harsh unrelenting form of social confinement. If Whites could be universal, the mark of humanity itself, then Blackness was a form of provincialism necessitated by survival and lack of alternatives." Wow, what powerful prose and understanding! And as far as the interviews themselves, "...by and large, everyone sees something a bit different in the American racial dilemmas. And of course, is all centered on talk, speech, discourse, interviews, edited into a kind of exchange." Bob's passion for this study was not in vain, and Gerald Early has given it second legs! 

 

To be completely honest, the sociologist in me is not enamored with ethnography and observing subjects. I find myself pivoting back to Bob's tour de force in Racial Oppression in America, which addresses the structures behind the individual and personal level of analysis. But that is neither here or there, and having done his opus, Bob chose to undertake Lives to observe the horrific human divide b/w blacks and whites. That speaks for itself and is amplified by Gerald Early's sensibility and wisdom. 

Sincerely, 

Steve 

 

*Stephen Steinberg is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College, and his most recent book Counterrevolution: The Crusade To Roll Back The Gains Of The Civil Rights Movement was just released on February 18, 2022. 

Congratulations on this much needed analysis! 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/stephen-steinberg/counterrevolution/






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