Books reviews, current events, and other musings

The subject matter of Afraid of the Dark: What Whites and Blacks Need to Know About Each Other definitely has potential. Its author, USA Today journalist Jim Myers, has a black wife and lives in black neighborhood of DC, making him qualified to write such a book. Unfortunately, Afraid of the Dark mainly consists of material that I had encountered before.

Myers did present some interesting aspects about how blacks perceive whites in America. For example, many black women are irritated by the way white women toss or flip their hair. The black women view the hair tossing, which is almost unconscious to the white women, as calling attention to their beautiful hair, while for many black women straightening their hair to satisfy societal ideals is an arduous task. Also, blacks often view whites as unclean, in part because many blacks have worked in menial jobs cleaning up after white people. Overall, blacks often view whites as cold, overly serious, and obsessed with rules. My girlfriend pointed out that, by those standards, the ultimate white man is Rimmer, the hologram from Red Dwarf.

Those intriguing observations are the book's exceptions, at least for someone like myself who has read newspapers and news magazines for years. For example, the discussion of the TV shows watched by black and white audiences is worthwhile, but I've seen it 3 or 4 times before, with the same details (whites watched Friends, while blacks watched Living Single).

Also, Myers spends a lot of time analyzing obvious consequences arising from the fact that blacks comprise 13% of the US population. On average, a white person has significantly fewer interracial social interactions than a black person does, making whites relatively ignorant about black concerns while blacks are more attuned to white concerns. As a USA Today reporter, Myers writes for a mathematically unsophisticated audience, which can be frustrating for someone with a more technical background. Though it was amusing that, in absolute numbers, more whites than blacks thought O. J. Simpson was innocent.

Myers spent an entire chapter urging people to follow the Golden Rule (do unto others...). While it's a fine moral precept, I couldn't believe that an author writing for adults would feel the need to justify the Golden Rule. Though, considering the current governmental leaders, maybe that justification is necessary.

Books about race relations written by East coast authors generally seem incomplete to a person living in the Bay Area. In my day-by-day life, I come across far more Asians and Hispanics than Blacks, though there are many Blacks in other parts of the Bay Area (Oakland, East Palo Alto, and parts of San Francisco). Maybe I should look for a book on California racial dynamics.

Afraid of the Dark would probably be a good book for high school students or people who don't follow the news closely. For a more educated audience, it covers too much familiar ground and proceeds too slowly.