What's Going On
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
With the same personal authority and exhilarating directness he brought to his account of his passage from a prison cell to the newsroom of The Washington Post, Nathan McCall delivers a series of front-line reports on the state of the races in today's America. The resulting volume is guaranteed to shake the assumptions of readers of every pigmentation and political allegiance.
In What's Going On, McCall adds up the hidden costs of the stereotype of black athletic prowess, which tells African American teenagers that they can only succeed on the white man's terms. He introduces a fresh perspective to the debates on gangsta rap and sexual violence. He indicts the bigotry of white churches and the complacency of the black suburban middle class, celebrates the heroism of Muhammad Ali, and defends the truth-telling of Alice Walker. Engaging, provocative, and utterly fearless, here is a commentator to reckon with, addressing our most persistent divisions in a voice of stinging immediacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCall (Makes Me Wanna Holler) here offers essays on contemporary racial issues, warning at the outset about "the incompetence of white leadership" and blacks' failure to respond when "we're victimized by one another." In conversational tone, he starts with hard-hitting pieces on how basketball mythology warps both black and white America's view of black men and how the black community must confront gangsta rap, which he sees as a product of what a friend of his terms "internalized oppression and pathology" and a testament to a highly violent world. Then the momentum slows. Some essays seem reworked feature stories--reports on the attempt of Alexandria, Va., to move out poor people and the conflicts among middle-class blacks living in Prince George County, Md. McCall offers vignettes of interaction with whites: a baby free of race fear, an elevator ride full of it. He closes with pieces on Muhammad Ali, the failures of the white Christian church and a moving piece on the death of a former "homeboy," a criminal mourned by his victim's mother, a black woman with "unflagging belief in redemption." Author tour.
