Thank you for this review. When I read this book (my 10th grader's honors English class used it as their textbook the entire school year), I thought it was ridiculous that he states that Booker T. Washington hated black men. Kendi really works hard to minimize him. My daughter was not reading Up From Slavery or learning about Booker T. W…
Thank you for this review. When I read this book (my 10th grader's honors English class used it as their textbook the entire school year), I thought it was ridiculous that he states that Booker T. Washington hated black men. Kendi really works hard to minimize him. My daughter was not reading Up From Slavery or learning about Booker T. Washington or WEB Dubois (they were learning about gender fluidity and pronouns in History). Booker T. Washington was a great man and did a tremendous amount for blacks. He opened 5,000 schools with funds from the president of Sears. He founded Tuskegee Institute and believe that people needed to learn to be self-sufficient as well as be educated. He observed that his fellow slaves had only learned one or two skills on the plantations and were unable to take care of themselves. He taught students physical skills along with educating them. This Kendi says was Booker T. Washington wanting blacks to serve in a blue collar role and be subserviently to whites. You cannot read Booker T. Washington's writings and believe that. Kendi says in the book that when WEB Dubois becomes an antiracist is when he returns from visiting the Soviet Union in the early 1900's and has an epiphany that Marxism is the only way forward. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1959. Funny that Kendi doesn't discuss what happened under Marx and Lenin. And my daughter's History and English classes certainly weren't covering it. A good assignment for our kids would be for them to research the individuals and read the books by Washington and Dubois, compare and contrast and see who they think helped humans most. I did find it interesting that when I was searching for the dates of the "peace" prizes, that someone has spent A LOT of time on the WEB Dubois Wikipedia page and removed information and made him sound like a much better person than he actually was.
Thank you for this review. When I read this book (my 10th grader's honors English class used it as their textbook the entire school year), I thought it was ridiculous that he states that Booker T. Washington hated black men. Kendi really works hard to minimize him. My daughter was not reading Up From Slavery or learning about Booker T. Washington or WEB Dubois (they were learning about gender fluidity and pronouns in History). Booker T. Washington was a great man and did a tremendous amount for blacks. He opened 5,000 schools with funds from the president of Sears. He founded Tuskegee Institute and believe that people needed to learn to be self-sufficient as well as be educated. He observed that his fellow slaves had only learned one or two skills on the plantations and were unable to take care of themselves. He taught students physical skills along with educating them. This Kendi says was Booker T. Washington wanting blacks to serve in a blue collar role and be subserviently to whites. You cannot read Booker T. Washington's writings and believe that. Kendi says in the book that when WEB Dubois becomes an antiracist is when he returns from visiting the Soviet Union in the early 1900's and has an epiphany that Marxism is the only way forward. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1959. Funny that Kendi doesn't discuss what happened under Marx and Lenin. And my daughter's History and English classes certainly weren't covering it. A good assignment for our kids would be for them to research the individuals and read the books by Washington and Dubois, compare and contrast and see who they think helped humans most. I did find it interesting that when I was searching for the dates of the "peace" prizes, that someone has spent A LOT of time on the WEB Dubois Wikipedia page and removed information and made him sound like a much better person than he actually was.