false 3 111 109 true 5631783 read 1 true 409981 currently-reading 1 true 409980 to-read <![CDATA[Kman added 'Philosophy of Mathematics']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74872452 Philosophy of Mathematics (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) by James Robert Brown
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Underworld']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74872321 to: McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Underworld (Hardcover) by Misha Glenny
]]> <![CDATA[Kman recommended the book Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II to Carey]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book/recommendation/551333 Kman recommended the book Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II to Carey
]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70315175 to: Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II (Paperback) by David Rohde
]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'The Private Life of Chairman Mao']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/66384454 to: The Private Life of Chairman Mao (Paperback) by Li Zhisui
]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/66384155 to: Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature (Paperback) by Daniel A. Olivas
Interesting and edgy, but the quality of submissions, as well as their tenuous ties to LA, varies. Some of the stories are real gems, like the story of a hapless screenwriter or the raver who realizes he has lost his family only after it is too late. Others are kind of meh, like the Guatemalan laborer who pines for the black woman he sees on the bus or a journalist turned murder detective. ]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'Water for Elephants']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/66383915 to: Water for Elephants (Paperback) by Sara Gruen
Fun page turner. I never really warmed to any of the characters but it is a great vacation read. Very well researched, if a little on the tame side of all the crap that went on in early 20th century circuses (e.g., no mention of the opium culture). ]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/62528417 to: A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Paperback) by Melvyn C. Goldstein
Incredibly well-documented, detailed story of the final years of Tibet leading up to re-integration into China. Goldstein's command of Tibetan allows his uniquely synthetic engagement of British, Indian and American archives as well as interviews with the main Tibetan player make the book a definitive treatment of Tibet since 1913.

Goldstein also appears to have felt a need to present many of the primary sources - these became rather numerous (like a 2 page letter every 3 pages) towards the end and started to distract from his narrative slightly. However, he relegated other primary sources to an appendix. Thus, it seems this book was written over a series of stages and this does come through in the presentation.

No doubt there are much shorter versions of this story that are accessible elsewhere. I read this in preparation for a trip to Tibet. At 800 pages, I didn't finish it all before I left, and it went over considerably greater detail than I, a casual tourist, felt was necessary to get a reasonably good understanding of recent Tibetan history. I think for non-specialists, a shorter and abridged version would be incredibly valuable in getting more people familiar with this fascinating story. ]]> <![CDATA[Kman added '"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/61715473 to: "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity (Paperback) by Beverly Daniel Tatum
All in all it was a worthy read. It articulated a lot of ideas I've been having about how white Americans just don't notice race. It also provided a plausible account about why black adolescents seek out the friendship of other blacks. Tatum also sought to provide concrete solutions.

But the book had some serious short-comings. For instance, Tatum's quantitative evidence for the persistence of racism is ambiguous. She sites a study that notes that black ethnicity or hispanic origin is the single greatest predictor of socio-economic well being. This is reasonable. Although we can agree that genetics is probably not part of the equation, Tatum pays mere lip service to other hypotheses such as cultural differences. Instead, she uses this to argue that it is evidence for systemic, institutionalized racism. I don't necessarily disagree with Tatum's conclusion, only that she fails to rule out other hypotheses. Another problematic case of discussing statistics is when Tatum gives a statistic that about 40 some percent of white college juniors say their social group involves members of other ethnicities. What is not said is to which ethnic groups these friends belong. Indeed, it is reasonable that in many college campuses in America (especially the elite schools on the East and West Coasts as well as the Midwest and New South), such cross-racial friendships that whites have are almost certainly Asians and perhaps Hispanics, but probably not blacks. And that is assuming the respondents are honest - as Tatum notes, whites frequently underestimate their own racism. A Honduran lab partner or Jewish student might qualify as a friend "from a different ethnic group". That she fails to analyze this statistic in greater depth, or quote a result of a rather vague study, at best suggests Tatum is, inspite of her efforts, naive about the extent of black-white segregation, and at worse is selectively using the empirical evidence. This makes her argument come across as highly selective.

Indeed, the author's selections of quotes by whites seem to belie her claim that whites, too, have a role in the anti-racist struggle. She seems to quote the most egregious, nonsensical diatrabe of white people short of interviewing a neo-Nazi.

Moreover, although she acknowledges that bigotry exists in communities of color, she persists in painting people of color in the role of victim, empowered or not. This blindness, if it can be called that, extends to her other passages. She entirely neglects the fact that whites in majority-minority communities tend to be among the most virulent racists. No doubt her analysis would have been more interesting (and believable) had she analyzed how white students behave in schools that are overwhelmingly black. That a proposed scholar of identity development fails to explore, much less even mention, this rather under-studied demographic (whites who grow up in predominantly non-white neighborhood) makes one wonder about if the author is interested in identity development per se or in the experience of blacks in America.

Tatum's black-white focus is increasingly obsolete. Tatum suggests as much when she has a chapter on "racism beyond black and white." But here again Tatum rather unconvincingly tries to force the experience of other ethnic groups to align with the experience of blacks. For instance, she repeatedly emphasizes how Native Americans and Hispanics, like blacks, been forced to deal with the American mainstream. There is a kernel of truth to this view, but this analysis fails completely when she ignores it when it comes to Asian Americans, most of whom came, and continue to come, to America by choice.

Another problem with Tatum's analysis of "other races" is her disingenous conflation of (mostly East Asians) with Pacific Islanders. From issues as diverse as child mortality to college degrees, the two groups have starkly different demographics. That Taylor persists in lumping them in "Asian Pacific Americans" betrays, inspite of her cursory discussion, a superficial understanding of this group of Americans.

Perhaps no where else is Tatum's failure to go beyond the black-white divide more clearly illustrated than her cursory treatment of the experience of Americans of middle eastern descent. Arab Americans have a scant two paragraphs (in the context of being "Asian American"), whilst Jews are subsumed as white. Of course, in a book written before 2001 this is to some extent understandable. But in light of the fact that both groups have assimilated so well, Tatum's curosry treatment of them also suggests, once again, that Tatum projects her own experiences as a black American unfairly onto the experience of other groups. Tatum avoids examples of overwhelmingly successful assimilation (also experienced to a lesser degree by South Asian, white Hispanic, and Japanese Americans) like the plague throughout her book. Clearly this makes the work incredibly "black-centric".

As a multiracial person, I found Tatum's discussion of multi-racial families artificial. I am simply unconvinced she understands the complexity of the problem. For instance, only in passing is reference made to black children teasing mixed race children for their wavy hair or non-African features. Although I have repeated problems with her reference to the empirical literature throughout the book, by the time she gets around to discussing the empirical literature on the problems of mixed-race Americans, I am disinclined to trust her summary of the empirical literature that mixed-race children turn out generally fine. Worse, Tatum's focus on the offspring of black-white relationships is unjustified. Tatum herself should recognize the reason for this - namely, the one drop rule. As Barack Obama's experience illustrates, offspring of black-white couples are black first and foremost. As such, their experience with the sort of racism pervasive in society is only marginally different from that of lighter skinned blacks. A really interesting examination would have been the offspring of white-Asian, white-Pacific Islander, or white-Amerindians, because both groups have offspring that really are neither white nor Asian/Pacific/Amerindian. Disappointingly, and unsurprisingly, Tatum largely ignores such cases.

Finally, Tatum fails to confront the central reasons why racism persists - namely, class society. She does seem somewhat more cognizant of gender and sexual orientation issues. But perhaps because Tatum herself is an academic bureaucrat of middle-class extraction, she is blind to the central role of poverty and capitalism in perpetuating racism. Either that, or she is astute enough to understand that complaining about race is acceptable within bourgeois discoure, but complaining about capitalism is not. I suspect the latter is the case.

Indeed, the strength of one's argument is often tested only when confronted with the most direct, seemingly contrary evidence, not when abetted with the most friendly evidence. Regrettably, Tatum's important message about the persistence of institutionalized racism is muddled by her having chosen the latter course. ]]> <![CDATA[Kman added 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/55219522 to: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Paperback) by John Perkins
Worth the hype. Eye opening and depressing. ]]>