Daniel Kleven > Recent Status Updates

This is really good. I'm taking the endorsement on the back to heart: "essential reading for teachers, principals, administrators, parents, counselors, after-school program leaders, and anyone seeking to better understand the lives, complexities, and brilliance of black girls" (Tiffany Gill).

As someone on that list (a teacher), I'm seeking to better understand -- this is a good book.

"Do you mean it?"
"Yes, Bles."
"Why?"
"Because I am selfish and -- small."
"No, you are not. You want to be; but give it up, Carrie; it isn't worth the cost. Come, let's be honest and poor -- and free."

Why do I love Du Bois so much? I wonder if it's the Massachusetts Yankee earnestness in me (via my great-great-grandfather) which resonates when the Massachusetts-born Du Bois sounds the same notes in his own key

This book!!!

I've seen analysis of Booker T. vs. W.E.B. that emphasize their regionalism, i.e., because Du Bois was from the north, he really didn't understand the situation in the south. Nonsense. Du Bois went to school in the middle south (Tennessee), taught in rural schools there, and made sociological study of the situation from Atlanta. In this novel the protagonist is a rural Black Georgian, and he is a hero!

Chapter XXII - wow, Du Bois really lets us (white folks) behind "the veil" here, and the complex dynamics within the Black community -- north v. south, city v. plantation, upper, middle v. lower class, and a variety of interactions and responses to these dynamics. Du Bois the careful and observant sociologist writing his data into characters.

Chapter 2 - a nice exploration of _The Souls of Black Folk_ from a religious angle. Also, Blum situates the book in context, a context where some white supremacist authors were actually still arguing (in the 1900s) that Black people actually didn't have souls, weren't human beings. It's an insane conspiracy theory rabbit hole, but I guess a lesson that hatred often weaves conspiracies around it to justify itself.

It's so good!

Anderson's on the Rosenwald Fund's 1929 report on the displacement of black workers in southern cities is devastating. Proves the ineffectiveness of attempting "economic uplift" without at the same time addressing white supremacy. In other words, you can analyze the Booker T. Washington's v. Du Bois debate from a theoretical/ideological angle all day long, but practically speaking, the BTW strategy failed.