Blackward

The iconoclastic Black Republican strategist calls out leaders who fan the flames of racial rhetoric and sabotage a post-racial America The euphoria surrounding Barack Obama's historic election had commentators naïvely trumpeting the beginning of a "post-racial America." In Blackwards, Ron Christie shows that not only is the opposite true, but black leadership today is effectively working against this goal by advancing an extremist agenda of separatism and special rights that threatens to point us backward to the days before Brown v. Board of Education. The motto E pluribus unum ("Out of one, many") speaks to the idea of a melting pot in which Americans of all backgrounds come together to form a strong, unified nation. But in the race politics of today, Christie argues the American melting pot is threatened by what Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned was the "cult of ethnicity," in which social divisions are deepened rather than transcended. Christie takes on such sacred cows as affirmative action and other race-based educational policies and campus programs that, in the words of former NAACP officer Michael Meyers, place "figurative black-only signs over certain doorways at America's colleges [while] only confirming and reinforcing pernicious racial stereotypes." Meanwhile, the author argues any open debate about such issues has been hijacked by such self-appointed spokesmen for black America as Al Sharpton, who co-opt the public narrative merely by being outspoken and charging racism against anyone who would speak against their political agendas and public grandstanding. Tellingly, it is within this context that then–presidential candidate Obama famously declared he could not disown Reverend Jeremiah Wright for his racist and anti-American sermons any more "than I can disown the black community." Perhaps most important, Christie reveals how a separatist mind-set has led to a form of selective, skin-based jurisprudence in the federal government, including: • Attempts by the Congressional Black Caucus to shield black members found to have committed ethics violations • The Justice Department's sudden dropping of charges against New Black Panther Party members for voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential election • A former trial attorney's admission that Americans "would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against non-white defendants on behalf of white victims" As African Americans face skyrocketing rates of single-parent families and high-school dropouts, the author urges black American communities to shun the limits of the monolithic politics of victimhood and embrace an open debate of many voices en route to the goal not of a separate "Black America" but of constructive inclusion in the American melting pot.

'Brilliant . . . twisting the tension tauter with each page' Guardian 'The dialogue crackles and the search for the killer has surprising twists and turns' Observer Inside a beautiful Victorian family home in Glasgow’s West End, a mother and her young son are found brutally murdered. DI Costello is furious and knows exactly who did it, George Haggerty, the husband and father. The only problem is that Haggerty has a cast-iron alibi – the police themselves caught him speeding on the A9 at the time of the murders. But Costello can’t let it go. Determined to expose Haggerty as a ruthless killer, she’s gone solo. DCI Colin Anderson has no time to ponder his partner of twenty years going rogue, as his own cases are piling up. But Costello’s absence becomes increasingly worrying. Has she completely disappeared following the tracks of a dangerous man?

African American Republican Ron Christie argues that black leadership is working against equality by advancing an extremist agenda of separatism and special rights.

This book provides a global perspective on the transformations in the world of work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The collection of essays will break down the general statistics and trends into glimpses of concrete experiences of workers during pandemic, of workplaces transformed or destroyed, of workers protesting against political measures, of professions particularly exposed to the coronavirus, and also of the changing nature of some professions.

Published nearly two decades after taking on the challenge of step-fatherhood to a beautiful, ethnically diverse young girl, this poetic journey describes a personal struggle with faith, race, and cultural appropriation. The central themes explored in these daydreams reflect the tensions of uncertain love, the pressures to adapt, and the pursuit of self-identity. By moving Blackward, the poet amends his inexorably white worldview and embraces the advantages of an enlightened, multicultural perspective.

In the tradition of Randall Kennedy's Nigger and Shelby Steele's The Content of Our Character, Acting White demonstrates how the charge that any African-American who is successful, well mannered, or well educated is "acting white," is a slur that continues to haunt blacks. Ron Christie traces the complex history of the phrase, from Uncle Tom's Cabin to the tensions between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X to Bill Cosby's controversial NAACP speech in 2004. The author also writes candidly of being challenged by black students for his "acting white," and also of being labeled a race traitor in Congress by daring to be Republican. This lucid chronicle reveals how this prevalent put-down sets back much of the hard-earned progress for all blacks in American society. Deftly argued and determinedly controversial, this book is certain to spur thoughtful discussion for years to come.