Reviews for Being & race

The average rating for Being & race based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-07-29 00:00:00 Tom Dinges I'm on the fence about recommending this book or appreciating Johnson, and I have his work on my shelves. So far, he's opaque to me as a fiction writer. That may not be all his fault. The light--to me--shines quite brightly on where he may be at. Simply stated: only black male writers, it appears, has his support and attention, and even here, it's pretty conditional. His prejudices are way obvious. He seems a member of the Albert Murray school of black writing. The vehemence of his attack on Alice Walker for instance, while justified in a few respects, makes me think that her novels became a personal affront to him and him alone--an attitude not uncommon with some black male writers who had have had what we call issues. At least, Ishmael Reed and Walker have buried their 'feud.' Sometimes, a novel is just a novel and a point-of-view is just a point-of-view, not a wish to see half of humankind--or most of black men--in cinders. I know so good and well that half of depictions of black women in novels by both white and black males haven't been as strenuously challenged...or psychoanalyzed. In short: If I were wanting to read this book, I would ask myself first: what are you looking for? Confirmation that what you're reading is well within the black canon? Do you want another point-of-view? Or are you just intellectually cruising able to find some nuggets, and then step on and leave the rest? If I were you, I would be of the latter persuasion in order to give the guy a chance and not contempt. If the book surprises you despite my misgivings, then he's your guy. Go forth. If not, don't say I didn't warn you to bring your asbestos gloves.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-06-26 00:00:00 Andrew Bryans Don't be fooled by the title: this book is neither about humanity, nor is it a history of the 20th century -- though we can perhaps say it is moral, if morality means feeling good about not being a war criminal. Glover's grandiose title masks a project of a substantially more limited scope: a catalogue of atrocities committed in the last century, followed by a discussion after each particular episode of what went wrong and a concluding section with suggestions as to how we can fix it. Glover's purpose, he announces at the onset, is "to bring ethics and history together" -- a promising approach. And it should have been to the book's advantage that Glover, as director of the Center of Medical Law and Ethics at King's College, London, is enmeshed in the discipline of bioethics. Alas, Glover enshrines the misperceptions and inadequacies typical of his profession in his approach to the topic at hand. Namely, he believes ethics "could be more empirical than it is"-- as if the discipline needed more empiricism, not less. Glover's "more empirical" approach to ethics takes on a veneer very much like the pseudo-psychological approach he professes at the same time to disfavor. Worse still, Glover uses his own peculiar brand of pop psychology for the majority of his analyses. In their application, none of the clumsy pop-psychology terms or concepts proves particularly rewarding or especially original. Further, the ideas that are original are not useful, and what is useful is unoriginal. Given the vision of "humanity" he assumes at the outset -- that is, a qualified materialist one -- it is not hard to understand why. Glover claims to replace the "thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex . . . a darker account" of human nature, which at first glance seems suspiciously like an understanding of Original Sin. However, he basically sticks to the Enlightenment model of man and to its "hope of a world that is more peaceful and more humane." In Glover's world, humans are little more than stimulus-response machines: input the correct "moral resources" and the correct behavioral output will emerge soon after. What is more, this view of man places Glover squarely in the same trap experienced by humanity time and again in the last grim century. For example, in the concluding chapter, which lays down a plan of action for improving the human condition, he writes the following lines without a hint of irony: "The causes of these [20th century ] catastrophes are partly political and social. Solutions to them cannot be purely in the realm of psychology or ethics: the political dimension has to be central. There is a need for proper policing of the world, with a legitimate and properly backed international authority to keep the peace and to protect human rights. There is a need for independent sources of information as alternatives to propaganda. There is a need to avoid large-scale utopian political projects. [emphasis added]" Thus, in one concise paragraph, Glover's "solution" identifies itself with the primary cause of the largest-scale and most horrid atrocities of the last century. For what are "proper policing of the world" and the establishment of an "international authority to keep the peace" if not examples of the very kind of "large-scale utopian political projects" he condemns?