ANNOUNCING THE BOOK FOR
Two Towns: One Book 2005

 

 

How Race is Lived in America

by Correspondents of The New York Times

Read it! . Check here to find out where to borrow or buy the book, and for a link to read it on the web.

About the book Read about who wrote the book and why, here.

Read more about it! Read reviews.

Event Schedule! Check here for updates on Two Towns: One Book 2005 activities. Updated as new activities come on line – check back often.

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Read it!

Available for borrow or purchase at local libraries, and for purchase at the Maplewood Memorial Library (Main and Hilton Branch sites), South Orange Public Library and Goldfinch Books in Maplewood. Free pass_around copies are available at locations throughout the community! Get one, read it, pass it on!

Read the articles on line at http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/


About the book!

How Race is Lived in America: Pulling Together, Pulling Apart by Correspondents of The New York Times.  Henry Holt Company, 2001, 394 pages.

The New York Times team is comprised of Ira Berkow, Dana Canedy, Timothy Egan, Amy Harmon, Steven A. Holmes, N. R. Kleinfield, Charlie LeDuff, Tamar Lewin, Mireya Navarro, Mirta Ojito, Kevin Sack, Janny Scott, Don Terry, Ginger Thompson, and Michael Winerip. Joseph Lelyveld is executive editor of The New York Times.

Because many whites believe that the social, economic, and legal advances which emerged out of the civil rights movement ended formal racial discrimination, they are often irritated by what they regard as media preoccupation with race. They think the race problem has been solved. Consequently, they're totally astounded when riots break out in Cincinnati following the shooting death of a black man by a white policeman or by the outrage expressed at a public official who uses the term "niggardly." In one sense the first such "surprise" occurred following the verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial. Whites couldn't believe that Simpson wasn't convicted. But even more disturbing to them was the universal joy expressed by blacks from every walk of life at the outcome. Race never ceased being an issue for African-Americans, and they don't think the playing field is level at all.

In 1999 The New York Times set a racially diverse group of editors and writers and photographers to investigate the question "What are race relations like today?" Each journalist found a black person and a white person who shared the same workplace, school, church, police department, or political arena. Over the course of a year they talked very intimately with their protagonists about race as a factor in that particular setting. The reporters also spoke extensively with coworkers, friends, other church members, and family members to enrich the details of their stories. By combining two accounts – one black and one white -- the Times reporters thought readers would be able to see more clearly how differently even friendly, cordial people interpret a shared situation. In addition, the writers agreed not to force any themes upon their stories. We are free to interpret according to our own insights. How Race in Lived in America offers highly various and utterly fascinating stories of racial cooperation and racial strain as experienced by real people in real situations.

2005 Event Schedule!

Sunday, November 20
Essex Ethical Culture Society, 516 Parker Avenue, 11:00 AM
Alice Robinson-Gilman and Meredith Sue Willis: How Race Is Lived in America. Platform centering on the book that started as a series of articles in the NYTimes. You can read the book, or read the articles at http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/ . One of the articles, "Growing Together, Growing Apart" is about local Maplewood-South Orange students.

Sunday, July 17 3pm   
      Black Maria films South Orange Public Library
      Hardwood   a Harlem Globetrotter's two families - one black, one white
      S.P.I.C.: the storyboard of my life amazing animated life story

upcoming in September

    film: Let the church say Amen Maplewood Memorial Library

Wednesday, September 14

How we celebrate race South Orange Public Library

    dessert and open mic

 

ALSO: book discussions at Maplewood Memorial Library, guest speakers at Seton Hall check back for a full schedule

 

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Reviews

 

Amazon.com
The Assembly of God Tabernacle in Decatur, Georgia, has succeeded at doing what most institutions in America have failed at--achieving full integration. White parishioners who thought of blacks in the worst terms in the past have now decided that all believers--black and white--are going to the same heaven, so they might as well get used to it here on earth. After a black man hugs an elderly white woman, he says, "Man, 30 or 40 years ago I would have been hung for just touching this lady." While there is genuine affection between many of the parishioners, all the complex feelings and questions that plague the races at the turn of the century are being reckoned with here. Is integration a blessing or a sellout, blacks wonder. Is it ever acceptable--or even helpful--to make race the issue, or must a preacher and his congregation always feign colorblindness? What are the burdens of blending in, and are they worth it? And will this last, or is the church just like so many neighborhoods--enjoying a fleeting moment of integration on the way to becoming predominantly black? These are just some of the touchy issues explored in this remarkable and eye-opening book.

Originally published as a series in The New York Times , the 15 stories are the outcome of a yearlong examination by a team of reporters who managed to overcome the taboo of discussing private attitudes toward race and uncover the daily experience of race relations in schools, friendships, sports, popular culture, worship, and the workplace. The result is a wide range of intimate portraits, from bringing up slavery in the Old South, to drug cops reacting silently to the Amadou Diallo verdict, to the making of the HBO special The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood .

Race clearly remains a source of misunderstanding and alienation, but there are also heartening signs of reaching out, reconciliation, and even unity. This book is an important leap into an area most fear to tread, yet also yearn to change. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly
In his introduction to this expansive book on the complexity of contemporary race relations, Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the New York Times, notes that he urged his correspondents to "go deep" beyond the headlines with their research and "hang in there." His staff produced 15 stellar stories that dig down to the gnarled crux of our racial dilemma in this turbulent post-O.J. era, presenting a startling array of voices and situations. In the powerful opening story, "Shared Prayers, Mixed Blessings," Kevin Sack chronicles the power of faith as a unifying force in a formerly segregated, now multi-racial church near Atlanta. Another poignant account, "Best of Friends, Worlds Apart," follows the immigration and acculturation of two youths from Cuba, where race is a lower-case issue, who find that their experiences in Miami are so different (one is dark-skinned and one is light) that it drives a wedge into their longtime friendship. Janny Scott's "Who Gets to Tell a Black Story?" explores the need for self-determination and the opportunity to define one's cultural image, as a reporter details countless obstacles faced by an African-American TV director and his writers in bringing a controversial series on drug abuse in a Baltimore neighborhood to the small screen. The unorthodox efforts of a young white writer and activist, Billy (Upski) Wimsatt, to open a dialogue between white and black youth gives new meaning to the term "wigger" (a white who wants to be black) in N.R. Kleinfeld's well-turned story, "Guarding the Borders of the Hip-Hop Nation." While the so-called "unmediated conversations about race" at the end cover familiar ground, several revelations crop up in the raw interviews with the black, white and Hispanic subjects for the pieces that are reprinted at the end of the book. Overall, this high-minded, superbly written collection unflinchingly probes America's racial struggles, posing as many solutions as it does questions, shining much-needed light on one of the nation's toughest challenges.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This collection reproduces in its main part some 14 articles that appeared over six weeks in 2000 in the New York Times (NYT) on the theme of race relations in America. Another piece from a special issue of the New York Times Magazine offers the personal odyssey of racial identity of one of the reporters. The ambitious series fastened on real people from a Harlem narcotics squad to the legacy of slavery on the old Magnolia plantation in central Louisiana to two recent Cuban immigrants. The remainder, heaped under the header "Conversations," offers pieces of various length from personal journals and writings and dialogs on race, ending with 27 pages of NYT survey data. The stories, conversations, and data reflect both progress and poverty in the persistence of race as a fundamental category in individual and national life. This is essential reading for anyone who cares even to glimpse behind the facade, to reach the exposed emotions of America's present racial reality. Recommended for any collection on the contemporary U.S. or race relations. Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Made up of an acclaimed New York Times series and later responses to it by readers as well as journalists, this book surveys a cross section of racial issues and relationships in the U.S. today. The collection covers the political, social, and cultural terrain in which race continues to plague the American sense of justice and equality, documenting areas of change in racial attitudes but also areas of stubborn resistance. Communities and individuals profiled include a Pentecostal church in Stone Mountain, Georgia, that chose to integrate rather than slowly die as white members leave the church and the community; black and white Internet entrepreneurs who report prospects in the color-blind world of e-commerce; and Cuban immigrants, best friends--one black, one white--who discovered the great racial divide while settling into life in the U.S. for seven years. Issues examined range from racial profiling to affirmative action to the many ways that race affects Americans' everyday lives. All told, this is insightful reporting that avoids both cliches and cynicism. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Charlie Rose
"The range of reality uncovered is extraordinary."

Review

"This is reporting at its best. This is how sociology should be, a comprehensive view in depth on a major social problem in America. This will be a benchmark for all future inquiries."-- Daniel Bell, professor emeritus, Harvard University

" How Race Is Lived in America expands the boundaries of daily journalism. Resolutely avoiding stereotypes, cliches, and official wisdom, the New York Times team has gotten to the rich and complicated heart of the most persistently difficult theme in our country's history. It stands not just as an outstanding portrayal of race relations, but as proof that with time, persistence, and a willingness to listen, reporters can convey not just the sayings and doings of important people, but a true sense of American life."-- Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Leman
" How Race Is Lived in America expands the boundaries of daily journalism. Resolutely avoiding stereotypes, clichés, and official wisdom . . ."

Jack E. White, Time
" . . . set[s] out to examine the uneasy relationships between minorities (mostly blacks) and whites who relate to each other as equals . . ."

Review
"This is reporting at its best. This is how sociology should be, a comprehensive view in depth on a major social problem in America. This will be a benchmark for all future inquiries."-- Daniel Bell, professor emeritus, Harvard University

" How Race Is Lived in America expands the boundaries of daily journalism. Resolutely avoiding stereotypes, cliches, and official wisdom, the New York Times team has gotten to the rich and complicated heart of the most persistently difficult theme in our country's history. It stands not just as an outstanding portrayal of race relations, but as proof that with time, persistence, and a willingness to listen, reporters can convey not just the sayings and doings of important people, but a true sense of American life."-- Nicholas Lemann