From: Lindsay, Nina <nlindsay>
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 16:58:31 -0800

Thanks for sharing the results of your discussion. Can you share any comments about McWhorter's Dream of Freedom? I found it myself a very flaw and troubling book.
  To me it reads very choppily, as if it were patched together from her other writings, and not presented in the best way possible to her audience. Many things are mentioned fleetingly without appropriate context, (p.23 The Birth of a Nation; p.80 Letter to Birmingham; p.97 JFKs assasination) or awkwardly/only-half explained (p.44-5 distiction between effect of the boycott and the NAACP; p.53 "resegregation" of schools). Combined with a lack of documentation, this book to me does not "[display] respect for children's understandings, abilities, and appreciations."
  I'm also puzzled and disturbed by some comments she makes about how black people felt during that time, without giving us any evidence. A couple of places I marked:
  p.15

"They began to accept a form of social insanity as reasonable." Did blacks really consider it reasonable?

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p.16

"black people began to believe in the inferiority inflicted on them from the outside." I'm similarly startled by this comment. She needs to show more to say something like this.

 

Now, I know well that every committee is different, and I don't know what the discussion was like for your Mock election. But I'd love a little bit of insight into the discussion on this one, since it is a title that's being
"talked about".

 

Thanks,

Nina

 

Nina Lindsay, Librarian Children's Room Oakland Public Library 125 14th Street Oakland CA 94612
(510) 238615 fax (510) 238h65 nlindsay at oaklandlibrary.org
Received on Sat 18 Dec 2004 06:58:31 PM CST