★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man
• Author: Emmanuel Acho
• Year: 2020
• Pages: 200*
• Genre: Antiracism, Advocacy
• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• ISBN 978-1-250-80046-6 (hardcover)
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not including acknowledgements, “Quick Talks”, recommendations, references, and about the author.)

 

Summary

Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man was born out of a video series (start here on YouTube, or here on Emmanuel Acho’s website) in which the author talks to (mostly) white people about various questions on the topics of racism, interracial relationships, protests against police brutality, defunding the police, transracial adoption, white privilege, and so on. The book mostly stays on these topics though Acho includes sections that don’t fit well into videos, like the historical background behind each topic.

 

Praise

A former professional football player who previously attended an elite private school, Acho recognizes that his life experience differs widely from many Black men in the U.S., but also that his relative privilege provided him a platform from which to address these issues.

“I’ve been navigating the lines between whiteness and blackness all of my life... My childhood was one big study abroad in white culture — followed by studying abroad in black culture during college and then during my years in the NFL... Now I’m fluent in both cultures: black and white.”

—page 2-4

More so than most books I’ve read on this topic, Acho works to combine various tactics: personal or second-hand anecdotes, historical precedent, statistics, and plain everyday language. He asks readers to examine their own motivations — why they hold certain viewpoints — and provides (at the end of each chapter) a suggested reading list for bending or changing that perspective.

“There is no conversation that excuses a white person using the word [N-word]. There’s too much pain in that word coming from a white mouth. However, I will also say that if you’re ever inclined to use it, you can and should investigate where that inclination or compulsion comes from. That’s the difficult conversation — not if you should or shouldn’t say it but why you could want to say it at all. If the word [N-word] is in your heart or on your tongue, please, try to figure out why.”

—page 65-66 (emphasis in the original; redactions are mine)

Though each sub-topic is treated briefly and without much depth, it’s clearly because Acho covered so many sub-topics (in addition to what I mentioned in my summary above: voter suppression, systemic racism, reverse racism, cultural appropriation, mass incarceration, redlining, educational inequality, wealth inequality, and how to be a good ally). As a primer, or introduction to many of these, the book doesn’t require much of a reader but does point to further study for anyone who might have more questions or who remains unconvinced.

 

Points Off For...

Each of the following things bugged me as I read, but they seem less significant when balanced against the bulk of this book.

1. I found the style oversimplified and overly conversational (though it’s my fault for not expecting the latter, based on the title). I think Acho’s intended audience is meant to be mostly white people who aren’t even convinced racism is real and probably haven’t looked into it much — so, not really for me.

2. Acho sometimes says “remember the old saying...?” and then delivers a quotation that I’ve never heard before, like: “If you can’t run from it, run into it.” Given our differing backgrounds and experiences (he’s Black, a first-generation son of Nigerian immigrants, I was an adult before he was born, and he played in the NFL), I assume he and I have heard different sayings in our lives. Still, it was weird that all of his “old sayings’ were unfamiliar to me — typically when an author says that, it’s a saying I’ve heard before.

3. There were some odd errors that should have been caught in the editing process. Two examples: (1) When he tells the Emmitt Till story, he refers to “those two white men” without having mentioned any white men in the previous part of the story. (I assume he referred to J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the two men charged with, and aquitted of, Till’s murder.) (2) When discussing interracial marriage, he says: “When I see a black man with a white woman or a white woman with a black man...” — I’m pretty sure at least one of those hypothetical couples was meant to say “a white man with a black woman”, instead of listing the same two people in reverse order.

4. The one thing that bugged me enough to take off a full point was his use of “broken families” throughout Chapter 11. Acho did an excellent job explaining how Black families in the U.S. came to be the way they are (though it isn’t his experience at all), from the slave-trade related breakups of families to the over-policing and over-incarceration of Black communities today. And he very well makes the case that this isn’t inherent to Black families. But, throughout all this, he accepts the baseline underlying assumption that a “two-parent nuclear family” is the goal, the default, the natural and better order of things. And yes, a lot of people hold that view — especially people like Acho who attended an elite private school and whose father was a pastor. But I think progressive activism is better served by refuting the definitions and standards set forth by conservatives and/or racists. Kind of like how “men wear pants, women wear dresses” is a very recent development in society (and not at all part of the “natural order”), the “nuclear family” is a social construct and nothing in nature indicates “it must be this way”.

 

Conclusion

For the apparent intended audience, this book would make a great introduction to the many related topics it covers. There’s just enough historical background, just enough statistics, just enough personal anecdotes, and just enough “Hey, I’m a nice guy; let’s talk about it” vibe that it’s possible Acho can point some people in the right direction with this effort.

For me, I think a book like this 15 or so years ago could have done a world of good. As it was, I don’t think there was any one thing here that I haven’t already researched beyond the capability of this book (except possibly cultural appropriation).

 

 

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