Black Way of Seeing, A

This is a bold approach to empowerment emerges from this fresh take on race in America. The language of the Declaration of Independence could not have used the word freedom without directly confronting the issue of slavery as the ultimate denial of liberty , writes black American writer Paul Robeson, Jr. in the opening pages of this powerful and forward-looking indictment of contemporary American politics from one of America’s strongest and bravest voices of conscience. Thereafter, Robeson writes liberty meant the privileges to which the elite minority was entitled. And as for freedom, we are still waiting for it. In the tradition of James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, Robeson’s work melds history and analysis in a sweeping panorama, scathing in its understanding of why black empowerment has failed and prescient in its articulation of what it will take for black Americans to finally cross over to the status of fully empowered citizens and what the ramifications of this change can be for the country as a whole. Today no African American elected on a Republican ticket sits in Congress. Most blacks do not trust President Bush and are not inclined to believe anything he says. When black Americans begin to change the status quo, Robeson argues, they will change not only their own status in America, but will help change the whole country in the process.