Black & White: Healing Racial Divide delivers an assessment of racial strife in America which moves from a history of changing racial issues (from Jim Crow experiences to modern times) to a survey of insights and solutions focused on reuniting a deeply divided country. In the process, it explores facets of the divide that rarely receive attention in similar-sounding approaches, such as Biblical references, discussions of assimilation approaches and underlying attitudes, bias, and more.
The story opens with a family picture of the author with his two high school teachers and leads to what looks to be a memoir reflecting on the birth of his daughter. This becomes a reflection on George Floyd's murder and why African Americans remain disenfranchised and at high risk in American society: "Truthfully, the breathlessness of African Americans is not a new phenomenon. Their four-hundred-year struggle to breathe began during the middle passage, increased during slavery, extended beyond post-civil war reconstruction, and remains even until the writing of this book in 2020. Obstructions to African American airways now take the form of white supremacy, systemic racism, bias, injustice, unequal treatment, and lack of access to products, services, and resources."
While he admits that every problem in the community isn't due to racism, C. L. Holley's discussion traces many facets of seemingly diverse issues to not just racist attitudes, but issues of guilt and lasting resentments, which stymie any possibility of a healing conversation.
As chapters consider the inherent racism and repression in everything from housing and communities to economic opportunities, they draw together statistics, studies, and researched information to support observations about the many faces of repression in American society: "Where a person lives and the condition in which he or she lives can determine the health and wellbeing of not only that individual but other members of the family. And those effects can linger from generation to generation."
Unlike other discussions, both black and white barriers to change receive the laser beam of Holley's attention and contentions. The new foundations of racial healing opportunities receive close inspection as he draws together possibilities for both sides to meet—but only after considering their own inherited attitudes towards race, communication, and attitudes, which erect walls on both sides.
Anyone interested in how all races can participate in the broader win-win effort of defeating racism will find Black & White: Healing Racial Divide an excellent starting point for discussion and change. It's highly recommended reading not just for collections already profiling racial issues, but high school to adult classrooms who might consider debating and absorbing its lessons, which offer opportunities for re-envisioning America and the values about equality which this nation purports to hold.
