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Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation (Revised and Expanded Edition), by Molefi Kete Asante. New York: Prometheus Books, 2009, $14.82, 370 pp., paperback.
Six years after publishing the first edition of Erasing Racism, Afrocentric scholar and Temple University Professor Molefi Kete Asante discusses the promise of, and barriers to eradicating racism from the American psyche in a contemporary, post-Obama context. In this work, which now includes an introduction and two additional chapters, the author of over 70 books and 400 articles delineates the reasons why a blatant confrontation of White supremacy is intrinsic to improving race relations in the United States. Although the dynamics of race may have with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, the book's central thesis of political and racial justice remains. What is produced is a passionate, but somewhat tautological roadmap that leads to the liberation of both White and Black Americans.
In the introduction, Asante locates Barack Obama's historic election in 2008 within the historical quest of African Americans for equality. He cautions that while one may be buoyed by Obama's ascendancy, one must also not be lulled into believing the falsehood that Americans have been able to surmount the ubiquitous obstacle of racism. Asante asserts that in fact, the United States remains a country of two nations with its citizens belonging to either "The Promised Land" or "The Wilderness." It is an effective metaphor that is resurrected throughout Asante' s polemic.
Chapter one's The Tortured Dream presents a cogent argument on why for Americans of African ancestry, the American dream is in reality, a torment. Any discussion about racism must discuss the dispossession of Native American lands as well as African captivity and enslavement; however, White and Black intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and other leaders have been loath to do this without the use of euphemisms or detractions. As such, structural racism still remains, and the inhabitants of the Wilderness are perpetually engaged in a tug of war with those of The Promise Land. One glaring shortcoming of this chapter is that the statistics used to substantiate Asante's original arguments were not updated in this second edition. As such, he makes (future) projections for 2003 in 2009.
Chapter 2, The Political Memory,...