Book: Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
Genre: History
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Publication date: 2023
Pages: 432 (including many endnotes)

Source: E-book borrowed from the library

Summary: Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America is a humorous (as indicated by the title) and casual blend of history and personal anecdote, backed up by serious scholarship.

It touches on events before 1619 to remind us that black people had lives and civilizations before they were forcibly moved to to the Americas. On the other end of the timeline, there is mention of COVID-19. In between, we learn about injustice, immorality, and murder by white people alongside rebellions and resistance and resilience by black people through centuries of US history.

As much reading as I’ve done in this area, every book offers more details. Here’s a bit of history that it seems like I should have learned about long ago.

“Maroons” were people who lived in the wilderness rather than remain where they were enslaved. I’d heard of Black Seminoles in Florida, but I wasn’t aware of how common it was in other areas– although it seems obvious, now that I think about it.

Maroons sometimes lived in well-formed villages that were quickly moved if they were discovered. Others lived in singles or very small groups, sometimes close enough to continue to see their families and provide mutual support. Still others waged guerilla warfare on the white enslavers. A bandit called Forest Joe terrorized planters in South Carolina for a couple of years before being killed in a battle.

I remember a similar feeling after reading Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett, Jr. That book listed way more slave rebellions that I imagined had happened. The history textbooks that I learned from in school were always skimpy on how enslaved people resisted their enslavement. We got the stories of John Brown and Nat Turner, but nothing else, leaving the impression that there was nothing else to learn.

Thoughts: Black AF History got me thinking about how much or little the books by black authors that I’ve read cater to a white audience. Our book group has read many books by black authors.

As I mentioned in the Before the Mayflower review, I came away with a broader view of how Americans might embrace a shared history. One of the reasons that I love The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee is that she invites us to consider how a shared future will work better than what we’ve tried in the past.

Many books follow conventions of publishing that appeal to educated white audiences without a more specific invitation or welcome. I’m thinking of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing.

Only rarely have we encountered books that were speaking to a black audience. In our book group discussion this week, we learned that many of us struggled with the humor in Black AF History. 

As mostly white readers, we found ourselves on a bit of journey to realize that the humor wasn’t meant to speak to us and that is okay. We can certainly survive reading a book where the humor is there for the black readers and our job is to tamp down defensiveness and judgment and consider ourselves lucky to get a peek into another culture.

Appeal: Our group had an amazing discussion with some deeper self-reflection than usual. We helped ourselves and each other push toward compassion even where there isn’t a foundation of full understanding. After all, we want to engage empathy whether or not other people conform to our ways of thinking.