Writing a review of Racing to Justice

I wrote a little last week. The experience was odd to me. I’ve been writing book reviews since 2004, but every time I write one it is as if I’m writing for the first time. Most people think writing book reviews is easy. I know I thought that when I first started reviewing for ForeWord Magazine.
Man, did the editor teach me how to write each time she sent a review back for revisions.  Looking back, I’m thankful for those lessons. I also learned from picking apart the reviews in ForeWord Magazine. I mean I dissected several reviews before attempting my own.

I was reminded of all of this when I reviewed Racing to Justice by *john a. powell. powell, who was recently selected to lead the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas Diversity Research Center, has written a heavy book about race, whiteness, justice, inequity and tons of other stuff.

I think writing the review was hard for me because he talked about so many interesting things.  For example, I’ve been interested in whiteness studies since I was a student at Ohio State and wanted to steer the review more toward that and Peggy McIntosh’s“Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” but then powell’s ideas about how people are arguing about multiracial identity is equally intriguing, especially for someone like me who chuckled when powell says something like, aren’t we all multiracial.

The court cases he cites, though I admit I thought many of them were **dated, seemed like a good thing to talk about in the review. But after all, wasn’t a main point of the book about how all of this talk about a postracial society acts like a deterrent to dealing with racism?

Another hard part of writing the review was deciding the lead. In October, my ears perked up and burned a little when NPR ran several stories about cases the Supreme Court might hear this term, so that seemed like the best place to start in the end, especially since powell alluded to the upcoming affirmative action case.  

I enjoy writing book reviews because it stretches me in a way that writing an article doesn’t.

You can see my review of Racing to Justice and other books at ForeWord Magazine.

*Mr. powell does not capitalize his name, so I will not capitalize it either.

**I do realize older court cases are used to establish precedent.