Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home

By Deborah Mathis

3 nationally syndicated columnist takes a controversial look at the divisions that remain between black and white America more than 40 years after the Civil Rights movement.In a provocative examination of the state of race relations today, Deborah Mathis provides personal and sociological perspective on what it feels like for African Americans who continue to be segregated spiritually and emotionally from the rest of the country. Mathis airs mutual fears and suppositions and shines a spotlight on how far we still have to go before black Americans can truly feel at home in a country that benefits so strongly from their many contributions. Topics of discussion include: Affirmative actionare we starting to move backward?Racial profiling and the assumptions it involves The poor state of education in low-income area schoolsBlacks and their treatment in the judicial system The dangerous sense of complacency about how things are so much better than they used to beAnd more.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446526363
• ISBN13: 9780446526364
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR EVERY WHITE PERSON

Most white people that I know don't get it. They just can't imagine what it's like to have their car stopped and be arrested for being black. They can't imagine what it's like to be followed around in a department store by a member of the security staff. They can't imagine what it's like to have their kids blamed for altercations regardless of who started it. They can't imagine what it feels like to always get the worst assignments on the job. They've never heard of the concept of unearned privilege of which they are the invisible beneficiaries. "Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home" makes sure the reader, if he or she didn't get it before, gets it now. It obliges readers to take a cold empathy bath in the humiliating everyday experiences of Black Americans. For that reason, it is not an easy read and not a fun read if you're white. After reading this book, we no longer have the excuse that, well, we just didn't know, we just didn't realize that here in the 21st century things were still so much more difficult for Black Americans than for us. The implicit challenge of the book is: now that we know and can no longer plead ignorance, what are we going to do with that knowledge? How are we going to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem? This book makes no attempt to be even-handed. Unlike Senator Barack Obama's recent speech on race, there is no section on white grievances and frustations and no Cosby-like admonitions for the black community to address and solve its own problems. Those topics, while important, are not what this book is about. Its target audience is us white folks, and its objective is helping us to lift the veil of our ignorance through an experience of empathy. Deborah Mathis has written a painfully graphic, valuable book. But published in 2002, ancient history in the publishing industry, its light is under a bushel basket. Too bad. This book should be required reading for every white person, young and old. How else will we get it?

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Yet A Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel At Home is a provocative account by Deborah Mathis which explores the feelings and experiences of Black Americans. Ms. Mathis candidly writes about how the experiences of Black People in America have caused a prolonged feeling of alienation which has impacted their sense of community. She asserts that the progress that has been made in race relations is not enough and more needs to be done to dispel the feelings of displacement that many African-Americans continue to feel. She gives storical context and media examples of how racism continues to be pervasive in society. She shows how today's racism, although subtle, is just as damaging as in the past. Ms. Mathis proposes ways for the Black Community to heal itself and restore a sense community that was once evident in the neighborhoods of Black people. Practical ideas such as supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities, creating financial collaborations, recreating the village model, and reconnecting with God are suggested. Yet a Stranger is a thorough analysis that not only states the problems, but suggests solutions. Reviewed by Diane Marbury

TO BE READ AND ABSORBED, SANS CHIP ON SHOULDER

If the day should ever come that America succeeds Ýn heaing its racial wounds, that day will no doubt beproceeded by a separation in our national debatebetween diagnosis and prescription. Too often theelements advanced in the making of one are used in the polemical debate to attack the other. And much ofthe debate stirred by Deborah Mathis' Yet a Stranger isevidence of this prism in our national dialogue thatrefracts and distorts reason.And it is the diagnosis in Yet a Stranger that isits greatest triumph. This debate stirred by this bookis evidence of how the elements on one are used toattack the arguments of the other. Our debate on theseissues is all too often refracted through this prismof distortion.The point here is that reasonable people of anyideological stripe can today applaud America'ssuccesses, from the Emancipation Proclamation to theCivil Rights Act, while condemning the horrors thoselandmarks sought to remedy. A consensus certainlyexists here on both diagnosis and prescription.But a consensus eludes us on the continuing strugglefor true equality and equity, as Mathis' bookeffectively illustrates. Interestingly, the debateaccomplishes the same mission. In much of contemporaryblack life, the hue of one's skin is equated with theability to pay a mortgage or cover the tab on asweater being examined on a store rack. In debatingYet a Stranger, the critics will effectively ask usto dismiss an analysis of racism's continuing menaceto education with an argument against theeffectiveness of school vouchers or their appeal tomany black parents. C'mon. In social discourse, it isindeed OK to cast the first stone. Let's just get oursyllogisms straight beforehand. Solving the problems Mathis examines is critical toAmerica's health and future. That this is the casecould probably be agreed by Rush Limbaugh and JesseJackson. And then we move on.Those sympathetic to the views and experiences of thejournalist Mathis will be probably agree with thetotality of her book. But those with a different takeon affirmative action, racial profiling or the conceptof collective guilt can gain a great deal from thisnarrative as well. Sure, her prescriptions at the endof this book, from the restoration of "Ninth Street"neighborhoods to governmental scrutiny to chain storecredit policies may lack the power of the analysisbehind the facts with which they are proceeded in Yeta Stranger.But it is those facts that Mathis assembles that mostneed to be absorbed and considered by all venturinginto the debate. If you must, take an imaginary eraserto all the "prescriptions" in Yet a Stranger. There will still be more substance than most of us can take.Forget the medicine for now; the dýagnosis isenough of a pill. The reader who does this will do America a service.Just as Mathis has done with her thoughtful survey, herapt storytelling and her insight into so manyseemingly intractable problems.David Judson.