An eye opening treatise and a must read…..  *****

This is a history lesson, a sobering view of the country we call the United States, and an eye-opening look into how a government can oppress a specific part of its population. Coates does an excellent job of describing the struggle and overt, as well as covert,  discrimination of blacks in this country.

There are too many events from black history in this book, that I had no idea about, to list. One that stood out to me was the way the GI bill, which provided low cost housing loans, was handled regarding black veterans. Because the local banks and cities were given the power to decide how the bill was implemented, they were able to deny loans to black veterans. Coates goes into this in great detail, so I won’t.

Coates shares the articles he wrote for The Atlantic, spanning the eight years of the Obama administration.  He introduces each essay with his comments in retrospect.

This is a must read and an unsettling view of this country. Sadly, it probably won’t be read by those that need to, and based on current attitudes I doubt it would change their minds anyway

This one gets five stars.