Here to Learn Book Club: Education on Race in America discussion

In all honesty, this might be one of the best books I've ever read. The nuance, the constant and delicate dance between realism and surrealism, the unrelenting and thorough investigation of the quest for human identity. And what a potent look into race relations past, present and future.

I had a very similar feeling reading this book that I have had reading many of James Baldwin's books: just like someone held up a mirror to not only the society I find myself in but also to me personally. I've been thinking a lot about how collective success lies in the success of individuals to discover themselves; society is only made up of individuals, right? And so after all, maybe it's our regained dignity, our constant investigation of ourselves leading to each personal truth, each societal niche, that makes the entire society work to its best ability - not a peaceful or "right" one perhaps, but to its truest iteration.

Penguin Random House has great questions for further discussion here for those who want to delve deeper into the book's content: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo....

Some particularly incisive insight for me:

P.315 - Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing.

P. 508 - Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men.

P.559 - I recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought be here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine.

P560 - But it was important to them that they hang me, lynch me even, since that was the way they ran, had been taught to run.

P.572 - I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest... on the other hand, I've never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to "justify" and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs.

P.577 - Whence all this passion to conformity anyway? Diversity is the word, let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states.

It's "winner take nothing" that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray.

This will be my next read, I’d always been aware of it but never gave it much thought (surprise). Now that I’ve been reading more about race in America, and really internalized how profoundly different the black experience is, I think I’ll learn a lot from Ellison.

Luke wrote: "This will be my next read, I’d always been aware of it but never gave it much thought (surprise). Now that I’ve been reading more about race in America, and really internalized how profoundly diffe..."

Would love to know what you think when you read it, Luke!