What do you think?
Rate this book
The Situation in South Carolina: A Novel
Heartstown South Carolina is a small, quaint segregated town filled faithful, god-fearing obedient families. When the Black community in this small city becomes fed up with years of police brutality and second-class treatment, they join together in an epic fight that exposes the inequality and corruption to the entire country. As the story unfolds, the entire nation becomes mesmerized by the incredibly complex story of murder, revenge and the faith of an entire community. Thousands of people from across the nation race to join this battle, not as a fight for the independence of a community, but as a symbol of every struggle for dignity and equality in the world. Soon, every eye in America becomes focused on the situation in South Carolina.
250 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 10, 2008
19 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
About the author
Michael Harriot
7 books324 followersMichael Harriot is a columnist at theGrio.com where he covers the intersection of race, politics, and culture. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, NBC, BET, and on his mother's refrigerator. He is a political commentator on MSNBC and CNN and has been honored by the National Association of Black Journalists for commentary, digital commentary, and TV news writing. Michael is the creator and cohost of the podcast Drapetomaniax: Unshackled History, produced in partnership with Pharrel's OTHERtone. His college course "Race: An Economic Construct" was adapted by university economics departments across the country as a model for teaching the combination of history, economics, politics, and class structures.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 2, 2015
The Situation in South Carolina is a snapshot of EXACTLY what has been happening day to day in communities that have found themselves in the clutches of the powers that be. To say that this book is about the police brutality or the violence that occurs today is doing the book a disservice. It does the book a disservice because The book tells a story that could have happened a million times in 3 million places in USA. The pace to me is very similar to Ann Petry The Street. I really enjoyed the book. Check it out.
June 2, 2020
EXTREMELY relevant to our current moment.
Content warnings:
* abusive white cop kills a Black man
* white cop sexually abuses a Black woman
* accidental death due to a child with a gun
* nat'l guard kills a Black woman
* white people abusing power
I got a lot out of reading this and I want to be clear by what I mean about that.
I grew up white, in a very white neighbor, with a white father who served on the majority-white police reserve in a mostly-white suburb of Kansas City on the Kansas side for about ten years before I was born and about two years after. When I needed a restraining order from an abusive stalker ex at age 16 which was not technically feasible as a minor, my dad called the Chief of Police in our city and made that happen. So - to borrow on a borrowed dichotomy that I find myself constantly referencing from Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon - for those of you who already know, you may see why this was such an important book for me to read. And for those of who you don't already know, you probably should read this book.
Some spoilers follow.
The single most important character for me was Martin, the Mayor's white police officer son. Martin has a semi-operating moral compass. Like many white people, he is able to identify excessive use of force, abusive behavior, and racial components motivating those behaviors in his white mentor with the police department. He even makes minor attempts to thwart his mentor while he is harassing Black driver, Ahmad James, after pulling him over for driving while Black. However, when push comes to shove, Martin becomes a complicit, silent bystander in a murder and deeply wrongful death.
Martin is in a position of remarkable power both as his father's son and heir apparent to - more or less - the Empire his white legacy has created for him in this small South Carolina town, and as a white witness to white police violence. He actually HAS THE POWER to seek justice for an innocent Black man whose life is lost to white police violence. But he doesn't use that power.
So when someone mistakes Martin as the killer instead of the accessory (I looked up the legal definition of accessory, and yep, driving the getaway car does count!) and kidnaps him with the intention of a revenge killing, Martin has this epiphany moment where he recognizes that he is not innocent, that it may in fact be a kind of old school eye-for-an-eye justice that he deserves. He doesn't correct the would-be killer about who exactly committed murder, though I am still having a lot of long thoughts about whether that was because he was acknowledging his role or if it was white solidarity. Maybe a bit of both. Later, when push comes to shove, he isn't so high-minded, but that epiphany moment was something I think a whole lot more white people need to sit with.
Harriot is a brilliant history nerd. I got this book because I love reading everything he writes on Twitter. I really look up to him. And there is nothing like a history nerd to write a thought experiment and inform it with the history that'll likely repeat itself because we (white people) just haven't learned.
On a lighter note, I went through phases with the copyediting issues in this. Phase I: OMG hire a copyeditor. Phase II: This is so well-written, who cares about copyediting, who am I to judge. Phase III: OMG hire a copyeditor.
p.s. I also really appreciated the ambiguously-queer rep of Ace.
Content warnings:
* abusive white cop kills a Black man
* white cop sexually abuses a Black woman
* accidental death due to a child with a gun
* nat'l guard kills a Black woman
* white people abusing power
I got a lot out of reading this and I want to be clear by what I mean about that.
I grew up white, in a very white neighbor, with a white father who served on the majority-white police reserve in a mostly-white suburb of Kansas City on the Kansas side for about ten years before I was born and about two years after. When I needed a restraining order from an abusive stalker ex at age 16 which was not technically feasible as a minor, my dad called the Chief of Police in our city and made that happen. So - to borrow on a borrowed dichotomy that I find myself constantly referencing from Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon - for those of you who already know, you may see why this was such an important book for me to read. And for those of who you don't already know, you probably should read this book.
Some spoilers follow.
The single most important character for me was Martin, the Mayor's white police officer son. Martin has a semi-operating moral compass. Like many white people, he is able to identify excessive use of force, abusive behavior, and racial components motivating those behaviors in his white mentor with the police department. He even makes minor attempts to thwart his mentor while he is harassing Black driver, Ahmad James, after pulling him over for driving while Black. However, when push comes to shove, Martin becomes a complicit, silent bystander in a murder and deeply wrongful death.
Martin is in a position of remarkable power both as his father's son and heir apparent to - more or less - the Empire his white legacy has created for him in this small South Carolina town, and as a white witness to white police violence. He actually HAS THE POWER to seek justice for an innocent Black man whose life is lost to white police violence. But he doesn't use that power.
So when someone mistakes Martin as the killer instead of the accessory (I looked up the legal definition of accessory, and yep, driving the getaway car does count!) and kidnaps him with the intention of a revenge killing, Martin has this epiphany moment where he recognizes that he is not innocent, that it may in fact be a kind of old school eye-for-an-eye justice that he deserves. He doesn't correct the would-be killer about who exactly committed murder, though I am still having a lot of long thoughts about whether that was because he was acknowledging his role or if it was white solidarity. Maybe a bit of both. Later, when push comes to shove, he isn't so high-minded, but that epiphany moment was something I think a whole lot more white people need to sit with.
Harriot is a brilliant history nerd. I got this book because I love reading everything he writes on Twitter. I really look up to him. And there is nothing like a history nerd to write a thought experiment and inform it with the history that'll likely repeat itself because we (white people) just haven't learned.
On a lighter note, I went through phases with the copyediting issues in this. Phase I: OMG hire a copyeditor. Phase II: This is so well-written, who cares about copyediting, who am I to judge. Phase III: OMG hire a copyeditor.
p.s. I also really appreciated the ambiguously-queer rep of Ace.
February 13, 2019
This book is incredibly true to life, and the things that happen in it can and do happen far too often in America. If you’re a human with a soul, you will be infuriated within the first 15 pages.
In all honesty, this book (at least, the copy I have) is lacking some much needed copy editing, but the story was so good and was told so well that even though I’m a serious stickler for all things grammar-related, the mistakes didn’t distract from the enthralling content. It’s amazing how well Michael Harriot painted pictures that had me living in the story like it was happening before my eyes.
10/10 and I will read it again!
In all honesty, this book (at least, the copy I have) is lacking some much needed copy editing, but the story was so good and was told so well that even though I’m a serious stickler for all things grammar-related, the mistakes didn’t distract from the enthralling content. It’s amazing how well Michael Harriot painted pictures that had me living in the story like it was happening before my eyes.
10/10 and I will read it again!
May 22, 2023
Great Storytelling!
I had no idea I would enjoy this book as much as I did. I loved reading about the ways these characters were intertwined in their community…so much so that I want to know more about each of them.
I had no idea I would enjoy this book as much as I did. I loved reading about the ways these characters were intertwined in their community…so much so that I want to know more about each of them.
July 9, 2020
Michael Harriot's first fictional novel about police brutality in a small South Carolina town says it all in the preface: "The story is fiction. But not really."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews