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The House I Live In: Race in the American Century
In The House I Live In , award-winning historian Robert J. Norrell offers a truly masterful chronicle of American race relations over the last one hundred and fifty years.
This scrupulously fair and insightful narrative--the most ambitious and wide-ranging history of its kind--sheds new light on the ideologies, from white supremacy to black nationalism, that have shaped race relations since the Civil War. Norrell argues that it is these ideologies, more than politics or economics, that have sculpted the landscape of race in America. Beginning with Reconstruction, he shows how the democratic values of liberty and equality were infused with new meaning by Abraham Lincoln, only to become meaningless for generations of African Americans as the white supremacy movement took shape. The heart of the book paints a vivid portrait of the long, often dangerous struggle of the Civil Rights movement to overcome decades of accepted inequality. Norrell offers fresh appraisals of key Civil Rights figures and dissects the ideas of racists. He offers striking new insights into black-white history, observing for instance that the Civil Rights movement really began
as early as the 1930s, and that contrary to much recent writing, the Cold War was a setback rather than a boost to the quest for racial justice. He also breaks new ground on the role of popular culture and mass media in first promoting, but later helping defeat, notions of white supremacy. Though the struggle for equality is far from over, Norrell writes that today we are closer than ever to fulfilling the promise of our democratic values. The House I Live In gives readers the first full understanding of how far we have come.
This scrupulously fair and insightful narrative--the most ambitious and wide-ranging history of its kind--sheds new light on the ideologies, from white supremacy to black nationalism, that have shaped race relations since the Civil War. Norrell argues that it is these ideologies, more than politics or economics, that have sculpted the landscape of race in America. Beginning with Reconstruction, he shows how the democratic values of liberty and equality were infused with new meaning by Abraham Lincoln, only to become meaningless for generations of African Americans as the white supremacy movement took shape. The heart of the book paints a vivid portrait of the long, often dangerous struggle of the Civil Rights movement to overcome decades of accepted inequality. Norrell offers fresh appraisals of key Civil Rights figures and dissects the ideas of racists. He offers striking new insights into black-white history, observing for instance that the Civil Rights movement really began
as early as the 1930s, and that contrary to much recent writing, the Cold War was a setback rather than a boost to the quest for racial justice. He also breaks new ground on the role of popular culture and mass media in first promoting, but later helping defeat, notions of white supremacy. Though the struggle for equality is far from over, Norrell writes that today we are closer than ever to fulfilling the promise of our democratic values. The House I Live In gives readers the first full understanding of how far we have come.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
400 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 16, 2016
Norrell is a white man who seriously dug into the history of race relations in America, and put together a useful and highly readable story hitting the high points between Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. He falls apart in the last 20 years of the century, as he gives greater credence to Conservative viewpoints than he does to Liberal, and he cherry picks examples to show that racism isn't as strong as it used to be. Of course, he wrote in 2003, which makes many of his conclusions more absurd than they may have been at time, since we now have the benefit of seeing the Black Lives Matter movement while all Norrell could quote is some slogan of "All races matter." And he couldn't foresee Donald Trump's rise when he wrote: "Americans' ideological journey in the twentieth century had brought them to a place where xenophobia and nativism were unacceptable." Still, I hadn't read a book-length study of the subject, and it was good for me to connect some dots I had only seen in isolation before.
March 14, 2013
Book rates right there w/Race and Reunion. Dr. Norrell's book is an eye opener for me and reinforces how racism is rampant in our History. However I also believe that Because of the Bible and the Holy Spirit, we can overcome our fears and prejudices. It is a constant battle w/me though not to fall into stereotypes of all. I am sure that I also am stereotyped to some degree.
Well worth the time to read.
Well worth the time to read.
May 10, 2021
This is a really interesting history of race relations in the US. While I was familiar with some of the historical events, there were some things that were new for me and some expanded treatments of events I only knew a little about. I didn't always agree with the author's analysis, but I enjoy having my thoughts challenged. This was most true for the epilogue. The book was published in 2005, and I think if I had read the epilogue in 2005, I would have probably mostly agreed with Norrell's thoughts on the future. Looking back from 2021, though, his optimistic view of the future seems quite misguided. I'd be really curious to see what he'd write if he were doing a new epilogue today.
September 3, 2021
This is an exceptionally informative read. Looking back on it, I can still remember the key moments in Civil Rights History that Robert J. Norrell draws attention to and how they affected the movement as a whole. Just off the top of my head, I can remember the Black Codes, the release of Birth of a Nation, and the Watts Riot, which up until that point in my life, I had never heard of. More than just moments though, Norrell turns focus to individual people and how they affected the movement such as Booker T. Washington, Mamie Till, and Joe Louis. This isn't Civil Rights History that starts and stops at Martin Luther King Jr.; it gives what came before and after, and how it all connects.
February 18, 2009
Twenty years back I was starry-eyed over PBS’s Eyes on the Prize documentary, its companion paperback, and all things James Baldwin – the latter’s Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time, in particular.) But since then, surprisingly little has changed in much of the scholarship about the Civil Rights movement and its origins. For this reason, most of Norrell’s superbly researched and written narrative about the history of black-and-white race politics has been covered before. But if there are things that he talks about that others are just getting to, I can laud him for two distinct areas arguments that he makes toward the close of The House I Live In.
First, Norrell’s analysis of the waning disengagement and activism in civil rights is blunt, to say the least. That is, he directly attributes the white backlash against expanding Democrat-sponsored welfare and affirmative action programs to the increase in violence and rioting by the black community (think the anger of Watts and, later, the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King) -- instead of the much-preferred peaceful civil disobedience that was a hallmark of the 50s and early 60s. (Is this what Obama meant when he advised us to “put away childish things” in his inaugural speech? One can only speculate here.)
Second, Norrell astutely observes that we are entering into a blended age in which strict racial identities are becoming less and less prominent – or useful. (Obama’s mutt-ness comes to mind. But post-racial though? Too soon to tell, if you ask me.) Norrell not only discusses the growing prominence of mixed-race couples and their children, but he also notes the increase of non-European immigrants into the American cultural fabric (by which he means the fast-growing Hispanic population, and the increasingly prominent Pacific-Asian cultures), as well as the emergence of the women’s and gay rights movements that coincided – or grew out of, depending on how you look at it -- with the Civil Rights movement.
To his credit, Norrell is a realist whose pluralism is in tune with this new century that we have embarked upon. I can only hope that his next book, now that we are in the age of Obama, will be even more scintillating and insightful about our collective multiracial American identities.
First, Norrell’s analysis of the waning disengagement and activism in civil rights is blunt, to say the least. That is, he directly attributes the white backlash against expanding Democrat-sponsored welfare and affirmative action programs to the increase in violence and rioting by the black community (think the anger of Watts and, later, the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King) -- instead of the much-preferred peaceful civil disobedience that was a hallmark of the 50s and early 60s. (Is this what Obama meant when he advised us to “put away childish things” in his inaugural speech? One can only speculate here.)
Second, Norrell astutely observes that we are entering into a blended age in which strict racial identities are becoming less and less prominent – or useful. (Obama’s mutt-ness comes to mind. But post-racial though? Too soon to tell, if you ask me.) Norrell not only discusses the growing prominence of mixed-race couples and their children, but he also notes the increase of non-European immigrants into the American cultural fabric (by which he means the fast-growing Hispanic population, and the increasingly prominent Pacific-Asian cultures), as well as the emergence of the women’s and gay rights movements that coincided – or grew out of, depending on how you look at it -- with the Civil Rights movement.
To his credit, Norrell is a realist whose pluralism is in tune with this new century that we have embarked upon. I can only hope that his next book, now that we are in the age of Obama, will be even more scintillating and insightful about our collective multiracial American identities.
September 1, 2014
To keep from repeating the past we have to look back, and this book does that. Very well written and informative look back at the struggle of the African American experience. They have had and continue to have the worst of the struggle. It truly blows my mind how horribly they have been treated from emancipation till now. This book has given me a different perspective on our country, the definition of freedom, liberty, justice and our democracy.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews