Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERThis edition includes illustrations by Everett DysonFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop, a passionate call to America to finally reckon with race and start the journey to redemption.“Powerfully illuminating, heart-wrenching, and enlightening.” -Ibram X. Kendi, bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist“Crushingly powerful, Long Time Coming is an unfiltered Marlboro of black pain.” -Isabel Wilkerson, bestselling author of Caste"Formidable, compelling...has much to offer on our nation’s crucial need for racial reckoning and the way forward." -Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy The night of May 25, 2020 changed America. George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis when a white cop suffocated him. The video of that night’s events went viral, sparking the largest protests in the nation’s history and the sort of social unrest we have not seen since the sixties. While Floyd’s death was certainly the catalyst, (heightened by the fact that it occurred during a pandemic whose victims were disproportionately of color) it was in truth the fuse that lit an ever-filling powder keg.Long Time Coming grapples with the cultural and social forces that have shaped our nation in the brutal crucible of race. In five beautifully argued chapters—each addressed to a black martyr from Breonna Taylor to Rev. Clementa Pinckney—Dyson traces the genealogy of anti-blackness from the slave ship to the street corner where Floyd lost his life—and where America gained its will to confront the ugly truth of systemic racism. Ending with a poignant plea for hope, Dyson’s exciting new book points the way to social redemption. Long Time Coming is a necessary guide to help America finally reckon with race.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, History, Audiobook, Social Justice, Politics, Sociology

229 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2020

About the author

Michael Eric Dyson is an American academic, author, and radio host. He is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University.

Reviews

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Memorial to Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old medical worker killed during a botched raid. Police barged into her and her boyfriend's apartment as they slept. The unarmed and recently awakened Breonna was shot six times, killing her. To date, none of the officers have been charged in Breonna's death. However, one officer was indicted for endangering her white neighbor (!). Mural painted by an unknown artist.)

One day last May, I picked up the phone to call an elderly patron from our library. Because she lives alone, I periodically called to check on her during the early days of the pandemic when many places, including the library, were closed.

That day, almost immediately after our "How are you? Fine, and you?" she blurted, "Can you believe how that policeman killed that Black man??" 

She was horrified, as was I, as were many people who saw the video of George Floyd's murder by a police officer (well, I couldn't watch it, but I read about it).

"How could he do that?", Thelma (not her real name) rhetorically asked? "He told him he couldn't breathe! How could he do something like that!?". 

I expressed similar sorrow and outrage, and then told her that George Floyd's murder was not an isolated incident. Hundreds of people are killed each year by those who are sworn to uphold the law and protect citizens - poor whites, Brown people, and especially Black people, most of them unarmed and posing no threat to anyone. 

Thelma was appalled. She was aghast. She wanted to know when this had started and why hadn't she heard about it before now? Why did it take a bystander with a cell phone, filming the incident, for it to make it onto the news if this happens regularly? Why hadn't she known about this all along?

I told her some things I've learned over the last few years about racism in America and Thelma kept asking, Why? Why are they (Black people) treated so badly?". She paused, thinking. Then she said, "I worked with a Black woman for years, one of the nicest people I've ever known. I wonder if she had people be racist to her?" 

I guaranteed Thelma that her co-worker had experienced racism her entire life. Sadly, every Black and Brown person in this country (and others - racism is not isolated to the US) live under structural racism. It's not just individual people who are overtly racist, yelling out slurs or threatening their lives. Every part of America was built upon white supremacy, and white supremacy continues to hold down people of colour. And not just hold them down, but kill them, with both a figurative and a literal knee on the neck. Whether it be from inadequate and inferior health care, by angry white people who feel it's their duty to murder Blacks, by inner city poverty and violence that is a result of white supremacy, or by trigger-happy cops, trained to see Black skin as a threat, who shoot first and ask questions later, Black lives are threatened on a daily basis. 

For too long, it's been easy for white America to turn a blind eye to the suffering of our fellow citizens. We benefit from the unearned privilege heaped upon us by our white skin. When we are the beneficiaries, it's easy to maintain the status quo. To not ask too many questions. To not look at what is happening to others. To pretend it isn't happening.

Thankfully most people now have cell phone cameras and we have social media to share these atrocities with the world. White America can no longer say, But I didn't know!

Only a fraction of the murders and other violence against Black people are recorded and shared, but it is enough that we can no longer insist these things don't happen and that we live in a post-racial America. 

With the same eloquent fire with which he wrote Tears We Cannot Stop, Michael Eric Dyson delivers an impassioned plea to white America. 

America has never been not-racist. It has never treated all people equally. We are long past due for a reckoning with race in America, as the subtitle of Mr. Dyson's Long Time Coming states.

Each chapter is addressed to a different victim of racism, beginning with Elijah McClain, a 23 year old Black man who did things like play the violin to soothe stray cats. He was anemic and, walking home from a store one evening, waved his arms to warm himself. Someone called the cops on him for "suspicious behavior"... apparently waving your arms while Black is suspicious. 

As was done to George Floyd, Elijah quickly found himself on the ground with an officer's knee on his neck. Elijah was just 5'6" tall and weighed 140 pounds. He kept crying out that he didn't have a gun, he did not pose a threat to anyone, he couldn't even kill flies. And yet police officers saw him as a threat, a threat that had to be subdued. 

After the chokehold rendered him unconscious, they called paramedics who administered a lethal dose of ketamine. A sedative on an unconscious, unarmed man who had done nothing wrong. 

Elijah's Blackness was a death sentence.

Mr. Dyson begs us to see the humanity in these victims. He brings them to life and then walks us through their deaths. It is difficult to read at times. 

As he tells their stories, he also writes about the history of race and racism in America. He begs us to put ourselves in the shoes of Black people. To both see their humanity and the injustice done to them. To open our eyes and finally start listening to the voices of people of color when they tell us why they are so afraid. When they tell us how they are oppressed. When they tell us what it's like to live under the mantle of white supremacy. What it's like to fear for your life every time you leave your home.

He begs us to consider what it's like to know "that no matter how much education or money we have, how nice a car we drive, how well behaved we are, how disarming and articulate we prove ourselves to be, at any moment we might feel a baton crushing our skull, a Taser sending a jolting message to our nervous system, a bullet penetrating our flesh. All because, and for no other reason than, we are Black."

Mr. Dyson also writes about topics like white comfort, the dangers of cancel culture, and why many people of color are unable to believe white people will finally do better and do the work to dismantle white supremacy.

Long Time Coming is a must-read for anyone wanting to learn more about racism, its history, and its present day manifestations. It is also a must-read for those who are doing anti-racism work - It is imperative that we learn from books like these, not just to see where the system harms people of colour, but how we as individuals uphold that system.

A genuine reckoning with race in America is long past due. 

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dyson uses the recent deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police as examples of systemic racism. There are the deaths of Elijah McClain, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, and Rev. Clementa Pinckney. He also recounts the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery in painful detail; and points out that it has been the advent of Smartphone video recordings that have caused America to really understand the vulnerability of Black Americans to white racism.

Dyson’s argument falters when he states that ‘cancel culture’ is a “proxy for white supremacy” without including the powerful examples he previously noted in his discussion of Black martyrs. But his most powerful argument is a simple one. Black. Lives. Matter.

[sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"As George Floyd's death suggests, the knees of the nation have been on the necks of Black America for centuries."

Long Time Coming offers a timely look at racism in the US, told in epistolary format with each chapter addressed to black victims and martyrs.

“to be Black in America is often to feel under siege, to feel, in the marrow of our bones, genuine terror.”

This book is a good opening for those looking to begin their journey of educating themselves on modern day racism. It provided clearly presented information in an accessible way, with many of the key base concepts of anti-racism. However, the book lacks a little depth and originality for me. For people who have already been made aware of the institutionalised and deep rooted racism in America, I feel that much of the information will be nothing new. I would have liked to dig a little deeper into some of the topics, because I know this author is definitely capable. Some of the chapters showed this potential, such as the one on cameras, which framed the issue through a different lens, and made it feel more engaging and innovative. The chapter on George Floyd was absolutely chilling, providing a more personal look at racism and changing up the format.

"the camera's framing of black bodies through its lens suggested how so many black bodies were framed by whiteness in a culture that disdained the very image of blackness."

I listened to the audiobook, read the by the author himself, which I think is a good way to go should you have it available to you. Michael Eric Dyson is a preacher, which comes through in the story. Therefore, hearing it audibly feels as if you are hearing speech and invigorates you with the urge to do something. However, this is also the source of one of my other complaints. It felt at times a little... preachy. It could possibly be my lack of spirituality, but I felt some sections or lines to feel as if I were in a church being preached at, which is something I just personally didn't love.

"denied first their bodies, their being; then they are denied control over the social consequences of their nonbeing; finally, they are denied the very changes that only their deaths make possible."

Overall, I think this book is a useful and informative look into racism in America for beginners. However, there weren't many new ideas presented, and some didn't go as much into depth as I was hoping for. It was definitely engaging and accessible, however I didn't love the preachiness of certain sections.

“to be Black in America is often to feel under siege, to feel, in the marrow of our bones, genuine terror.”

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Libro.fm for this ALC

Release Date: 1 December 2020

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson is an interesting and informative book about race.

Long Time Coming is a fact based portrayal of race problems in the United States. Real life examples are described from recent events as well as events over the last few years. Long Time Coming started with discussing George Floyd’s death and then went on to discuss other black deaths. I’ve read multiple books about race over the last few months and I really enjoyed how Long Time Coming discussed so many real life examples. The examples were all covered on the news, but this book discussed the main points of what happened and what the problems were.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Michael Eric Dyson and thought the narration added to the book. I really enjoy when authors narrate their own books especially nonfiction. Dyson narrating his book really shows the reader his emotion.

I recommend Long Time Coming to anyone looking to learn more about the race problems in America.

Thank you Libro.fm, St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for Long Time Coming.

Full Review Coming Soon: https://justreadingjess.wordpress.com/

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long Time Coming is a brief but important book written as a series of letters to Black people who have died at the hands of police officers. It is emotional, thought-provoking, and incisive as it addresses the history of racism in American and of police brutality directed at Black people, all through a lens of faith, hope, and the possibility for redemption.

It also specifically remembers many of the people who have so needlessly died, and recounts the circumstances of their deaths. The chapter dedicated to George Floyd was particularly gut-wrenching. Throughout the book is thoughtful, nuanced, and the author tries to recognize his own blind spots as well. My one issue is I'm not sure I fully agree with his take on cancel culture as being toxic and more detrimental than helpful. I think it certainly can be at times and the points he brings up are worth discussing, but I also think it can be an important means of power and justice for people who aren't given those things through traditional means. There's a conversation to be had for sure, but this did strike me as throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.

That said, overall I thought this was wonderful and well worth your time. I received an audio review copy from Libro.FM. All opinions are my own.

[Avani ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading about Black Movement history and equal content which has to deal with #BlackLivesMatter movement.

This one was equally good and informative, the audiobook narrated by the author gave me all the perfect feels to get into this book.

Thanks to Libro FM for the book.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile entry into everyone's anti-racist reading list. There were ideas here that shouldn't be new to anyone who has been engaging with ideas of institutional racism in America, but Dyson also presents things in fresh ways. I particularly appreciated the format, letters to Elijah McLain, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, Hadiya Pendleton, and Clementa Pinckney, that ultimately address some aspect of racism, dating back to slavery and through Jim Crow and up to this year's Black Lives Matter protests. I appreciated seeing through lines from early slave rebellions to modern protests. I also really loved the ideas Dyson brings about the way Black progress slams against the white desire to maintain the status quo.

There were a few things here that I didn't totally agree with, or that felt a little under explored. One was the chapter on cancel culture. I understand his underlying idea of how structures survive the canceling of single people, but I don't think he gets at something vital here: the use of "cancelling" as protection for members of a community.

Additionally, there is a lot of hope here. While it's nice to encounter, it also feels a bit too hopeful, but that's probably particular to my own sensibilities.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Not F-ing Around Coalition is the best part of this book. My heart was heavy after rehashing unarmed African-American murder victims. My gripe about this book is a lack of action plan for shifting power (e.g. bank black/financial empowerment or local policy reviews).

[David Wineberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are only so many ways to slice and dice racism. There is the pathetic legal trail, the shameful political trail, tragic straight history, personal memoirs and the legacy of civil rights efforts, to name the top few. Michael Eric Dyson has taken pages from each of them and sewn them into “letters” to Blacks who have been murdered, mostly by whites, in Long Time Coming.

Each chapter is addressed to a different victim: Elijah McLain, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, Hadiya Pendleton, and Clementa Pinckney. In the letter (Dear Elijah, etc.), Dyson recaps the way they died to them, and launches into a discourse on some aspect of racism from slavery and Jim Crow lynchings to Black Lives Matter. It’s a different approach, but the content is largely the same. There is no new ground broken here, but the usual sick feeling over 400 years of abuse, physical, mental and sexual, is ever-present.

Early on, in what might be the only really memorable development, Dyson explains the “law of white racist physics”: “A Black body and a white body cannot exist in the same space and same time without white permission.” “Black bodies that violate the rules of play automatically revert back to the conventions of slavery and the protocol of the plantation.” I had not seen that anywhere before.

The hero of the story, if it can be called that, is the cell phone. Dyson does not examine it very closely, but the cellphone has produced real time, definitive, unimpeachable, blow by blow documentation of the murders of ordinary Blacks, out in public. The videos show what are more like executions than arrests. They prove conclusively what Blacks have complained about since Reconstruction: police brutality on top of racial discrimination. Cell phone videos have mobilized whites as nothing ever has before. They have certainly provided much of the story Dyson presents in his book.

I found three complaints buried in the letters. Dyson bemoans the fact that Blacks are not a unified group. They have the same range of opinions and attitudes as anyone else, and do not speak with one voice. It is, of course, unreasonable to think it would ever be otherwise. He also confronts the pickiness whereby whites’ awakening to the continuing discrimination of Blacks might have the effect of reducing the work to cure it, as in the attitude of once it’s out in the open, it is therefore being dealt with. It is not, any more than #metoo has stopped sexual assaults or Congressional hearings have made Facebook a safe place, or listing Trump’s lies has stopped them. Lastly, he does not approve of cancel culture, whereby social media simply avoids mention if not denying the existence of those who offend. What with all the various opinions and attitudes, Dyson most reasonably calls for dealing with structural issues instead of canceling.
The final chapter/letter is addressed to the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was gunned down in his church by Dylan Roof, who hoped to somehow start a race war by doing so. In it, Dyson tells of his own preaching and love of God. He can’t understand how white churches condone all the hate of other races and cultures. But he is full of hope. He sees the possibility of civility and equality, and he clings to it enthusiastically. It is a relief after a litany of crimes against humanity.

David Wineberg

[Dr. Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Libro.FM for an ALC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Definitely will be rereading this in the future.

What a way to start off my 2021 reading. This book is painful and challenging in the best way possible. Long Time Coming gives you the bare minimum in the details of the history of police brutality in the USA, but the details we do get, damn. Hearing the details of Floyd's murder was heartbreaking. I want this to never happen again in this country. I think this should be required reading in schools and especially for white people. There is no hiding from how corrupt the police force is when seeing the gruesome murders committed.

Each chapter is addressed to a Black person who was killed by the police. Dyson takes us from the beginning of enslavement to modern day 2020. The mix of historical lessons and modern day examples is striking. The way we see how our history has led us to present day is needed and terrifying. The USA is the way it is now because it was built this way, acknowledging this is the only way to move forward and begin to dismantle the systems that are in place.

Extra star for Dyson's phenomenal narrating. Highly recommend the audiobook!

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dyson addresses Black martyrs Elijah McClain, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, and Rev. Clementa Pinckney in what is basically a series of essays about white supremacy, police brutality, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Among other things, he also touches on the backlash against the Hamilton musical and the 1619 project, the Gayle King interview that brought up sexual assaults after Kobe Bryant's death, cancel culture, and white comfort.

As with his Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, the writing style feels odd at times on the page, as if intended for oral presentation, as if this were more a transcription of a speech or sermon. The audiobook version may be a better presentation of the material, and I'll probably try his next book in that format.

Still, even on paper, Dyson's voice is compelling. I don't always agree with everything he says this time around -- such as a rationalization for looting during protests -- but I find his arguments powerful and persuasive, and I know I will dwell on them and use them to question my own positions and belief. And if I find myself in the wrong, I take comfort from his emphasis on fallibility, forgiveness and redemption.

[Sahitya · Rating 3 out of 5]

If we’ve been following the news for a few years and know a bit of American history with regards to white supremacy and racism, this book might not offer anything new but sometimes, we do need a reminder. The sheer repetition that I felt while listening to the audiobook is proof of how much racism permeates the so-called law and order/justice system in this country. I couldn’t bookmark a lot of the hard hitting lines because I didn’t have an ebook with me, but there were many moments where the author’s words made me emotional. Definitely worth a listen.

[Natasha Niezgoda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Eric Dyson opens the forum for great discussion when it comes to the parallels between social justice now and 60 years ago. I loved that he addressed each chapter to someone who fell victim to the brutality of racism within the U.S.

I found myself nodding so much as I read this. For white Americans, Dyson puts all the pieces together we've been learning, listening, and witnessing in a very applicable narrative. Basically, if you've been paying attention to the news and/or social media for the last decade, you'll be able to form critical thoughts about everything Dyson shares.

Here are some quotes that hit me:

“This history of race would yet again be condensed into an interaction between the cops and a young Black anybody from Black anywhere doing Black anything on any given Black night.”

"As is often the case for the Black dead, most of us got to know your name only after you were gone."

"Boys like you (Emmett Till), boys like we were, boys who are now our boys are just as vulnerable 65 years later. It is beyond absurd that the slightest perceived offense in the white mind should have such fatal consequences then or now. "

"That American prosperity was built on Black death."

"America has been trying for a couple of centuries now to reconcile its self-image as a shining beacon of democracy with the nation’s corrupted and unjust practices. We have promised time and again to change from within, motivated by some crisis, moved by some uprising, shamed by some catastrophe that wore on our consciences. But each time we bowed to the inertia brought on by half-hearted half-measures. Something feels different now, but how far are we willing to go? Are we prepared to sacrifice tradition and convention for genuine transformation? Are we ready to reckon with the disastrous social forces that have been unleashed in such unprecedented fashion? "

"We cannot deny a tragic paradox because a Black person’s killing was caught on camera, the justice that alluded them in life when they weren’t treated as a human being, could only come in death when their murder could be redressed. That is no consolation to the dead person. And only sad consolation to their loved ones."

"Our country was built on looting. Of indigenous lands and African labor."

"When leaders with fascist leanings gripe about cancel culture, they are griping about being held even slightly accountable in a democracy whose very principles they tout but effortlessly ignore. … When figures who abuse power are finally brought to justice because of the words of protests of the relatively powerless, then cancel culture may seem a good thing."

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Eric Dyson is one of our most prolific scholars presently. So it may stand to reason with dozens of published works and hundreds of articles, that it may take some measure of creativity to keep tackling these issues of race in America. Dyson is at his inventive best here when he writes each chapter in a form of a letter to some fallen martyrs. In each he writes of sorrow and failure and updates the fallen as to the current atmosphere and if anything has changed. In the prelude he writes to Elijah McClain, the young man killed in Colorado, despite pleading with the Cops he was not who they saw in their imagination but a tender hearted introverted young man who avoided any kind of conflict.

Dyson pens, “The history of race would yet again be condensed into an interaction between a young Black anybody from Black anywhere doing Black anything on any given Black night.” It is that kind of encapsulating prose that keeps this book moving at a quick clip and doing so in a way that few others can approximate. He addresses Emmett Till in chapter one and laments, “I wish I could say that your death changed things forever, But here we are, my brave young soldier of light, caught in the madness of hare once again. Long before your death, and so many times since then, we have pledged to reckon with the racial catastrophe at the heart of our democracy. And too many times we have reneged on that promise and failed to embrace our best racial future.”

It is that failure, which brings a note of sadness to these pages, but we must grapple with the reality, because what is the alternative? As he writes these letters, he takes the liberty to expound and explore ancillary issues, such as “cancel culture” and calls out its deleterious effects. He takes on police brutality or the “Blue Plague” in his letter to Eric Garner and reminds him that some few years later; Floyd would die similarly while mouthing the same words, “I can’t breathe.” And Dyson chillingly recounts George Floyd’s last minutes on Earth.

There is a letter to Hadiya Pendleton whose death “didn’t come at the hands of a cop or vigilante.” A necessary inclusion, if only to thwart the criticism that we don’t care when Black people kill each other. Utter nonsense! In the letter to Sandra Bland, he takes a minute to rif on the Black next and the White again that continues to plague us. He includes a quick dissection of the word rage with that Dyson brilliance and ingeniousness.

What Dyson is conveying to would-be-allies, “to be Black in America is often to feel under siege, to feel, in the marrow of our bones, genuine terror.” If one can truly grasp that, then maybe a true reckoning with race can take place in America.

This is another excellent work by Michael Eric Dyson, and one should take the time to read this book. A big thanks to St. Martin’s press for gifting me an ARC.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I began this book, I was very hopeful that it would be an important addition to our essential national conversation about and struggle against systemic racism. The more I read, the more disappointed Ii was. It was not until the fifth chapter that I was fully able to understand my disappointment.

The author is one of the most openly vocal and unabashed racists I have ever read.

Focusing on the hideous stories of police murders of African Americans, with a different victim for each chapter, Dyson spins a world in which all cops are killers, all Whites are and have always been focused on keeping Blacks down and all Black people are noble and heroic. What tips his hand is the chapter about the young Chicago High School student who was shot in the back while standing with some of her friends. The shooter was a young Black gang member who thought they were from a rival gang. Having ruthlessly condemned all the earlier Black deaths by cops (which certainly warrant condemnation) he immediately makes excuses for this shooter. I am sorry, but if killing innocent people is wrong (and it is, just as killing guilty people is wrong), it is always wrong. You can't have it both ways.

I also don't see how presenting the world in such stark categories of good and evil moves us toward any kind of moral or social growth. That Blacks have ben and are abused is certain. That all Whites do it equally and intentionally and all Blacks are blameless is harder to prove. I was especially struck by the fact that, as a Black man, he never mentions the terrible social issues caused by the breakdown of the Black family, something that is now also being shown in the breakdown of poorer White families.

This is not written out of White defensiveness or White fragility (the title of a book on my "To read" pile.) I believe we are at a necessary turning point in race relations and policing policy in general in our country and welcome every voice that moves us toward such constructive reconing.
I just don't think this book helps in any way.

[Anna]

This book is filled with over generalizations and hypocrisy that may sound morally “good” but certainly disregard fact. The tragic events mentioned in this book are inarguably horrible and inhumane. But it does not mean that they can be generalized to points that this author makes. Individual incidents cannot be simplified to national issues when it statistically does not make sense. Nor does it mean that the author can assume the thoughts of others wanting these things to happen. Additionally, the author calls out examples of people preaching about racism but then profiting off of book deals. Seems like Michael Eric Dyson could take a look in the mirror to see what he himself is doing.

[AudiobookFiend · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am ashamed to admit how much more I need to learn.

No book has ever instilled in me the need to hear two or more sides of the story than this.

I hope you will all read these critically important stories and find it as eye and heart opening as I did.

[Alex Knipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dr. King said he'd sometimes pass white churches and, thinking of their abysmal track record when it came to racial justice, he'd wonder, Who is their God? It is still a relevant question. How can folk say they love God and yet hate so many of God's children--Black folk, poor folk, gay and lesbian folk, trans folk, and a whole lot more? Either you love God and you hate injustice, or you hate the folk God loves and therefore you don't really know or love God. At least not the God I've come to know, not the Being I believe in, the uplifting energy and loving spirit that courses through this universe."

[David Dunlap · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, powerful book. The author assigns each chapter the name of a black person killed (mostly) by police and then addresses a letter to that person, writing about the implications of his/her death within the larger context of systemic racism in contemporary America. He also assigns each of the chapters a color: gold (prelude), black, blue, white, red, and green (postlude). The book is both engaging and thought provoking, as well as deeply moving in places. The chapters on the police (blue) , with its detailed description of George Floyd's death (this passage moved me to tears), on white appropriation of black people (white), with its interesting juxtaposition of the words 'next' and 'again', and on white comfort (also white), with its helpful metaphor of racism as a tree, were especially meaningful to me. I also appreciate the author's ability with words. Highly recommended!

[Randy Ringeisen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much appreciated this book. Professor Dyson writes in they style of letters to those black Americans who have lost their lives to senseless violence. And he does so in a way that helps even a privileged white male like myself empathize with them. I encourage every American to read this book with an open mind and more importantly an open heart. There may be differing opinions on the politics but there can be no question about the pain and hurt that these individuals - and by extension many others - have and are experiencing being black in America. This book provides a great opportunity for us whites to stop talking and start listening. And I can't help but feel like if we do so then we will have taken at least a small step closer to racial reconciliation and justice for persons of color.

[Holly Hillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written to black folks who have lost their lives due to our continual racism and white supremacy that is woven into so many facets of our country. Dyson is a preacher and his book has the cadence of an emotional sermon. It is difficult to read sometimes simply because of the raw emotion you get faced with in each chapter, but it is worth it.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Eric Dyson continues to be an important voice in the crusade against racial injustice. If you haven’t read any of his books, I’d begin with Tears We Cannot Stop. This book is basically a direct addendum.

[Isabella (isabunchofbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very, very good, very powerful, short book. The only reason it's not 5 stars is because of the chapter on cancel culture, which I felt was a bit out place and missed the mark.

[Cym · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read! Current thoughts on race, the pandemic, social problems, the future....you name it! Especially with the Chauvin trial presently occurring

[Kameel · Rating 3 out of 5]

There really wasn't anything new in this book....the author basically rehashed the current headline with the latest police killings....it was really sad for me to listen and hear some of this again. He went all the way back to the 1960s when Emmitt Till was killed unnecessarily. 50 plus years later and nothing has really changed...we are just constantly reminded.

[Vel Veeter]

A lot of Michael Eric Dyson books are generally the same, with updated topics and examples. That’s not exactly true, as sometimes he focuses on figures like Tupac, Martin Luther King, or Jay-Z in order to talk about broader issues or to focus on a very specific issue. In this book, it’s more like his other common type of writing like in Race Rules or Tears We Cannot Stop, which are almost jeremiads about contemporary topics. What’s interesting about reading the older books is to see both the evolution of the topics surrounding race in America, but also to see the evolution of Dyson as a writer and a thinker.

This book is specifically positioned after the 2020 election and spends a lot of time with the pandemic, the mass protests of summer 2020, the Trump presidency and other similar topics. There’s an interesting conversation about “cancel culture” which Dyson links specifically to white supremacy and the tools of suppression that have cancelled Black people in the past (whether literally through murder or more “cancel culture”ly like Colin Kaepernick. It’s interesting, but like all other conversations about cancel culture the free-floating nature of the definition leads to unclear meaning at times.

The structure of the book is in the form of long letters to figures like George Floyd and Emmet Till, but used to discuss contemporary events. The sadness of these letters is in the sense of continuity of the topics they cover. There’s a suggestion here that the methods change, but the ideas stay the same.

[Jack Stedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely am I able to read about history while it is still happening. This is what I found in Dyson's "Long Time Coming," written in 2020. He writes of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, while bringing in the context of the other pandemic–coronavirus. In ten, twenty, and thirty years, this is the book I will point to as the preeminent history text; the one that I'll give to my children and say, "This is what was happening when I was 25. Study it."

In the meantime, Dyson's book has been crucial to my own fledgling anti-racism work. Writing in the form of letters to Taylor, Elijiah McClain, Emmitt Till, Eric Garner, Hadiya Pendleton, and Sandra Bland, Dyson offers a poignant and profoundly personal look at the key issues of anti-racism work (each one a new letter): Combatting (and mourning) the continued death of Black people at the hands of the police (the "Blue Plague"); addressing white comfort and white theft, then and now; and understanding violence within the Black neighborhood.

I am grateful for Dyson's words, and hope to turn them into action in my own life.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard book to read.

It is framed as letters to the dead: Dear Elijah McClain, Dear Emmett Till, Dear Eric Garner, Dear Breonna Taylor, Dear Hadiya Pendleton, Dear Sandra Bland, and Dear Clementa Pickney. Prof. Dyston describes their deaths, and many others, vividly. He speaks of love, loss, the horrific history that lead to their deaths, other deaths that followed, and hope for something better. (Also Trump. He stands in for so much). Prof. Dyson makes absolutely clear that for four hundred years, our soil has been watered with the blood of Black people.

Incredibly powerful.

Except for this strange detour into a condemnation of cancel culture in the chapter dedicated to Hadiya Pendleton. Whatever the excesses of former mentors and strangers on the internet attacking people, it's just not on bar with systemic racism that repeatedly results in Black blood sinking into the soil. That really detracted. I'm glad it wasn't the last chapter.

I can't say it's a deep text. But, that strange detour aside, it's loving, raw, and elegiac. Well worth teh time.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Eric Dyson has written seven “letters” to African Americans—all but one who were killed by white people and addresses the systemic racism, hatred, ignorance, entitlement and violence that caused these horrific murders. Dyson is passionate and eloquent as he describes the circumstances of each person’s death and connects these terrible acts with the sickness in American culture that is revealed in the newly energized, but not new white supremacy movement, by the twisted and perverse connections between today’s police force and slave catchers, and by the tiresome and frustrating experience of “each gesture of Black advance being dogged by retaliation. Each Black “next” is opposed by a white “again.” I was a bit frustrated with this book. I didn’t always understand the connection between the person to whom Dyson was writing his letter and the racist indignities and brutality that Dyson chose to connect with that person’s life and death. For instance, a big part of the letter to Hadiya Pendleton centered on Dyson’s criticism of cancel culture.

[Shannaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is any time to read this book, IT IS NOW! This novel by Michael Eric Dyson provides a roadmap from racial reckoning to reconciliation. In letters written to 5 black martyrs, Dyson, a distinguished scholar of race and religion, brings to light black inequity, the struggle between the competing approaches of the "black next" versus the "white again", the expectation of reinforcing white comfort (both as a noun and a verb) and ending w/a plea for social justice & hope for the nation.

Thank you to Libro.fm for providing me with a copy of the audiobook!

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