This week I finished:

Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity, by Donald Yacovone: I was curious about this book. I watched a few of the author’s talks. He reviewed American history textbooks and found they promoted white supremacy.

I’m glad I read it since I learned yet more about this country’s inequality. He covered a lot of history, but like the 1619 Project and White Fragility, he doesn’t understand the cause of dominance hierarchies so he keeps assigning to whiteness what skin color doesn’t cause. Racism didn’t cause slavery, slavery caused racism, and whiteness didn’t cause slavery, material conditions did.

I have to write a book on racism at some point to clarify this common misunderstanding. I have to finish Sustainability Simplified and work on its follow-up first. Sorry to make everyone wait for what will clarify a lot, but unsustainability is upstream of racism, so has to be tackled first.

Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, by Vivek Ramaswamy: I don’t know why I so often finish books after I realize there’s no point. Only after finishing this book did I realize the author ran for president. I think he means well but again didn’t understand why people who are woke act that way. He seems to think they’re a conspiracy.

The book contains a few interesting ideas, but many examples of inexperienced writing, like too many adverbs and cliches that popped me out of reading the book. The parts about his life seemed maybe genuine but not from the heart.

I just don’t think he’s thought through the issues. He’s just reacting. He falls into the trap that Calling the other side “a new religion” demeans yourself and so on.

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