Tracy Stolarski

From the minute I started reading it, I started taking notes. Things I wanted to imprint on my brain. Starting with our attempt at genocide of the Native Americans to the enslavement of Africans, our history is deep and shameful. The fact that the Nazis found our system too brutal says everything. Even they weren't willing to go as far as we did in our treatment of blacks. Its not so much taking responsibility for what our ancestors did, but acknowledging the wrongs and the impact they have had on both native Americans and blacks. Hundreds of years of being put down and treated as subhuman have created the systemic racism we have today. We can't change the past but we can shine a bright light on it. Accept that our ancestors were grossly wrong. And there is no sugar coating it. Slaves were not happy. They were not treated like family. They were abused, denigrated, beaten, worked to the bone, starved, separated from family, and on and on. And after slavery supposedly ended, it did not. Blacks were still treated like slaves and under the Jim Crow era, great injustices were done. If you had a black nanny you "loved" I don't want to hear it. That is NOT the experience of blacks in our country. We have to start acknowledging the history and actively working to change the now. If you don't believe "black lives matter" or think its just a bunch of black people looting...PLEASE read this book. It is a lot to digest and when you're done you'll wonder what to do with it all. But we must start somewhere. Thanks to the author for writing this important book. I just hope that people who NEED to read it will read it.