Reckoning With Race: An Unfinished Journey
Frederick Allen
HarperCollins
In Reckoning with Race, award-winning journalist and former CNN commentator Rick Allen explores his ongoing efforts to understand the struggle of black and white Americans to navigate a shared history at once wicked and intimate, full of love and hate, as they seek to level an uneven playing field.
Allen examines issues from the era of Reconstruction through Jim Crow and into today’s contentious debates over redlining, reparations, and critical race theory. He explores the symbolism of Confederate flags, the controversy over Uncle Remus, the election of Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and the tragic case of the Atlanta Child Murders.
Throughout Reckoning with Race, Allen is candid about his own shortcomings as a white native Northerner learning gradually about the complexities of race in his adoptive South. The essays highlight his continuing journey toward understanding the forces that both hinder and promote equality and harmony between the races.
Foreward by Andrew Young.