I'm not usually into non-fiction books, being the kind of person to prefer a fast-paced fantasy novel. Nevertheless, on my last visit to the library, I walked out holding Democracy in Black, a heavy book on the truth about the state of race and justice in America. Upon beginning to read the book my initial reaction was to feel grateful with how Eddie S. Glaude writes, he cleverly manages to communicate his purpose by intertwining facts, statistics and statements that invoked just the right amount of feeling. A little further into the book the concept of the 'value gap' is introduced and after learning a little bit about how blacks are valued significantly less in America, a looming sense of powerlessness overtook me. However, towards the …show more content…
As explained cleverly by Eddie S. Glaude, “no matter our stated principles or how much progress we think we’ve made, white people are valued more than others in this country [America]” While many argue that America is a country of freedom, a place where all people are valued equal, unfortunately, this is not the truth. America may have come a long way since the likes of slavery and apartheid but black people are still under oppression and this can be seen in countless cases of police brutality. An example used multiple times throughout the book is the death of Michael Brown, who was shot on the 9th of August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, USA. After being spotted as a suspect for a robbery, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer, Darren Wilson. The people of Ferguson were greatly outraged when officer Wilson was later not charged with murder, because they believed that it was a situation of racism, where Wilson shot Brown on unfair instinct. This example and many others included within the book slowly began to break down my courage in humanity. It shows just how deep the value gap in America runs, and after all, as Eddie S. Glaude states; "I doubt the same fatal shots would have been fired if the suspect had been white." Eddie S. Glaude believes that one of the main reasons that the value gap still exists is because of deep rooted racial habits that the citizens of America uphold. In his own words: "Racial habits are the ways we live the belief that white people are more valued than others. They are the things we do, without thinking, that sustain the value gap. They range from the snap judgments we make about black people… to the ways we think about race that we get from living with our respective communities." Women