In this clear-eyed and compassionate study, Robinson (Coal to Cream), Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
for the Washington Post, marshals persuasive evidence that the African-American population has splintered
into four distinct and increasingly disconnected entities: a small elite with enormous influence,
a mainstream middle-class majority, a newly emergent group of recent immigrants from Africa and the
Caribbean, and an abandoned minority "with less hope of escaping poverty than at any time since
Reconstruction's end." Drawing on census records, polling data, sociological studies, and his
own experiences growing up in a segregated South Carolina college town during the 1950s, Robinson
explores 140 years of black history in America, focusing on how the civil rights movement, desegregation,
and affirmative action contributed to the fragmentation.

Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Washington Post, presents an interesting thesis on make up of Black America at the same time bring the reader up to date on the last 60 years regarding race relations. One thing becomes clear in this book; race in this country is no longer just a matter of black & white. The growth of other minority groups, the recent immigration of families from Asia, Central America, Mexico and the Middle East, have made the issue more complex. There is also the matter of class to deal with. Class in America is a real issue, sometimes it is straight forward and other times it is confused or mixed up with race. If you want to understand where we may be headed socially as a country in the next 25 years read this book. ( )

Eugene Robinson takes a very complex topic and organizes for understanding. He provides the reader a logical analysis of African-Americans and the factors or variables that have contributed to their overall progress and status. However, while he does a masterful job sharing the characteristics of the three groups that have overcome poverty, he offers little or nothing by way of policies as it relates to the fourth group of African-Americans who are poor or "abandoned" as he describes them. The books ends with you wanting more relative to how to address the plight of the poor. ( )

Thorough and insightful. I appreciated the broader view of what is a very complex issue. While I don't think the book completely exhausts all the challenges, it did a great job of objectively covering many of the struggles we face in modern America. ( )

Eugene Robinson is perhaps best-known as a columnist for the Washington Post, where he comments on the national scene, particularly politics, from his post in the nation’s capital. But he is also an author of several books. This, his latest, is an examination of what he describes as the end of what had been a more or less monolithic Afro-American community.

In Robinson’s view, previous to the mid-60s, Jim Crow laws in the South and de facto segregation in housing and discrimination in employment in the North resulted in a more or less communal experience among blacks, and forged an identity and unity that allowed them to survive and to struggle for their rights. But the passing of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid and late 60’s opened up possibilities in housing and employment for blacks that had not existed. In addition, reform of immigration laws saw a wave of black immigration from the Caribbean and Africa. These critical events, according to Robinson, resulted in the splintering of black Americans into four distinct groups: The Transcendent--those with wealth and power; the Mainstream--middle-and upper middle class blacks, the majority; the Emergent--two subgroups, those who are biracial and those who are the new immigrants; the Abandoned--those who live in a cycle of poverty and its attendant ills.

To make his case, Robinson uses an impressive and eye-opening array of statistics about black America that had me amazed. “Everybody knows” about the Abandoned and their problems. But how many people really know about the other groups? I had no idea just how large the black middle class was, no idea of the extent of the Transcendent (of whom Barack Obama is merely the most obvious). While I knew that there was immigration from African countries and the Caribbean, I had no idea of the extent--or the kind of people who were immigrating; they are among the best educated of all immigrant groups. It goes on and on.

I found it highly informative and utterly fascinating, doubly so because of having read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns immediately before starting Robinson’s book.

But the end of the book somewhat weakens what has gone before. Robinson seems to shift focus, as if he started out to do one thing with the book and wound up doing something else. He ends with serious concern about the Abandoned, which is natural enough--but has very little new to offer. As he himself says, “everyone knows” about these problems, “everyone knows” that Something Has To Be Done. But what? Robinson does not come up with any new ideas, just generalities that “everyone knows.”

That was disappointing, but should not deter anyone from reading this excellent, informative book. Highly recommended. ( )