I will come right out of the gate and say I approached this book the wrong way. I thought it was going to be more of a straight-through read, and it’s definitely something to read in chunks instead. Otherwise everything gets overwhelming and your brain just…shuts down. So perhaps for someone who didn’t try to power through it in a few weeks, or maybe even for someone who listened to the audiobook in its entirety, this book wasn’t…Boring AF. But I definitely found myself wandering away mentally, right in the middle of sentences. Somehow, not even Harriot’s sarcastic tone allowed for any element of warmth; instead, it felt like yet another dry history book. And while books like How the Word is Passed or The 1619 Project or Four Hundred Souls have gorgeous text to fall back on, Harriot’s straightforward style of storytelling gets old, fast. So maybe I wasn’t bored. But I still had trouble sticking around during some of the less interesting parts of the story. You decide.
BUT! I’m really glad I read it. It had a lot of really interesting information, and that was what kept me going even when my brain tried to stop me. I never actually did technically finish the book. I jumped ahead, read a few supplements here and a chapter there, and then went back to read what I had skipped. It was no easier to latch onto the second time around. I even bought the audiobook and listened to some of it, but I drifted away listening as well. I have no idea what was happening with me and this book, but it’s one I recommend to folks who are looking to learn more about Stuff We Didn’t Learn In School, in what I would guess is an approachable way.
Black AF History is an ambitious text that covers the presence of Black folks in this land known as America from the beginning. Michael Harriot, who has posted many interesting threads on social media and written dozens of articles for The Root, uses his cutting style to put together a true textbook of people, places, and events of concern to not just the United States, but the Caribbean and other parts of the double continent. And when I say textbook, I mean it: there are supplemental sections on people like Mansa Musa and Esteban; there are sarcastic and sardonic “End Unit Quizzes”. There are endnotes and indices galore. This is a textbook. And each chapter is thohohorough. You will get nearly every detail of each event Harriot wants to tell you about, and that might be to his benefit if you actually care…but I will admit that sometimes I… did not. His personal stories are there to supplement and frame a lot of the history he wants to tell, but sometimes they go on a little long. This is fine for a certain kind of reader. But even my character-focused mind could not keep holding on, even as he told fun stories of his grandmother, cousins, extended family, and friends. I understood where he was coming from with most of the stories, but good lord, some could have been a few pages shorter.
The most important element of this book is what it says on the tin: this history is certainly Black As Fuck. There are stories of people I knew about, people I’d only heard small details about, and people who never even crossed my radar. There were thorough examinations of white supremacy and it’s connection to everything in American History, and clear presentations of how it affected Black life throughout our presence here. He tells the story of the Virginia Company in a way that truly examines their total incompetence when it came to surviving in a place that wasn’t designed for them, and how Black farmers and engineers from the Western coast of Africa was one of the few things that helped settler colonialism survive in the colonies when the people indigenous to the land had realized they would not have a good relationship with the white settlers. He talks about early uprisings by enslaved Africans and their descendants, and how the concept of race was truly developed in this country. He talks mostly about the 18th and 19th centuries, leaving the later parts of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and modern issues to a few chapters. Which is understandable! Most of the stuff we were never made aware of is stuff that happened during the eras of enslavement, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. That’s when the most horrific elements of whiteness pressed themselves against the Black residents of this continent, and made the systemic rules that we still have to live by today. It’s an angering, enlightening book, and if you’re seeking a way to learn about Black History in the Americas, it’s a good place to start.
Just be prepared: your brain might not be able to handle it.