Book Review: Taboo 10 Facts [You Can't Talk About]
Updated: Feb 27, 2022
Kathleen Wells - Having a bird's eye view is necessary when adequately assessing the success or failure of anything as well as having the passage of significant time in order to have sufficient data and sufficient anecdotes to be accurate in our understanding.
The timing of this book, Taboo, fulfills this requirement. Approximately 53 years have passed since Bloody Sunday, that day in Selma Alabama where police attacks against civil rights marches made national news. One of the things I consistently maintain on my radio show is that the data tells the story.
In Taboo, Professor Reilly uses data to support the central theme of his book that what "everybody knows" about racism and sexism is utterly inaccurate.
Reilly points out that the three central themes of left-wing activists, including Black Lives Matter, is the Continuing Oppressive Narrative that 1) American police are unfairly targeting Black folks and murdering them at will, 2) gaps in performance between groups reflect racism, and 3) and that racism hasn't declined in the U.S. but merely changed form. This is the theme of Michelle Alexander's book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration which is wrong when put to scrutiny. Using quantitative analysis, Reilly proves the utter nonsense of the claims made by social justice activists.
For instance, in 2015 exactly seventeen unarmed Black people were killed by white cops. And, as I say often, what happens to seventeen Black folks in America is not the national interest of Black Americans. In fact, Black Americans are less likely to be shot by police than American whites, the data says.
The national interest of Black America is for millions of Black men to possess real wealth in order to provide for and head their households.
Reilly makes the provocative statement that racism has nothing to do with the major problems faced by Black Americans today, but rather fatherless and broken homes are. I agree with Reilly and say that regularly on my radio show. The accuracy of Reilly's statement is easily supported by the data and our history.
During slavery, 3/4ths of Black children had the same mother and father. And, in 1938, only 11 percent of Black children were born to unwed mothers. Yet, social justice activists routinely state that broken Black families are the legacy of slavery.
Too many Black Americans have fallen victim to false narratives, thanks to the mainstream media in both print and TV. The definition of racism needs to be re-examined. I think Professor Reilly would agree with me. Black Americans must start to get it right and reading Taboo is a good start in that effort. Conversely, Reilly shows how much of the so-called Alt-Rights narratives and understandings are wrong-headed. Taboo is a book that will enable Americans to come to a better understanding as to how our culture has shifted, with the help of mainstream media, and how this shift is not serving the best interest of America nor Americans. Read this book!