Malcolm X is claimed to have once said: “If you want to hide something from black people, put it in a book!”
If these words had been spoken by almost anyone else, they would have been considered a serious racial insult. Close to fighting words. But coming from the minister, they were a call to action – a harsh reminder that we, as a people, are not reading enough and not learning enough. In many of his speeches, Malcolm used to chastise our negligence by reminding us that our enslaved forefathers were beaten and sometimes killed for attempting to learn to read. And that once they got the freedom to read, they took it seriously.
Sadly, although more than a half century has passed since Malcolm issued his challenge, most of us are still not reading very much. A recent Pew Research Center survey reported that a quarter of the U.S. population hadn’t read a book in the past year. It further reported that black people were reading even less than whites, and that those with college degrees were five times more likely to have read a book than those with a high school diploma or less.
These alarming findings indicate that the well-educated are more likely to continue to learn and accumulate knowledge than the uneducated, and that the resulting increase in the knowledge gap will affect black people more than others.
Despite this troubling news, there are positive signs of change. Like Brothers Also Read. The BAR is a group of Detroit area black men that have come together in literary fellowship to read, enjoy and discuss good books, and when possible, encourage others in our community to do the same. In recent months we’ve read great book like: What Truth Sounds Like, by Michael Eric Dyson, Charcoal Joe, by Walter Mosely, Political Tribes, by Amy Chua, and Winners Take All, by Anand Giridharadas.
Our format is simple. Every two months we meet to discuss our latest book. With a membership of educators, doctors, lawyers, scientists, businesspeople, writers and many other professions, most of us are located in the D, but through teleconferencing, several out-of-state members participate in our meetings. After breaking bread together, we dig into our current selection, thoroughly reviewing key themes we have identified. The lively and often impassioned discussion that follows is an important and enriching part of our process.
BAR members are avid readers, but we all have our own literary tastes and tend to stick with our favorite genres. Because of our collaboration, we end up reading some outstanding books that we might not have picked on our own.
And through our “collective intelligence,” we achieve deeper insights and extract more from our books than if we read them in isolation. We conclude our sessions by going around the meeting table, each of us rating our current book on a scale of one to ten. Through our discussion, brothers often finding themselves amending the rating they intended to give when the meeting began. That’s collective intelligence in action, a process that is both intellectually stimulating and enjoyable.
An important adjunct to our reading is community outreach, often in the form of youth mentoring, but also through participation in literary events such as book fairs, and in networking with thought leaders and opinion shapers as we did in a visit with civil rights legend and icon, U.S. Congressman John Lewis.
Reading to young people is an important component of our mission. We regularly mentor with and read to kids at Chandler Park Academy, a Detroit inner-city k12 school founded by BAR member Dr. Anthony Shipley. Individually, BAR members also read and mentor at other local schools of their choice. As much as we enjoy and look forward to our BAR meetings and book discussions, we find our reading to kids equally uplifting and inspirational.
For me as a writer, the experience of reading to kids counts a little more when I read from one of my own books. I love it when some of them have that Aha! moment and realize that books can be written by people who look like them.
I believe Malcolm would be cool with the BAR!