Author Description

The two authors of this book (one of them is a black social worker and the author of the Handsworth report) have managed to get black people to talk, to 'tell it like it is'. The major part of this book is devoted to careful description of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the kind of discrimination nearly every one of us exercises. We even look at black people differently, as if they were freaks. In this description is laid bare the way in which the barriers of mutual incomprehension have come to be. The last section of the book is devoted to the way out. Integration is discussed and shown for what it is: the desire to convert black men into white men. Black power, different in mind but as strong as it's U.S. counterpart, is seen as a humanizing necessity, not only for blacks but for whites too. Political conflict and struggle are essential if we are to change ourselves and our society sufficiently to see not only black men as human but to make ourselves human too. The appendix by Dr Hashmi on the psychology of racial prejudice shows how those who are finally less than human are those infected by the disease.