All three books are not only sad and satiric, but also all too indicative of the systemic racism the continues to permeate our white privileged society today.
Charles Farley |
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If you think that systemic racism doesn't exist, read these three novels: The Spook Who Sat By The Door, published in 1969 and made into a movie in 1973, tells the fictitious story of Dan Freeman, the first black CIA officer, recruited some time in the 1960s as the agency's token Black. What he encounters as America's first Black spy (aka "spook") and how he responds seems only too real, particularly when compared to two other more recent novels. American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson, relates how Marie Mitchell, one of the FBI's first Black and female intelligence agents is used by the white power structure in this thriller set in the 1980s and 90s in New York, Martinique, and West Africa. Not much different than Dan Freeman 20 years earlier, as it turns out. And sadly, not much different than how Darren Vender is treated in Mateo Askaripour's Black Buck, set in present-day New York City, where our hero finds himself as the only Black employee in a hep, new startup that sells questionable mentoring services to rich people and organizations worldwide. All three books are not only sad and satiric, but also all too indicative of the systemic racism the continues to permeate our white privileged society today.
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AuthorCharles Farley is an author who lives and writes in Huntsville, Alabama. Archive
January 2023
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