lakecake's review against another edition
2.0
I received a copy of this book for free from Goodreads Giveaways.
I was so hype for this book. I wanted to love this book. It had everything I thought would be great. AND THEN I saw the way that Kohn had treated Aminatou Sow and it all fell apart. I was about two chapters in when that broke and then it was just impossible for me to feel the same way about this book. To write a book with the central conceit that "connection will save us" and then to not have connected with people quoted in the book is just....privileged is the word that comes to mind. I know that word is charged, and I know that word has a lot of problems but that's exactly what this is. Preach connection to me to solve our problems, but then cause more problems by quoting people potentially incorrectly, don't connect with them to check, and then blame the industry and not yourself when it comes to being called out on that. No thanks. The advice is solid, but it's feels like just another person trying to cash in on the "woke" train at this point. I'm not here for it.
I do think this could be a solid starter book for your liberal, white Aunt Sharon who has NO IDEA how to even BEGIN a journey to understanding with most people who aren't just like her. So it has value in that sense, and that's my two stars.
I was so hype for this book. I wanted to love this book. It had everything I thought would be great. AND THEN I saw the way that Kohn had treated Aminatou Sow and it all fell apart. I was about two chapters in when that broke and then it was just impossible for me to feel the same way about this book. To write a book with the central conceit that "connection will save us" and then to not have connected with people quoted in the book is just....privileged is the word that comes to mind. I know that word is charged, and I know that word has a lot of problems but that's exactly what this is. Preach connection to me to solve our problems, but then cause more problems by quoting people potentially incorrectly, don't connect with them to check, and then blame the industry and not yourself when it comes to being called out on that. No thanks. The advice is solid, but it's feels like just another person trying to cash in on the "woke" train at this point. I'm not here for it.
I do think this could be a solid starter book for your liberal, white Aunt Sharon who has NO IDEA how to even BEGIN a journey to understanding with most people who aren't just like her. So it has value in that sense, and that's my two stars.
jmckendry's review against another edition
5.0
Everyone needs to read this book. Liberal or Conservative, Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Jew, straight or gay, neo-nazi or terrorist or pacifist, we all need this book. Spread this like our humanity depends on it, because it does. The opposite of hate is not love, it is connection.
As I've read some other review for this book, I noticed people claiming that Sally Kohn didn't fact check or that she misquoted people… honestly, I didn't research whether those claims were accurate or not, but even if she misquoted people or didn't fully fact check, it doesn't change the fact that hate is eating away at our humanity, and it doesn't change her discovery on how we can improve ourselves and our world by creating connection spaces. Even if the book isn't entirely accurate, the overall point of it is so important for us all. It's a great read, either way.
As I've read some other review for this book, I noticed people claiming that Sally Kohn didn't fact check or that she misquoted people… honestly, I didn't research whether those claims were accurate or not, but even if she misquoted people or didn't fully fact check, it doesn't change the fact that hate is eating away at our humanity, and it doesn't change her discovery on how we can improve ourselves and our world by creating connection spaces. Even if the book isn't entirely accurate, the overall point of it is so important for us all. It's a great read, either way.
driedfrogpills's review against another edition
1.0
When you are writing a book discussing hate, bias and prejudice, don't misuse other people's words to make yourself sound better. Especially if that person is black and you are white. In all honesty I don't think it was done maliciously, but instead illustrates how privilege blinds us. This in no way excuses Kohn from not checking her privilege and verifying her facts.
I had hoped this book would break new ground or discuss in-depth methods for recognizing and dealing with our hate, but it reads like the "woke white woman realizing there are social issues around her and she has thoughts!!!!" stereotype. At times, it feels like the bare minimum of research into very complex issues went into this book. The controversy surrounding two quotes makes the rest of the book's content, some of which involving interviews with people from other backgrounds, into question as to the validity of those engagements. Also, using the experiences of one or two interviewees to illustrate the experiences of their people seems to me to be an incredibly narrow way to accurately reflect those experiences. It doesn't help that half of the book reads like a memoir than an examination of the nature of hate.
Kohn had some good thoughts, especially about connection. However, she doesn't go deep enough into her idea to generate any conductive discussion, and her sloppy handling of her source material overshadows any benefit this book may have had otherwise.
I had hoped this book would break new ground or discuss in-depth methods for recognizing and dealing with our hate, but it reads like the "woke white woman realizing there are social issues around her and she has thoughts!!!!" stereotype. At times, it feels like the bare minimum of research into very complex issues went into this book. The controversy surrounding two quotes makes the rest of the book's content, some of which involving interviews with people from other backgrounds, into question as to the validity of those engagements. Also, using the experiences of one or two interviewees to illustrate the experiences of their people seems to me to be an incredibly narrow way to accurately reflect those experiences. It doesn't help that half of the book reads like a memoir than an examination of the nature of hate.
Kohn had some good thoughts, especially about connection. However, she doesn't go deep enough into her idea to generate any conductive discussion, and her sloppy handling of her source material overshadows any benefit this book may have had otherwise.
emflibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing!!! Makes you think. Makes you question. Forces you to do some self reflection. None of the above which are easy to do. Highly recommend.
kbratten's review against another edition
2.0
Some good points and thought provoking questions, but the half advice/half personal anecdote format made this extremely self-indulgent /self-congratulatory. I've tried thinking about what would have been a better format, and I think having it be more clinical, based on research than personal experience. As it was, it came off as a liberal person patting herself on the back for being open minded. I believe the author has good intentions at building bridges, but she did not succeed.
bookanonjeff's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting Yet Flawed. To be clear upfront, I am writing this review after having just finished reading this book on my Kindle Fire HD 8 (and more specifically having its text to voice feature read to me while I achievement grind in Age of Empires HD) and having seen some of the controversy of this book when coming here to leave my review.
The book itself showed promise, but how much it delivered on that promise largely depends on how much State force you find acceptable. Her points early in the text (the first chapters) about hate being mitigated by genuine community (though she never once used such a term) were enlightening and true in my own observations. But then, after covering the Rwandan Genocide, she begins advocating ever more State force in "addressing" hatred, contradicting her earlier words about voluntary community being the solution.
Overall, the text here is worthy of consideration yet has several flaws that deal it at least body blows in its recommendations, and is thus recommended yet independent consideration about the points it raises is also recommended. And thus my star ranking.
Addressing a bit of the controversy:
1) Assuming Kohn did in fact misquote at least two sources, that is a serious lack of judgment and care on both her part and everyone at her publisher involved in the printing process. This was not a self-published book, where such issues may have at least some level of understanding and forgiveness, but was instead a book published by a traditional yet small publisher, one who should have at minimum contacted cited sources and verified the veracity of the quotes used and the context in which they were used. As an extremely small independent publisher myself, this is one basic thing I would do if I ever published a nonfiction book, and no one would have to tell me to do it.
2) As wrong as the above is - and again, I find it *very* disturbing and extremely wrong - it is *just* as wrong to leave a review about a book that you have not personally read. For the purposes of review, it really doesn't matter how one acquires the book so long as the book is at least genuinely attempted before leaving the review. (For purposes of ethics or law, obviously how one acquires the text matters.) I have little issue with the reviewer who at least attempts to read a text, throws it away in disgust, and lambasts the book in reviews detailing exactly why it was thrown away in disgust. I may disagree with it, but that at least is an honest reaction to the act of reading the text itself, and thus it at least is fair. I have major issues with a person leaving a review lambasting a book they have never attempted to read and thus attempting to cause harm to the author simply over a perceived slight rather than being honestly critical of the work in question. Again, leaving a review without actually reading the text (or more generally, using the product being reviewed) is *wrong* at least as much as Kohn and Algonquin Books were wrong in their quote issues.
But leaving this review back on the text in question: Kohn repeatedly makes the case that when we reach across the gap to try to communicate honestly yet civilly with the "other" that we begin to understand them, and in that understanding hatred is destroyed. Perhaps her detractors could learn a lesson from reading how she arrived at this conclusion as related in this very book.
The book itself showed promise, but how much it delivered on that promise largely depends on how much State force you find acceptable. Her points early in the text (the first chapters) about hate being mitigated by genuine community (though she never once used such a term) were enlightening and true in my own observations. But then, after covering the Rwandan Genocide, she begins advocating ever more State force in "addressing" hatred, contradicting her earlier words about voluntary community being the solution.
Overall, the text here is worthy of consideration yet has several flaws that deal it at least body blows in its recommendations, and is thus recommended yet independent consideration about the points it raises is also recommended. And thus my star ranking.
Addressing a bit of the controversy:
1) Assuming Kohn did in fact misquote at least two sources, that is a serious lack of judgment and care on both her part and everyone at her publisher involved in the printing process. This was not a self-published book, where such issues may have at least some level of understanding and forgiveness, but was instead a book published by a traditional yet small publisher, one who should have at minimum contacted cited sources and verified the veracity of the quotes used and the context in which they were used. As an extremely small independent publisher myself, this is one basic thing I would do if I ever published a nonfiction book, and no one would have to tell me to do it.
2) As wrong as the above is - and again, I find it *very* disturbing and extremely wrong - it is *just* as wrong to leave a review about a book that you have not personally read. For the purposes of review, it really doesn't matter how one acquires the book so long as the book is at least genuinely attempted before leaving the review. (For purposes of ethics or law, obviously how one acquires the text matters.) I have little issue with the reviewer who at least attempts to read a text, throws it away in disgust, and lambasts the book in reviews detailing exactly why it was thrown away in disgust. I may disagree with it, but that at least is an honest reaction to the act of reading the text itself, and thus it at least is fair. I have major issues with a person leaving a review lambasting a book they have never attempted to read and thus attempting to cause harm to the author simply over a perceived slight rather than being honestly critical of the work in question. Again, leaving a review without actually reading the text (or more generally, using the product being reviewed) is *wrong* at least as much as Kohn and Algonquin Books were wrong in their quote issues.
But leaving this review back on the text in question: Kohn repeatedly makes the case that when we reach across the gap to try to communicate honestly yet civilly with the "other" that we begin to understand them, and in that understanding hatred is destroyed. Perhaps her detractors could learn a lesson from reading how she arrived at this conclusion as related in this very book.
emiged's review against another edition
3.0
"The bad news is: we all hate. All of us. That includes me--and I'm afraid it also includes you. I promise that although this is a book about hate, it will end on an uplifting and positive note. But we first have to face the hard truth. In different ways and to different degrees, consciously or unconsciously, all of us, in one way or another, sometimes treat other individuals and entire groups of human beings as though they are fundamentally less deserving than we are." (5)
****
"Attribution errors and essentialism are like blinders, which stop us from truly seeing others accurately and fairly scrutinizing ourselves." (31)
****
"Before I went to the Middle East, I brushed up on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also read social science on the dynamics of what are called 'intractable conflicts.' In particular, I delved into the concept of competitive victimhood...and discovered the work of Israeli psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal. 'Very often both sides believe that they are the victim,' writes Bar-Tal with his colleagues in a paper on competitive victimhood. 'The struggle over the status of the sole victim can enhance aggressiveness and lead to the employment of harsher means against the rival out-group.' It's related to scapegoating, where one group perceives that its problems are the result of the other group, even if the group being scapegoated is in fact the group that is suffering more than and even because of the other.
"This is how we have a dynamic in the United States today in which Christian conservatives claim they are being oppressed by the nation's incremental progress toward queer rights, despite the reality that, over decades, it was the disproportionate power and influence of those same Christian conservatives that kept basic rights from queer people. And that actually still do--it is legal for same-sex couples to marry but still also legal in most states to fire someone for being gay or gender-nonconforming. Yet the sense of competitive victimhood keeps the tension brewing--including, yes, smears from the gay community against Christian conservatives. Each side literally makes the other side suffer more to express anger over how much their side is suffering. Which is ridiculous, but there you have it." (59)
****
"What makes competitive victimhood so pernicious in intractable conflicts and in general is that whatever side you're on, your arguments for being the worse victim and blaming the other side seem so rational. Of course, hate isn't rational, but it feels rational, and therefore it feels justified. That's why we keep doing it. It's not that we're irrational; our hate is a rational reaction to our often one-sided and deeply biased perceptions." (62)
****
"The vast majority of people who hate--even extremists who commit violence in the name of hate--are ordinary people who also love and worry and fear and care, and who can point to a number of what to them feel like well-justified reasons for their hatred. We don't just hate for the sake of hating. We hate because we feel under siege, and hate is our response. That's a s true of terrorists as it is of bullies." (68)
****
"Our identities aren't the problem. The choices we make around those identities--the meanings that we and society give them--that's the problem." (117)
****
"White families don't have twice as much wealth on average today as black families because white people are smarter or harder-working but because of slavery and segregation and discrimination, through with generations of white people exploited black people for their sole gain. And, yeah, their great-great-grandkids don't own slaves or believe in separate water fountains, but they're still born at the top of the pile because of their race. It's not necessarily that their parents and grandparents handed them places on top because of their disproportionate wealth or education or good jobs, though that certainly happens for some. But the shape of the hill, and who is generally on top versus on the bottom, has been contoured by that bias, which, in turn, actively shapes our lives today.
"The people who aren't at the bottom of the dog pile think they got where they are not because of history or luck but because they deserve to be there. And the irony is that these are the people who believe the other 'deep story ' myth, the one about the orderly line. The people in the middle and top of the dog pile often believe life is an orderly line--when in fact, that's all the people at the bottom are asking for. The people at the bottom are desperate for the world to work the way that the people at the top insist it already does, for opportunity to be truly equal and for achievement to be merit-based. It seems we can all agree on the ideal. What we disagree on is whether we've already achieved it or not." (143-144)
****
"Such mass atrocities can happen only because many fundamentally decent human beings participate and many other decent people fail to intervene. When we take that in, we realize that genocide is terrifying not only because it happened to them but because it could also happen to us--and that we could just as easily be the victims or the perpetrators." (160)
****
"...the way to stop us from discriminating against or hating various identity groups isn't actually to pretend that those different identities don't exist. The lesson is not that we need some people who feel like outsiders or who haven't fully integrated their sense of cultural affiliation into a seamless whole--indeed, having low bicultural identity integration is associated with greater rates of anxiety and depression. The lesson is that we need to combat negative otherizing without forcing assimilation or conformity. We can still have groups--the problem is when they are pitted against one another as dominant versus inferior." (178)
****
"We must foster group bonds not by imposing a homogenous identity on everyone but by building a sense of shared humanity that not only respects but actively appreciate everyone's differences, especially because those differences help us resist dangerous groupthink banisters." (189)
****
"What I've learned is that all hate is premised on a mind-set of otherizing. The sanctimonious pedestal of superiority on which we all put ourselves while we systematically dehumanize others is the essential root of hate. In big and small ways, consciously and unconsciously, we constantly filter the world around us through the lens of our explicit and implicit biases. This abets rationalization and looking the other way about widespread injustices, such as dismissing entire communities that don't have access to health care, or entire nations locked in civil war because they fall outside the sphere of our moral concern.
"We think we're good people, but we don't see how that sphere of moral concern is constricted by hate, by the history and habits and culture of who matters and who doesn't in our society, which we have all bought into, whether we mean to or not. So we shake our heads about excessive corporate greed and we shake our fists against neo-Nazis marching in the streets, but not enough of us admit that they're reflections of the society we've all created, let alone acknowledge that they're reflections of ourselves." (226-227)
****
"Attribution errors and essentialism are like blinders, which stop us from truly seeing others accurately and fairly scrutinizing ourselves." (31)
****
"Before I went to the Middle East, I brushed up on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also read social science on the dynamics of what are called 'intractable conflicts.' In particular, I delved into the concept of competitive victimhood...and discovered the work of Israeli psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal. 'Very often both sides believe that they are the victim,' writes Bar-Tal with his colleagues in a paper on competitive victimhood. 'The struggle over the status of the sole victim can enhance aggressiveness and lead to the employment of harsher means against the rival out-group.' It's related to scapegoating, where one group perceives that its problems are the result of the other group, even if the group being scapegoated is in fact the group that is suffering more than and even because of the other.
"This is how we have a dynamic in the United States today in which Christian conservatives claim they are being oppressed by the nation's incremental progress toward queer rights, despite the reality that, over decades, it was the disproportionate power and influence of those same Christian conservatives that kept basic rights from queer people. And that actually still do--it is legal for same-sex couples to marry but still also legal in most states to fire someone for being gay or gender-nonconforming. Yet the sense of competitive victimhood keeps the tension brewing--including, yes, smears from the gay community against Christian conservatives. Each side literally makes the other side suffer more to express anger over how much their side is suffering. Which is ridiculous, but there you have it." (59)
****
"What makes competitive victimhood so pernicious in intractable conflicts and in general is that whatever side you're on, your arguments for being the worse victim and blaming the other side seem so rational. Of course, hate isn't rational, but it feels rational, and therefore it feels justified. That's why we keep doing it. It's not that we're irrational; our hate is a rational reaction to our often one-sided and deeply biased perceptions." (62)
****
"The vast majority of people who hate--even extremists who commit violence in the name of hate--are ordinary people who also love and worry and fear and care, and who can point to a number of what to them feel like well-justified reasons for their hatred. We don't just hate for the sake of hating. We hate because we feel under siege, and hate is our response. That's a s true of terrorists as it is of bullies." (68)
****
"Our identities aren't the problem. The choices we make around those identities--the meanings that we and society give them--that's the problem." (117)
****
"White families don't have twice as much wealth on average today as black families because white people are smarter or harder-working but because of slavery and segregation and discrimination, through with generations of white people exploited black people for their sole gain. And, yeah, their great-great-grandkids don't own slaves or believe in separate water fountains, but they're still born at the top of the pile because of their race. It's not necessarily that their parents and grandparents handed them places on top because of their disproportionate wealth or education or good jobs, though that certainly happens for some. But the shape of the hill, and who is generally on top versus on the bottom, has been contoured by that bias, which, in turn, actively shapes our lives today.
"The people who aren't at the bottom of the dog pile think they got where they are not because of history or luck but because they deserve to be there. And the irony is that these are the people who believe the other 'deep story ' myth, the one about the orderly line. The people in the middle and top of the dog pile often believe life is an orderly line--when in fact, that's all the people at the bottom are asking for. The people at the bottom are desperate for the world to work the way that the people at the top insist it already does, for opportunity to be truly equal and for achievement to be merit-based. It seems we can all agree on the ideal. What we disagree on is whether we've already achieved it or not." (143-144)
****
"Such mass atrocities can happen only because many fundamentally decent human beings participate and many other decent people fail to intervene. When we take that in, we realize that genocide is terrifying not only because it happened to them but because it could also happen to us--and that we could just as easily be the victims or the perpetrators." (160)
****
"...the way to stop us from discriminating against or hating various identity groups isn't actually to pretend that those different identities don't exist. The lesson is not that we need some people who feel like outsiders or who haven't fully integrated their sense of cultural affiliation into a seamless whole--indeed, having low bicultural identity integration is associated with greater rates of anxiety and depression. The lesson is that we need to combat negative otherizing without forcing assimilation or conformity. We can still have groups--the problem is when they are pitted against one another as dominant versus inferior." (178)
****
"We must foster group bonds not by imposing a homogenous identity on everyone but by building a sense of shared humanity that not only respects but actively appreciate everyone's differences, especially because those differences help us resist dangerous groupthink banisters." (189)
****
"What I've learned is that all hate is premised on a mind-set of otherizing. The sanctimonious pedestal of superiority on which we all put ourselves while we systematically dehumanize others is the essential root of hate. In big and small ways, consciously and unconsciously, we constantly filter the world around us through the lens of our explicit and implicit biases. This abets rationalization and looking the other way about widespread injustices, such as dismissing entire communities that don't have access to health care, or entire nations locked in civil war because they fall outside the sphere of our moral concern.
"We think we're good people, but we don't see how that sphere of moral concern is constricted by hate, by the history and habits and culture of who matters and who doesn't in our society, which we have all bought into, whether we mean to or not. So we shake our heads about excessive corporate greed and we shake our fists against neo-Nazis marching in the streets, but not enough of us admit that they're reflections of the society we've all created, let alone acknowledge that they're reflections of ourselves." (226-227)