We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,564,627.82 | Books Available: 796,186 | Members Online: 227

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Dark Witness

Dark Witness
Author: Ralph Wiley

"You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. . . . Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped." — --Mark Twain — Like his literary forebears--Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Ralph Elliso... more »n, and yes, Mark Twain--Ralph Wiley has some information to purvey. The news is not always good. But with Wiley's electrifying take on subjects from the black intelligentsia to The Bell Curve to O.J., Dark Witness is certain to outrage, entertain, and ultimately enlighten.

The titles of his chapters say it all: "One Day, When I Was On Exhibit." "Why Black People Are So Stupid." "Why Niggers Steal, Are Violent, and Stay on Welfare." "Where Negroes Got All That Rhythm." "Whoopi-Do and Hughes 2." "Sin and Juice." Behind the explosive flash of these phrases simmer the intense honesty and searing self-reflection of a man burning for justice. Taking to heart Douglass's words that "it is not light that is needed, but fire...not the gentle shower, but thunder," Wiley, heir to the long tradition of "writer as activist," examines some of the most hotly debated issues of black life today and turns them inside out:

Affirmative action: "Many times, it seemed the 'worst' black candidates were chosen in hopes that they would fail. People talked about increased productivity, but often they meant in the personal sense. When others succeeded or produced, they felt lessened--it is human nature to feel this, but for a 'white' man to feel inferior to a 'black' in America causes instant insanity."

O.J. Simpson: "Now I've heard it said that The Juice, owing to his choices in women and habitat, wanted to be 'white.' A bigger crock of crap I've never heard. Juice made 'whites' feel comfortable with his kind of 'blackness.' He didn't want to be 'white.' He wanted to be privileged. And he was."

Huck Finn: "There's a Mark Twain Middle School not three miles from my base camp. An administrative aide there, a 'black' man, had wanted to delete any reference to that archaic/contemporary word 'nigger' from Twain's book--the one place where such copious use of the word in society was first best put in perspective, where it was used to describe a condition, where it reflected on the speaker, not the subject. There is not one usage of nigger in Huck Finn that I consider inauthentic and I am hard to please that way."

No one writing today has the incisiveness, the fire to dissect the world the way Ralph Wiley does. In Dark Witness he proves once again that he is one the most gifted writers chronicling life in the crucible that is late-twentieth century America.

From the Hardcover edition.

ISBN-13: 9780517301197
ISBN-10: 0517301199
Publication Date: 4/7/1998
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Dark Witness

Loading...