Review by Eleanor J. Bader
Joel Edward Goza, a white professor of ethics at Simmons College, believes that the United States cannot become a truly interracial democracy unless white people find ways to “repent, repay, and repair” the damage caused by slavery, Jim Crow, and the continued economic and social subjugation of Black Americans.
In Rebirth of a Nation, Goza makes his case, delving into history to find the ideological underpinnings that continue to classify Black people as intellectually and morally inferior to whites. The policies and speeches of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are parsed and each man’s complicity “in creating and perpetuating a nation divided along racial lines” is highlighted. But Goza does not let contemporary political leaders off the hook and the coded language of law-and-order, “welfare queens,” and personal responsibility is analyzed for its ongoing impact on policy and personal relationships.
Likewise, popular culture. Goza writes that notions of Black sloth, sexual deviance, intellectual inferiority, and irresponsibility popularized by eugenicist Madison Grant (1864-1937) and Baptist minister-turned-novelist Thomas Dixon (1865-1946), have had long-lasting resonance – leading to still-segregated and unequal public schools and still-festering white fear of miscegenation and Black power among many white Americans.
These realities, Goza argues, need to be reckoned with. In fact, he writes, it is high time for white people to grapple with the legacy of white supremacy and racism and excise both.
While this is an admittedly tall order, Goza is an optimist who believes that white folks will eventually support reparations, including monetary payments, an end to the school-to-prison pipeline, and the over-policing of underresourced and neglected Black communities. He also believes they’ll support changing the tax codes so that wealthy Americans of all races will be required to pay their fair share.
Rebirth of a Nation presents these necessities as both a challenge and an inspiration. It’s a powerful injunction.
Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America by Joel Edward Goza; Foreword by William J. Barber III. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., September 2024.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
