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Writings on the
Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld
c.2016, Liberty Street Books
$27.95 / $33.95 Canada
256 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
The fix won’t be quick.
It never is. There’s no magic wand to change the things
that’ve been on your mind lately: social issues, inequality,
poverty, politics, apathy, violence. Those ills didn’t
arrive quick and they won’t leave quick but, says Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, they can be repaired. In his new
book Writings on the Wall (with Raymond Obstfeld),
he explains…
When people ask Abdul-Jabbar what he might’ve become, had he
not played NBA basketball, his answer often surprises them:
he would’ve been a history teacher. History fascinates him –
especially in the way it reflects racism, religious
intolerance and gender issues. In history, as in current
events, the truth is sometimes bent.
Take, for instance, politics, which is on everyone’s mind.
We rail and complain about issues and promises broken and we
like to think it’s all out of our hands. The truth is that
we are the problem: we grow complacent about things
we don’t want, acting “like children when it comes to
politics” and hoping the government will “take care of us,”
rather than taking steps to fix the system ourselves.
White people may deny that racism exists, says Abdul-Jabbar,
while black people know that it does. Racism didn’t stop
with the election of the nation’s first black president. It
doesn’t end with melting-pot cultural appropriation. It
actually comes in two forms, he says, and education is the
first step in dealing with it, not eliminating it,
because racism is always going to be around. |
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar |
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On religion, we should never lose sight of the fact that
this “country was founded by religious outcasts running for
their lives from persecution for their beliefs.” When it
comes to equality for women, we must embrace the true
meaning of “feminist” and adhere to what we tell pollsters
when it comes to gender. We need to look at the media and
how to maximize its potential, and we must take better care
of our seniors.
“We cannot afford to just wring out hands and depend on the
kindness of strangers,” Abdul-Jabbar says. “We have to bring
about change on our own.”
Remember when your grade school teacher told you to put on
your thinking cap? You’ll need it again as you’re reading
Writings on the Wall.
Authors Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld don’t just
examine issues that are on the minds of every American. They
turn them over and blow them apart, looking for solutions
that can be accomplished and chiding us gently for not
already working. That makes for a thought-demanding,
intellectually heavy book but it’s also a worthy call to
action; you may also be delighted to see that Abdul-Jabbar
doesn’t miss a chance to add a touch of the personal here,
which includes quietly unexpected humor.
Readers with the right mindset will find this book to be
informative and entertaining but be prepared to take your
time get the most from it. There aren’t a lot of pages
inside Writings on the Wall, but what’s here is deep
and wide and nowhere near quick.
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