Can somebody please give this book to Trump to read, the man who said he promised to make America great again. How can a country be great and yet discriminate again such a large percentage of its population? How can a country ever be great if its primary intention is not to make itself and the rest of the world the safest place to live for all of mankind. This is such a great read. I'm not familiar with previous works from the other three authors but I also read The Sun Does Shine from Bryan Stevenson and I stand 100% with all that man believes. He truly is a remarkable man, a shining light amid so much oppression and discrimination. God created every one of us in his own image- colour, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation- all labels, images, categories are unimportant. Society, our leaders, us the people of the world need to learn tolerance, understanding and compassion so that everybody and live side by side in harmony. Read this book and pass it on to others, again and again and again, until the message has been heard by everybody. It's a fantastically accurate, current and poignant read. And please pass it on to Trump also!!!!

Interesting and thought-provoking. A must-read for everybody who wants to know more about the perils of racism in the US.

Very interesting read. Conversation between some of the leaders in the civil rights movement that provides interesting information about recent history and also suggestions for the future.

Brilliant read , This book is the much needed voice which America needs currently and no mainstream media would speak about it. It’s honest , eye opening and very inspiring.

Thank you netgallery for providing me with an Advance Copy of this book.

tl;dr Review:

A brilliant read that not only lays out the issues intertwined with race, inequality, and the law but provides the groundwork for how we can make things better.

Full Review:

Do you ever read certain books and at different parts just have to sit back and be like “Holy shit” or even the more succinct “Damn”?

That’s how I felt at various points while reading this transcript of the discussion held between Sherrilyn Ifill, Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson. Outside of Lynch and maybe Ifill, these names may or may not ring a bell. To provide some context, Ifill is the president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Lynch was the former US Attorney General, Stevenson wrote the book I keep meaning to read (Just Mercy) about the death penalty and is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Last, but not least, Thompson is a professor of clinical law at NYU’s School of Law and is the faculty director at their Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law.

Suffice it to say that these people know about which they speak (unlike certain other current “leaders” of our country). Though my time in law school shined a light on the systematic racism and inequity in our laws and how they are applied, this book took that knowledge one step further.

Not only did this book break down a variety of issues, but it also highlighted the personal and historical experiences of major events like the civil rights movement and segregation, as well as ongoing problems such as poverty and our current legal framework that’s steeped in racism. The book even went further and talked about housing discrimination, the xenophobia currently plaguing our country, how we handle policing, and more as it laid out how these themes are all inextricably linked.

Thankfully, the authors didn’t just provide us the history and knowledge of the ongoing problems. There’s also plenty of discussion on why being informed is critical in these times, but also how we can change things.

While not exactly a light and breezy read, it’s an impactful and important one and I highly recommend it.

I give this book 5 out of 5 thumbs up.

This, right here is what I call, truth. Truth has power and with that kind of power, it has the ability to create a paradigm shift that's needed today, not just in the American society but in every society.
My motive for reading this book is very selfish and personal. I admire Loretta Lynch and have read as much as I can about her and especially when the whole Policing Reform was being initiated in New York, and when I saw that she was part of the conversation that is this book, I had to read it off NetGalley. I am glad that I get to share my honest views on it after soaking up every word.
Now I want to buy myself a paperback copy because their discussion pointed out the power of a narrative and I am challenged to look into that and explore what impacts it's had in Kenya in terms of shaping our political affiliations.
I'd recommend this book first to Americans because it comes at a time when the rights of others do not seem to come first, and with a president lacking a modicum of control and empathy, and utter disregard of the constitution "government of the people, by the people and for the people" seems like a dream that's got to be actualized.
I'd recommend it second to every reader because we are citizens of nations that have laws, social challenges and issues with the justice system and this book provides insights on slavery in America, Prosecution and Poverty and you get to understand the role "the voice of the person" plays in shaping a narrative.

Based on a roundtable conversation held in early 2017 by Sherrilyn Ifill (president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF)), Loretta Lynch (former Attorney General of the US), Bryan Stevenson (executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy), and Anthony C. Thompson (professor of clinical law and faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law), A Perilous Path is a written record of a discussion on race and inequalities in the US and how the 2016 election pushed us to face the fact that we have so much more work to do. The discussion took place in early 2017, not long after Trump was inaugurated as president, just after the first episode of the despicable “Muslim Ban”.
I don’t think I have ever muttered “Oh my gosh THIS” under my breath as much as I did reading this book, or highlighted as much text as I did so that I could go back to it again and again. More than just a discussion on the current state of civil rights, equality, and oppression in the US in the light of a Trump presidency, A Perilous Path is a resounding conversation on what we need to do to make real, lasting change in this country. I took a lot of all of the participants’ comments, experiences, and ideas to heart, with the aim on doing my own part to lay a better foundation for now and the future.
I thought the ongoing theme of “changing the narrative” was a profoundly important one, as it pertains to all areas of social life in this country. We can’t continue with the current narrative of fear and exclusion, and also one of selective memory. We need to have these types of roundtable discussions at a local level, involve kids and teenagers, and MAKE the changes.
Bryan Stevenson: “[…] The people who were holding the signs that said “segregation forever” and “segregation of war,” they were never forced to put down those signs. They didn’t wave them around anymore, but they kept adhering to their value. And now we are living at a time where that thriving narrative of racial difference, that ideology of white preference, has exhibited itself, and now we are dealing with the consequences of that. We won the election in 2008, but we lost the narrative battle. We actually allowed that president to be demonized and victimized and marginalized because he’s black - not because of anything he said or did. And our comfort with that kind of demonization is, I think, at the heart of the challenge we face.”
The conversation is highlighted by a personal and historical background with the civil rights movement, poverty, segregation, and the laws that govern us all, and lays out how systemic racism will not change without real involvement and initiative from all areas, grassroots to the top. Topics such as affordable housing and discrimination, education discrimination, marginalization of immigrants, and policing are also evoked, as well as how important it is to understand how we can use the law to help change the narrative.
A Perilous Path is an extremely important read, very eye-opening, and also very inspiring. I finished reading this the outline of a personal plan of what I can do to change the narrative. I hope you will too.

Important voices, important topic. If you’re not sure whether to read it, you need it.

This book isn't a typical nonfiction piece - it's the transcript of a roundtable discussion on racism, inequality, law, public infrastructure, and more in the past, present, and the future, by 4 learned minds - the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and lawyer, and a star professor of clinical law.

I read this after the wonderful So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which gives a lot of education and direction for white people to unpack their own racism, classism, ableism, etc. It was a great follow up to her book. SYWTTAR was about recognizing and how to unpack it and break it down on a personal level, how to talk to others about race.

A Perilous Path is a vision for the future. It says, "Here are the issues. Here are the facts. Here's what we can do to work on fixing it." Each contributor visits the problems from different angles, but they're all good and worthwhile and useful suggestions, while also saying they don't have all the answers. It was an eye-opening read for the weekend before Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

“This conversation proved to be so much more than a lament over our current state of affairs; rather, in it we have seen the beginnings of a blueprint for a new progressive direction in America.” The astounding thing about this book, is how spot-on Ifill, Lynch, Stevenson, and Thompson were about Donald Trump considering their discussion took place only one month into his presidency. Their prescience speaks to the depth of their knowledge and experience. A clear-eyed discussion of race and equality, I found it both inspiring and at times harrowing with comments like “... how the law is managed depends very much on whose hands it is in.” I’ve highlighted more text in this short book than in many a longer tome. There is much in this book to think about.

This is a book that consists of a discussion between four persons: Sherrilyn Ifill the president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF), Loretta Lynch, the eighty-third attorney general of the United States, Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and Anthony C. Thompson, a professor of clinical law and the faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at New York University School of Law.

It's a quite varied and senseful debate, if one can call it as such, where those persons speak of inequality, indifference, inherent racism, and the consequences of capitalism, almost entirely in regards to the USA. If one has read Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Jill Leovy, and similar thinkers, this will not be entirely new information that will blow your mind.

However, it is quite a necessary book that brings much-needed stuff and information to the surface. For example, from Stevenson:

<blockquote>Bryan Stevenson: I think if you don’t hold people accountable for the narrative assaults that they make, then you’re never going to prevail. Because the South never voted for the Voting Rights Act, or the Civil Rights Act. They regrouped, started organizing in precisely the way you are describing, and then, forty-eight years later, they won a Supreme Court case, Shelby County, because their narrative persuaded the United States Supreme Court that we don’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore (at a time when we still saw the same suppression efforts). So I agree.

I look at domestic violence. When we were young, there was a show on TV called The Honeymooners. And the punchline was Jackie Gleason saying to his wife, “To the moon, Alice,” which was a threat of violence. And everybody laughed. We didn’t take domestic violence seriously. When women called the police to their homes after being assaulted, the cops would tell. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a piece of federal legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in nearly every sphere of American life, including voting, public accommodations, public education, public facilities, and employment. jokes to the guy to get him calm. As long as he was calm, they wouldn’t make arrests. And then we began to work on the narrative. We actually allowed women who are survivors of that violence to have a voice. They made the movie The Burning Bed. And we started talking about the pain and the injury and the suffering. Before you knew it, we started to think differently about that. And today, even these elite, professional athletes are risking something—not nearly enough, we still have a long way to go—when they engage in these acts of violence.

I think we’ve seen the same thing on climate change. But we haven’t made that kind of effort on race in my view, to direct things at the communities that need a narrative shift. And I think until we do that, we’re not going to make progress.</blockquote>

What all of the participants speak of is mainly the need for change via grassroots movements; naturally, the corporations (which are effectively in power in a plutocratic oligarchy, which the USA is in 2018) will not do this for us:

<blockquote>Loretta Lynch: We have to focus on growing the next group of people who are going to join the political discourse, and in fact wield that power at a local level. I think it’s important, because we were blessed for eight years. We had a wonderful president. He will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. I was tremendously proud to work for him. But politics is about more than who the president is. Law enforcement is about more than who the Attorney General is. It’s so much more than that. What we were trying to do is to travel across the country and empower local voices, to highlight people who are dealing with these issues in communities at the grassroots level. And we were trying to lift their voices up, amplify them, and share them with the nation. Those voices are still out there.</blockquote>

This is a little book which exudes eloquence and honesty. Another example:

<blockquote>Bryan Stevenson: Well, it’s sort of funny. We’re doing this cultural work, and for me it’s been very energizing, because I went to South Africa, and what I experienced there was that people insisted on making sure I understood the damage that was done by apartheid. When I talked to Rwandans, you can’t spend time in Rwanda without them telling you about all of the damage done by the genocide. I go to Berlin, and you can’t go a hundred meters without seeing those markers and monuments that have been placed near the homes of Jewish families that were abducted during the Holocaust. The Germans want you to go to the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. And then I come to this country, and we don’t talk about slavery. We don’t talk about lynching. We don’t talk about segregation. And so, our project is really trying to create a new landscape. I never thought during my law practice that I’d be spending so much time working on a museum, but our museum is called “From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.” We have to get people to understand the damage that was done to this country with this legacy.

We kidnapped 12 million Africans. Kidnapped them. Brought them across the ocean in this torturous journey. Killed millions of them. Held them in captivity for centuries. And we haven’t acted as though we did anything wrong. We must increase a consciousness of wrongdoing: lynching over four thousand people, taking black people out of their homes, burning them alive, hanging them from trees, brutalizing them, causing one of the largest mass migrations in the history of the world, when 6 million black people fled the American South for the North and West as refugees and exiles from terror. And then segregation: saying to black children every day, “You can’t go to school because you’re black. You can’t vote because you’re black.” And we haven’t really developed any shame about this history. So what I want to do is, I want to increase the shame index of America. Because we do a lot of things great—we do sports, we do all that stuff. But we don’t do mistake very well. We don’t apologize very well.

And if you don’t learn to be shameful about shameful misbehavior, you’ll keep doing that behavior over and over again. I think if you say, “I’m sorry,” it doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong. You show me two people who’ve been in love for fifty years, and I’ll show you two people who’ve learned how to apologize to one another when they get into trouble. I think we have to create that cultural moment where apologizing becomes okay. And part of the reason why we don’t want to talk about this history, is we’ve become such a punitive society. Most people think, well, if we talk about slavery, lynching, segregation, someone is going to have to get punished. And I just want to say to people, “I don’t have any interest in punishing America for its past.” I represent people who have done really terrible things. I’m not interested in prioritizing punishment. I want to liberate us. I want to get to the point where we can say, “That was bad and that was wrong and we need to get to someplace that’s better!” I want to deal with this smog created by our history of racial inequality, so we can all breathe something healthy, feel something healthy.</blockquote>

All in all, this is a great book to read for injecting some much-needed voices that are not likely to be aired over mainstream media.

This illuminating discussion should be read by all as these brilliant minds reach new depths in their interrogation of white supremacy, colonialism, policing,
discrimination, public housing, etc.