Fans of the TV show The Wire might want to check out David Simon’s earlier work The Corner. It’s not as artfully done as The Wire, but it is a direct retelling of a real family’s story from Simon’s days reporting for the Baltimore Sun, so it is as close to being a documentary as you can get without it actually being a documentary. I found both The Wire and The Corner to be quite useful for getting a visceral sense of what it’s like to grow up poor and Black in America’s inner cities.
I’ve also learned a lot about America’s racial history from reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, particularly the volume Master of the Senate. A brief history of the Senate itself is included in the book, and it’s striking to read about the details of how our country’s official instruments of power were used to undercut opportunities for Black people well into the 20th century. For example, I had assumed that “white supremacy” was just an academic neologism, but it turns out that Southern whites actually used this term unironically and as a call to action, including in speeches on the Senate floor. That blew my mind.
Fans of the TV show The Wire might want to check out David Simon’s earlier work The Corner. It’s not as artfully done as The Wire, but it is a direct retelling of a real family’s story from Simon’s days reporting for the Baltimore Sun, so it is as close to being a documentary as you can get without it actually being a documentary. I found both The Wire and The Corner to be quite useful for getting a visceral sense of what it’s like to grow up poor and Black in America’s inner cities.
I’ve also learned a lot about America’s racial history from reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, particularly the volume Master of the Senate. A brief history of the Senate itself is included in the book, and it’s striking to read about the details of how our country’s official instruments of power were used to undercut opportunities for Black people well into the 20th century. For example, I had assumed that “white supremacy” was just an academic neologism, but it turns out that Southern whites actually used this term unironically and as a call to action, including in speeches on the Senate floor. That blew my mind.