MLK Book Club: 'Disintegration' and Contemporary Black America

The MLK Book Club is a space to share, connect and learn through a selected book. This spring series, we will be reading and discussing chapters of Eugene Robinson's Disintegration, along with various other works related to what it means to be a part of "Black America" in the 21st century.

About the book:

The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a “Black America” with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book, Disintegration, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson argues that over decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered. Instead of one black America, now there are four: a Mainstream middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society; a large, Abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty and dysfunction than at any time since Reconstruction’s crushing end; a small Transcendent elite with such enormous wealth, power, and influence that even white folks have to genuflect; and two newly Emergent groups—individuals of mixed-race heritage and communities of recent black immigrants—that make us wonder what "black" is even supposed to mean.

How to read it:

The Dallas Public Library carries a copy of this book in our catalog, and copies from other local libraries may be requested via interlibrary loan (ILL) program for a $3.00 fee. More information on ILL can be found on our website: https://dallaslibrary2.org/services/ill.php.

For participants that are unable to borrow a copy, select chapters will be provided via email or available for pick up at the front desk in accordance to copyright law. Register below to receive the monthly reading.