Thank you for providing me with a free copy of “A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America” in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a chronicle of violence in the Black community—what violence is happening, how it affects Black people, where this violence originated, and what has been proposed to solve it. The book is full of data—it is a remarkable review of the literature. Many of the things detailed on this book, I knew in an abstract sense, but some of the specific statistics provided were just staggering. Additionally, the data was presented in a highly readable format.

I think this is an important book for dissecting the myths about where violence comes from. I also appreciated Currie’s use of a variety of types of data, and for highlighting key critiques of studies about crime (i.e., they often exclude the most vulnerable of people). However, I wish he had not used “third-world country” terminology. Further, I did not think there was really anything “new” to this book—again, it seemed much more like a review of the literature.

Mostly where I think this book falls short is in its solutions. While I definitely support the equalizing policies described, as Currie points out himself, they are supposedly “race neutral.” However, what we know from race neutral policies is that they’re rarely applied in a race neutral manner. I think it is somewhat wishful thinking to imagine Currie’s proposed solutions as equalizers, although he does briefly mention he also thinks some form of reparations to Black people are also warranted. However, he devotes very little time to these race-specific solutions that are likely needed to guarantee Black people violence-free communities and lives.

'A Peculiar Indifference' Takes on Violence in Black America

Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie's scrupulous investigation of the impacts of violence on Black Americans, A Peculiar Indifference, shows the damaging effect of widespread suffering and identifies an achievable solution.

"[There have been] few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference." - W.E.B. Du Bois

Sometimes the books delivering the most chilling message can be the most hopeful. These are the authors who are clear-eyed about the problem they are addressing while also refusing to throw their hands up in despair. They want to both level with the reader and provide real-world answers. It's a difficult balancing act, but one that authors like Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie pull off.

Currie's A Peculiar Indifference is an infuriatingly necessary read. Its title derives from W.E.B. Du Bois' statement of bafflement about a specifically American disinterest in the suffering of its Black citizens. While Currie shares the depth of Du Bois' concern, he does not indulge in polemics. An academic sociologist and criminologist who serves up tranches of data to support his points, Currie lets numbers, rather than rhetoric, do the work. And what his numbers show is a crisis with no signs of abating. Especially as long as the country turns a blind eye to it.

The bulk of Currie's work takes the form of deep dives into the disproportionate ways Black communities in suffer from violence. This remains true even when controlling for America being a more violent nation than its peer societies. He lays out harrowing statistics to prove a point most readers likely already know but have not tangled with on a specific level: just 13 percent of the United States' population, Blacks "account for over half of all years of life lost to violence in the twenty-first century."

Even as violent crime plummeted between 2000 and 2011, violence continued extracting a toll from Black communities. One study cited by Currie showed how, in that period, there was actually a "significant escalation" of gun violence victims treated by a Newark hospital serving a Black community. In a similar time period, Miami-Dade showed a rise in young Black men from a few "deeply disadvantaged and highly segregated neighborhoods" being treated for gunshot wounds. A 2013–2014 study of firearm assaults in Philadelphia revealed Black residents were five times more likely to be shot than Whites.

"The overall picture," Currie notes, of Blacks being radically disproportionate victims of violence "is stunningly consistent … numbingly predictable [and] not going away." While that is not a revelatory conclusion, Currie follows a different track afterward. Most popular studies of violence in the Black community zero in on the numbers and maybe highlight some individual stories of victims. But Currie's chapter on how those levels of chronic and often random violence impact the psyches of people in those economically distressed and segregated neighborhoods.

Recalling a study of how violence affected Black schoolchildren on Chicago's South Side in the late 1980s, Currie quoted its authors explaining how their subjects' experiences were "strikingly and fatefully similar to what children experienced in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime, Northern Ireland during the Catholic/Protestant 'troubles,' or Gaza under Israeli occupation." More recent studies looked at by Currie had similarly shown that "serious violence is an astonishingly common part of the lived experience of low-income African Americans in the United States and that this experience—as a witness or as a victim—starts very early."

Determined not to be indifferent to the human toll of this crisis, Currie writes about how the constant exposure to endemic violence causes not only day-to-day psychological strain (one researcher he quotes points out how "cognitively and emotionally exhausted" friends and relatives of the victims become) but also a long-term loss of faith in any future. Living in chronically violent conditions creates tsunamis of trauma that wash over communities, leaving abuse, addiction, and more violence in its wake. Those results are frequently and correctly called out by those who decry these conditions for both constructively empathetic and more simplistic, borderline racist, perspectives.

But in one of the book's most impactful sections, Currie talks about the less-commonly cited effects of violent environments on Black residents. In a seeming attempt to counteract the well-studied tendency in America for academics and health professionals to show less concern for Black well-being (based on dehumanizing assumptions that exaggerate Black physical strength and downplay peoples' emotional sensitivities), he lays out the health problems seen in Black areas affected by violence. These range from mental (depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and post-traumatic stress disorder) to the physical (hyperactivity, pregnancy complications, weight gain, sleep disparities).

Looking for the causes of this highly American violence, Currie draws upon research dating back to the early 20th century. Those studies pointed to a "toxic mix" of post-Emancipation conditions. "Overcrowding, poverty and economic insecurity" along with "systematic oppression and discrimination" often deprived Blacks of hope their situation could improve. At the same time, systemic inattention to fairly policing and protecting Black communities reinforced the idea that Black lives were not valued. A 1941 analysis of racial disparities in criminal justice determined that under-policing of Black homicide victims and over-policing of White victims (when the perpetrators were Black) created a "double standard" that in effect sanctioned violence in Black communities.

Currie's analysis leads him to this conclusion:

"There is nothing normal or inevitable about the racial divide in violent death and injury that continues to haunt America. It is the product of deliberate choices—choices that have systematically privileged some people while systematically depriving others. We have had plenty of opportunities to make different ones."

While this is hardly a cheery thought, it also suggests a way forward. Because different choices can be made.

Currie's argument for a possible answer takes a surprising turn. While acknowledging that there is no silver bullet—even the best programs, he says, "ultimately will be thwarted by the overarching environment of systemic neglect and racialized inequality"—he proposes that the best way to address the root causes of violence is to reduce the number of people "at high risk". For Currie, this means bringing Black unemployment more in line with that for Whites (it is currently about two to three times as high). Since that disparity has remained no matter how robust the economy, and research cited in the book makes a strong link between rising employment and lowering violence, he proposes a federal jobs guarantee:

"Guaranteeing good work with reasonable wages, and the training to make it feasible, would also strike a powerful blow against the extreme and intractable poverty that, as we've seen, is so closely linked to endemic violence."

For some Americans, particularly those convinced that the only thing causing violence and poverty in Black communities is moral lassitude and a refusal to bootstrap themselves into economic prosperity, a massive government outlay like Currie is calling for will be dismissed out of hand. Big problems, though, call for big solutions.

Currie's answer might not be the only one with a good chance to have a positive long-term impact on the lives of many Black Americans. But it beats wishful thinking.

Elliot Currie is a Pulitzer Prize finalist who has clearly done his homework in the writing of this book. Currie references a number of studies and statistics in A Peculiar Indifference in his analysis of the why, how and what of violence in Black America. Currie digs down into why Black people by far outweigh other Americans as victims of violence. He covers many factors including systemic racism, poverty, segregation, unemployment and underemployment. There is a lot of information in this book. This information is all timely and important. Currie even covers the damage done by the current administration as it impacts Black Americans.

I rate this somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars.

Thank you to Metropolitan Books and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Akin to other books like "Why do all the Black Children Sit Together" or "Savage Inequalities", Elliott Currie's "A Peculiar Indifference" explores the racist history of violence in America. In particular, the book focuses on the early criminalization of Black youth and the later effects this has on their schooling, livelihood and life expectancy. Currie weaves together interviews, landmark studies and common cultural stereotypes. It is an important and timely read.

Reading this book so closely after reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, I am finding myself starting to recognize studies that have been done, books referenced consistently (such as the source of the title from W.E.B. DuBois), and themes. Not just the overreaching and simplified statement that racism in America is systemic but specific parts that have been used not only to fuel racism but to oppress Blacks and shift the blame on them. While readers may find some commonalities with the ideas promoted in Caste, Mr. Currie takes the information and focuses in on violence in the Black community and adds to it comparisons to other communities in a very stark and depressing illustration of what racism has done to young Black males. No, they are not alone in the consequences, but when you start looking at the numbers, the odds are worse than Vegas to make it to old age. This shouldn't be happening! And, Mr. Currie provides proof that it doesn't need to keep happening. The last part of the book includes examples of programs and policies that have decreased violence and increased employment opportunities and offers suggestions on how to expand them. These changes would benefit not only the Black community, but all people in our society in some manner.

In A Peculiar Indifference Elliott Currie provides us with a detailed overview of violent crime in the US, and how it disproportionately affects Black people and communities. This study analyzes the toll that violence has taken and continues to take on Black men, women, and children, compares it to how violence affects white people in the US, and provides the reader with detailed information on how racism, segregation, and white supremacist laws over time have caused genertional trauma and disparities that only long-overdue social action can change.

This isn’t a book that you can rip through - especially the first half. It is very heavy on statistics and can feel a little dry at times, but it is important to really understand these statistics and compare them to others listed. The US, for all its wealth and stature, is one of the most violent countries in the world, and also one of the countries with the most racial disparities, even today in what people seem to call the “post-racial era”.

I think the most important part of A Peculiar Indifference is where the author provides ample information on understanding the roots of violence in African American communities. “Black on Black” violence is such an overused and hollow argument from those intent on maintaining the status quo, but in order to be able to counter that argument, it is important to understand why certain communities are more plagued by violence than others. Elliott Currie takes the history of systematic oppression, segregation, violence, and trauma, committed against Black Americans, and shows how the racial disparities and racism over time have led to what we see today.

I also really appreciated the solutions that the author provides in the latter part of the book: we are not going to change police violence against Black people without changing the system. We are not going to change mass incarceration of Black people without changing the system. We are not going to change racial disparities in all areas without overhauling the system and giving every single person the same advantages.

If you are interested in learning more about violence in the US, and the real racial disparities that exist, and how harmful they are, I recommend reading this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a terrific place to start when diving into the conversation about violence and police brutality against Black people. It seems to me to essentially be a review of the literature, except for laypeople. I appreciated the breadth of information Currie covers and think this is a good addition to the antiracist canon.