THE MOMENT: THOUGHTS on the RACE RECKONING THAT WASN'T and HOW WE CAN ALL MOVE FORWARD NOW (audiobook) by Bakari Sellers




Published in 2024 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Bakari Sellers.
Duration: 4 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Moment that Bakari Sellers refers to in his book is the so-called moment of racial reckoning that came with the murder of George Floyd and the protests all around the country that followed.

Sellers discusses a lot of relevant things that lead up to this moment including the murder of 9 African Americans by a young White supremacist in Charleston in 2015 and Covid-19. But, events like the Buffalo shooting of 2022, continued questionable acts of  and media and political-types discussing the Great Replacement Theory from 2017 until the present day have shown that moment of reckoning was not a big a moment that people supposed it was. Or, it demonstrates that the racist elements in America are pushing back hard.

I have run across Sellers as a guest on a couple of different podcasts that I follow and have always found him to be thoughtful and engaging. I have to admit, however, that I was a little disappointed in this book.

To me this book felt like two different books. I think there was too much time spent discussing the effects of Covid-19 on African American churches. Similarly, Sellers spent a lot of time discussing a police shooting case with an African American that he was involved in as an attorney. It is a sad commentary that I can say that I was only vaguely familiar with the case - and I'm not even sure if the case he referred to was the one I was thinking of because there are just so many.

The author
On the other hand, the other half of the book was compelling. He talked about the hope he had (and still has) after the George Floyd protests, his family, and some successes he has seen. 

Because of this wide variation, I am going to rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MOMENT: THOUGHTS on the RACE RECKONING THAT WASN'T and HOW WE CAN ALL MOVE FORWARD NOW by Bakari Sellers. 

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