Alaa Alghamdi

In Bind Us Apart: How the Enlightened American Invented Racial Segregation, Nicholas Guyatt addresses race issues in the developmental history of the country, focusing on identity and issues that affect Americans. The author described many race issues as substantial struggles, and whether they are true or not, the book was written well and is likely to be insightful to a wide range of people. One significant relevant issue is whether the United States is truly ‘post racial’ or not. Many people may believe that awareness of scientific and historical topics such as inter-African slavery trends, evolution, human migration patterns, or wars among the natives have led to acceptance of both the nature of race and mistakes races have made in the past. These people may also believe that the average citizen can put to rest notions that the United States had rampant or frequent slavery while the entire nature of its development as a society (including its economic success) was founded on the work of Africans or suffering of always peaceful (never taking land from each other) natives that all evolved right off the land. As ideal as all races acknowledging mistakes and realities while focusing on moving forward would be, however, the author brings the true reality of racial conflict and its historical roots. The premise of the book is that people have been ‘bound apart’ from historical developments, and that these roots should be brought to the attention of people as we work to embrace the reality of our evolutionary history and capacity to truly be an exemplary ‘melting pot’ society for the rest of the species on the planet. Generally, Guyatt’s book seems to exaggerate the severity of racial tension in the United States outside of its southern states, but its general message of working to address historical developments that caused people to look at race as more than a small amount of gene differences amid the major cultural differences is a positive one. Indeed, people should be willing to acknowledge historical mistakes and counterproductive cultural aspects while working to ensure America is truly the harmonious and developed melting pot that it is idealized as.

Guyatt’s writing and conveying of concepts is clear and informative, and he explained how the people that developed the country planned for development that had only been partially followed through. This may have been due to the assumption that Native Americans and African Americans were more different from Caucasians than they are, simply due to scientific ignorance. In any case, such resultant racism was preserved in the actions of politics, and a ‘separate but equal’ concept deviated from the forefathers’ original plan. This is what is important for people to consider in Guyatt’s assertion that people were ‘bound apart’ in the country, and he communicates the concept well through his description of how the politics had a role and the net effect on people. People who read the book can understand that the ideals of the Enlightenment did genuinely motivate the forefathers in creating guidelines for the political development of affairs and other aspects of the country, but then they were not considered as political developments continued. Therefore, readers can learn how it was actually changes in the country that gave rise to it, and it is these that need to be undone, rather than assume that the country was founded by racists or is a generally evil country overall.

Guyatt explained civil rights development, but still argues that race relations are haunted by political developments, and the extent that he implies that it affects the overall US culture seems to be exaggerated. Such exaggerations themselves, rather than teaching the historical realities of Caucasian and African slavery percentages or slave acquisition trends in Africa, seem to be what is perpetuating African racial tensions in the country. Similarly, this seems to be at least somewhat true in regards to ‘Native’ American migration patterns and wars, although these seem to be better known and closer to common knowledge. The mistakes of the American forefathers are by no means unique across the whole world, but the extent by which all of the different races have lived together had been more unique, and Guyatt’s discussions of the results are interesting for readers to consider. Now, meanwhile, similar trends are more common amid globalization, and places such as the UK, Canada, Japan, and Germany are becoming more racially mixed than they had been in the past, using the US as an example that thereby has more of a tainted past for new multicultural societies. Guyatt leads one to question when America’s past will be forgiven as common humanitarian mistakes that were not so bad comparatively for the time.  

The best aspect of the book is that it describes all of the legislation that has paralleled change, showing implied cause and effect. Hopefully racial attitudes continue to develop the way that most educated people seem to want them to. Meanwhile, people can use Guyatt’s and other authors’ perspectives of history to ‘enlighten’ themselves, learning of the causes of the problems while getting a condensed and guided tour of much of the relevant history.

Professor of English Literature *

@ayghamd