Stakes Is High

… I was waiting for Mychal Denzel Smith to either reflect or credit De La Soul with the title. Yet, in Stakes Is High, Life After the American Dream, he makes the term his without diminishing it … or relinquishing it. In 1996, De La said … \”A skin not equal … A meteor has more right than my people.\” A few days earlier, Breonna\’s killers walked away, unscathed. In 2020, a wall has more right than black people. But I digress. Smith\’s role is \”to write words and hope they land where they are useful.\” Stakes is High is not a clarion call however. It is, \”at its core, a desperate plea for community … to shake loose the dread.\” He knows he cannot do this alone. According to Smith, \”where America has f\’d up is by telling the myth as history – pretending that who we want to be is who we have always been – then building a proud and belligerent identity out of the myth. American myths obscure a shameful past and protect the powerful.\” \”When you come from a mythologized place, as I do,\” Sarah Broom writes in her award winning memoir, The Yellow House, \”who are you in that story?\” Of the inevitability of Donald Trump, Smith writes that he \”is the inevitable result of holding tight to the American Dream … the end result of allowing the delusion about our history, of uninterrogated whiteness and masculinity, of making freedom synonymous with capitalist accumulation, of unearned arrogance and untethered individual ambition.\” All the things that create American culture, whether they are acknowledged or not. Nevertheless, Smith doesn\’t want to leave the reader with a doomed outlook. He wants you to regain a sense of possibility. But he also reminds us of A Tribe Called Quest\’s last album, and the first track, \”The Space Program,\” which goes \”There ain\’t a space program for n-words, yeah, you stuck here, n-word.\” Smith concludes \”No one ever said it would be simple, only that it is possible.\” … you know them stakes is high. You stuck here, n-word.

This young man has a talent for hitting home on some of the important issues our country struggles with today. Race and poverty are looked at through a clever and thought-provoking lens, and I found myself having to ask some uncomfortable but necessary questions about my own biases. I learned that I have a lot to learn. I highly recommend this book.

This was a page turner for me. It was well written and explained the myth of the American Dream. This book was written with honesty and compassion. I am looking forward to reading his future works.

\”Stakes is High\” falls into the category of books that everyone should read. As a self-identifying liberal, this book puts into perspective how even if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, while it would have been better than the current presidency, the reality is that the inequality that has existed in this country since its founding will continue without a complete overhaul of our systems. I appreciation Smith\’s discussion on how, as liberals, especially white liberals, we can\’t put blame on the groups of people who voted for Trump unless we look at our long history that has allowed white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia/homophobia, discrimination against immigrants, and economic privilege by only certain groups of people to perpetuate. Many of the ideals that Americans profess that make us a united country, like the ability to live the American Dream, are a myth to those who work low wage jobs, graduate from schools without receiving a solid education, or face other daily (and lifelong) injustices. Overall, this book will raise awareness about the true history and current state of America, as well as lead you to think about how you can contribute to making this a better country for everyone.

“Contrary to what personal finance charlatans would have us believe, poverty is not a mindset—it is the inevitable and necessary by-product of a system wherein life is only guaranteed to those who have wealth and wealth is distributed via ownership and not labor. Poverty is a capitalists’s main resource, as it ensures there will always be a class of people to exploit.” Special thanks to Bold Type Books for the gifted finished copy of this marvelous book. STAKES IS HIGH is out today, and I believe it’s one that we’re gonna be referencing for a long time to come. Mychal Denzel Smith divides his book into four parts—Delusions, Justice, Accountability, and Freedom—each of which breaks down the American Dream into its unsatisfactory and contradictory components. Through these sections Smith sets out to argue that this moment in American history is, “not an aberration, that it is the course this country has always been on because the power of the narrative we have all contributed to has propelled us here.” It’s perhaps the most compelling, important argument I’ve ever read. “Delusions” tackles the idea that cultural touchstones arise independent of any ideology or agenda. Smith notes that even highways are political when you stop to question whose homes were destroyed to make way for them. “Justice” provides an erudite argument for why we must abolish the police in order to attain peace. His definition of justice is particularly insightful: “justice is a proactive commitment to providing each person with the material and social conditions in which they can both survive and thrive as a healthy and self-actualized human being.” Police can do two things, arrest or kill, and neither of those is going to deliver justice. In “Accountability,” through the example of the crime of rape, Smith explains the difference between apology and accountability, and why the latter is not being held up as the standard in our society. For that to be the case would require a vastly different system of adjudication. Smith builds on Angela Davis’s argument that “prisons are obsolete” and provides an honest examination of our own shortcomings. In “Freedom,” Smith traces his family history back to slavery and uses this framework to analyze the contradictions and impossibilities of America’s ‘individualistic freedoms.’ Freedom should not require luck, and so none of us are free. Smith notes that writing this book did not cure his Trump-era depression, and reading it sure didn’t cure mine. But, I found a kindred spirit in Smith’s words which at least made me feel less alone in my despair at the world, maybe even optimistic. He doesn’t profess to have all of the answers, but to suggest that the most important thing we can do in this moment is to come together as a community. “We must choose us,” he writes. Reading this collection reminded me of what that means. He also urges that he’d like the main takeaway from this book to be that we need to—my goodness we need to—abolish the police, so I’ll include that here as well. Abolish the police, there is no clearer way to say it. This is perhaps the most important book I’ve read this year, and it should be required reading for every American, or anyone looking at us dumbfounded. If my funds allowed (ha!) I would gift a copy of this collection to everyone I know.

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