American and Texas Political History: A Maze of Racialized Thought in America by
Mario Marcel Salas
My rating:
1 of 5 stars
I'm very conflicted on how to review this book. On the surface, this book is touted as a discourse in American and Texan political history. It is really a book on racism in Texas. The author, Mario Salas, is an Afro-Mexican Civil Rights leader living in San Antonio, TX. His main message throughout the book is that Texas' war of independence was based on the perpetuation of slavery and the appropriation of land from Mexico in order to raise more crops on the backs of slaves. That is an important and truthful message, for which I will give this rating a star. Salas has offered plenty of research to support this fact. That message and his final thoughts could really be summed up in one to two short chapters.
The rest of the book, however, is full of repeated rants and angry rhetoric with no cohesiveness or organization. There were many times I had to flip back to see if I had somehow lost my place and was re-reading something I already had. There was also a couple of chapters where Salas quoted other's works in painfully long details. Chapter 3, in particular, rounds out to about 50 pages of the 1847 writings of Benjamin Lundy on the war in Texas. Of those 50ish pages, Salas' writes but three paragraphs. Of those pages of Lundy's document, only a few comments were needed to make the point that Salas should have been making.
Salas comes off as an angry man who does not hold back on calling out all kinds of people for being racists. He devotes several paragraphs across multiple chapters attacking African American Republicans for kowtowing to white racists to further their careers. He even attacked the former mayor of San Antonio, Ivy Taylor, the first African American woman mayor and a Democrat, suggesting that she crossed party lines to get herself elected and has become a racist because of it. He fails to mention that her only opponent was also a minority woman and a Democrat.
This book is very dated. It is just about three years old and is already outdated. Many of the politicians and "current events" are long past, now, causing his supporting themes to be lacking in substance. The message that comes across is that he is holding on to grudges, rather than having supporting evidence for his thesis.
My other criticism of the book is that it is one hot mess when it comes to grammar. The man is a college professor and holds two Masters degrees, yet he is unable, apparently, to utilize spellcheck or Grammarly. It's obvious that the book has not been edited or reviewed and was likely self-published. The book comes off as personal rantings rather than a scholarly work.
So the tl;dr version of my own rant is that this book has a singular, important message but it is wrapped up in an unorganized mess, going off on repeated rants full of hate about the haters. I don't believe you can fight hate with hate. I say, skip this one as there are many great books to read on Civil and Human Rights.
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