And Then There Was Woke

It’s 2008. A small-town New England police chief of about 50 years of age is sitting in his car, thinking about how structural racism is causing crime in Black communities. They are overpoliced, this white cop thinks. If only somebody would defund the police.

This is how the third novel in Richard Russo’s Sully series begins. Russo is was one of the best American writers of our times. He wrote about the importance of fathers, male friendship, working class troubles. His Sully series was so good. The characters dug ditches, ribbed each other silly, went to diners, hid from debt collectors, made a mess of their lives, and then figured things out. Russo wrote about real life and real people.

But then he went woke.

And now Russo writes about white cops who sincerely believe in “structural racism” in 2008. And fret over it day in and day out. In 2008, I repeat.

Oy, I thought, ploughing through sentence after sentence about “white men and Black women” (original spelling), structural whatsisms, and “differences in Black and white time” (don’t ask).

I have followed Russo’s work for 20 years. I loved his writing. I don’t want to give up. So I kept reading his recent novel titled Somebody’s Fool and feeling like an embodiment of the title.

“At least there are no trans-affirming surgeries”, I kept saying to console myself.

Well.

Guess what?

Yeah…