Keep Your Head Up - A Review

Thabiti Anyabwile has a good review of Keep Your Head Up.  His conclusion:

Keep Your Head Up joins an important discussion already well underway between the conservative Cosby types who argue that African Americans need to accept and exercise more personal responsbility in addressing social problems and the liberal-progressive Dyson types who do not deny the need for personal responsibility but argue Cosby and his ilk overlook the more pervasive and debilitating effects of structural racism. Both Cosby and Dyson would criticize the Black Church for failing to play an effective role in resolving these social ills.

Keep Your Head Up speaks up to the church and for the church. The book really doesn’t break new ground, depending largely on the data and analysis already provided by Cosby and Dyson. The book’s main contribution is the insertion of the gospel in these discussions about African-American progress. If it did nothing else but repeatedly make known the Good News that the Lord Jesus Christ redeems sinners from their sin and brokennes, making them new, removing their guilt, and giving eternal life and everlasting hope through His death, burial, and resurrection, then it would have done a lot.

Perhaps it’s best to think of Keep Your Head Up as an early comment from evangelical Black Christians. There’s more that needs and certainly will be said. We can look forward to that. Read Keep Your Head Up for a start.

Read the rest.