Back in 2020, I had a chance to review an exceptional book, ‘Unmasking Obama’ by Jack Cashill. The work was a timely and engrossing review of the Obama era, when “a ‘right wing attack’ was an unwitting code for journalism.”
Cashill has written another excellent analysis that ties personal history into current events, “Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities.”
The book is a fascinating amalgam of biography and interviews that chronicles how Cashill, his family, and childhood friends were fully invested and working to hard to thrive in Newark, New Jersey communities, only to be driven out by crime and the rapid deterioration in quality of life.
I asked one lifelong friend, a loyal Democrat, why he and his widowed mother finally left our block in the early 1970s, twenty years after the first African American families moved in. He searched a minute for the right set of words and then simply said, “It became untenable.”When I asked what “untenable” meant,” he answered, “When your mother gets mugged for the second time, that’s untenable. When your home gets broken into for the second time, that’s untenable.”
Consider this book a “victim impact statement” from the families who fled the cities for the suburbs beginning in the late 1950’s. While academia touts “experts” who promote the “white flight” narrative, Cashill notes these opinion-makers were quick to forget their roots as they enhanced their careers.
Cashill presents case after case of personal stories from people who were working hard and following the American Dream, many of them coming from extreme poverty and in families that were struggling with alcoholism and addiction. Absolutely no “white privilege” was evident in any of these case histories.
Perhaps one of the most poignant examples was among the last and focused on Cashill’s mother’s first cousin. The relative, Mick, had a troubled youth and was jailed as a teenager.
He turned his life around after getting married and starting a family.
To support Rose and his young son, Michael, Mick took whatever job he could get. He did not need a college degree to wield a sledge hammer and dismantle boilers.This he did for as many hours as they let him. He saved hismoney and, in time, bought his own truck, then a second truck, then his own scrap metal yard, then another truck, and so on and so on. And with Rose handling the paperwork, they bought a shore house, then a second, and so on and so on.. . . . In speaking to Mick, I realized that all the explanations I had read for the fall of Newark—the fall of much of urban America—missed the mark. The family, it seemed clear, was the foundation of any community; the stronger the family, the stronger the community.The most overlooked variable in assessing community strength was the percentage of families headed by a married father. By 1982, that percentage was approaching zero in many Newark neighborhoods.
The book concludes with a very touching homage to Cashill’s mother, which was truly heartwarming.
I give this book 5 stars out of 5. This is the perfect counter to all the “white flight”/”white privilege” rubbish offered by American media and academics.
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