Quitting America by Randall Robinson

In 2004, Randall Robinson wrote Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land.

"Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing.  From now on everyone is defined by Christ; everyone is included in Christ."  Col. 3, The Message.

Though these United States of America often loudly proclaim that we are a Christian nation, an honest history reveals that we, the WASPs, have violated these verses countless times, both internally and externally (think Haiti).

To see ourselves as others see us.  Though it will not be a pleasant experience for American whites, it is an absolute necessity for every white American to read Quitting America.  Many Haitians will risk life and limb to come to America, so why would Randall Robinson, a well educated American black, choose to leave America and choose to live on St. Kitts, a Caribbean island.

In a wide-ranging historical and cultural analysis by a scholar-activist, Robinson cites a number of factors ranging from Columbus to the war in Iraq to our despicable treatment of Haiti as reasons to leave the U.S.

Quitting America is not a tactful book; it is a blunt and brash book, in the prophetic sense.  I think it an accurate book.  Robinson sees WASP America as ignorant, arrogant, ethnocentric and oppressive.  For many years, Robinson vigorously fought these social evils; "the truth put squarely is that I am spent, having fought too many American social battles . . . preoccupied, as I have been constrained to be, with race and all the wearying baggage that trails heavily in its train."