The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto

Charles M. Blow

Jan 2021 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller: “A compelling argument on how a second migration back to the South could prove a way forward for Black America.” —Library Journal

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

The Inspiration for the HBO Original Documentary South to Black Power

Race, as we have come to understand it, is a fiction; but, racism, as we have come to live it, is a fact. The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, but to remove an existing one. After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.

Acclaimed columnist Charles Blow never wanted to write a “race book.” But as violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests of the summer of 2020, he felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans. He envisioned a succinct, counterintuitive, and impassioned corrective to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, he offers a call to action by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms.

So what will it take to make lasting change when small steps have so frequently failed? It’s going to take an unprecedented shift in power. The Devil You Know is a groundbreaking manifesto, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country. This book is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, offering a road map to true and lasting freedom.

“A must-read in the effort to dismantle deep-seated poisons of systemic racism and white supremacy.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Ratings and reviews

I would never recommend a book that is full of racism! This guy Charles Blow the author is crazy he wants people to believe the only way to get racism over in America is to give black people all the political power period. This bump wants people to believe all white people are white supremacist!! This is how he thinks he will win over white people by calling them all white supremacist! The man is nuts an CNN is crazy to have him on there network! I will be boycotting CNN untell they stop having racist people like this author on there network. CNN should be ashamed!!! Instead of promoting this racist book by a racist black man.

This young man Charles Blow is the Greatest. I Love his books We all need to learn from him it would be a better place to live America is troubling So saddened such a great place but we are LOOSING it

Promotes racism against Anglo- Americans. God will judge the author.

About the author

Charles M. Blow is an acclaimed journalist and op-ed columnist for the New York Times who appears frequently on CNN. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones. He lives in Atlanta.