Follow Here To Purchase No Place for Race


Author:Rodney L. Demery

Publisher:The Demery Group LLC

ASIN: B00G2039SW

At a time when some prominent political leaders, community agitators, and major media outlets are conspiring to create the impression that law enforcement is engaged in a conscious and coordinated effort to profile and discriminate against racial minorities, Rodney L. Demery’s book, No Place for Race represents a refreshing, well reasoned, and antidotal minority report. It should be required reading for “Reverend” Al Sharpton and his lieutenants.

Demery addresses the conflicts between law enforcement and the criminal element by analyzing how each group can improve its situation by rational thought and behavior. The keys for improvement of the circumstances of the socially and economically disadvantaged are to forget about the historical causes of their lesser lot, to appreciate the wonders of free will with the concomitant capacity to choose between constructive and destructive actions, and to view education as the single most important step in their movement toward a better life. It is not difficult to imagine what Demery thinks of demands for reparations, which are totally backward looking.

Demery is equally critical of circumstances existing in law enforcement, focusing primarily on the lack of inspired and dedicated leadership.

Along the way, the author takes clear sides on many related issues—one-parent families, treatment of non-violent drug “offenders,” gun control, media influences, and the infirmities of those in a position of moral leadership. The treatments of these problems are so clearly and rationally expressed that it would be a disservice to the book and its readers to paraphrase.

The author does not hide his disgust for rappers and other contemporary musical expressions that degrade women and encourage drug abuse. Without disagreeing in the slightest, I think that earlier expressions of African-American musical forms—the blues, gospel--could have been cited as significant sources of inspiration for today’s youth, particularly as the major figures in these creative areas were themselves disadvantaged. Further guiding lights are the impressive minority contributions to the United States in the fields of letters, politics, classical music, and the visual arts. This backdrop of achievement should do much to dispel the notion of unavoidable and immutable despair.

For this reader, the most remarkable aspect of No Place for Race is the perspective from which it was written. Author Demery is a 25-year veteran cop serving in one of the most race-roiling sections of the U.S., is himself African-American, and is the brother of a lifer for murder (to whom the book is dedicated) and the son of a woman murdered as a result of domestic abuse. I don’t know what the opposite of Ivory Tower is, but Officer Demery surely lives there.

Much of the author’s valuable advice about the importance of education, two-parent family life, and enlightened life choices has been promulgated by TV icon Bill Cosby, much to the annoyance of those who seek to profit from the notion of ethnic fatalism. I think that Rodney Demery is well qualified and positioned to assume Cosby’s recently tarnished mantle.