Weaving his own journey and trauma—including his memories of the arrest and incarceration of his hero, his older brother Moochie—with fearless storytelling, Bailey contemplates a number of cultural flashpoints involving race. The essays in WHY DIDN'T WE RIOT—which touch on justice system inequities, the tight ties between evangelical Christianity and white supremacy, media stereotypes and misrepresentation, workplace microaggressions, and other outcomes of ingrained systemic racism—reveal a dogged resistance to change from the people and institutions who hold power, and offer insights into the levers that operate racial injustice in America. With WHY DIDN'T WE RIOT, Bailey delves into how exactly larger forces interlock to imprint themselves on black bodies, and examines the wounds, “…psychic, emotional, physical…”, that are born of those unjust circumstances.
Armed with clarity but never ceding to the complexity of the issues at hand, Bailey openly and honestly wrestles with the ways in which he himself has been socially conditioned to internalize and act on a racist mantle of thought. Drawing on sociological research and combining a journalist’s reportage with the raw emotion of his own heart-wrenching experience—perhaps most evident in the severe stutter he develops following Moochie’s sentencing, an impediment he still grapples with today, as well as his diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—Bailey seeks answers to the crucial questions of our time.
