The Book: Randall Robinson, Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land (Plume Books, 2004)

Why: From the pen of a self-exiled American, some thought-provoking insights into American culture. Do we drive progress or are we driven by it? 

This time of year—and especially this year—a Minnesotan’s thoughts turn to warm and sunny places. The urge to get away from the ice and snow is nearly irresistible. Here in the northland, as soon as the last week of March or first week of April arrives signaling spring break time, offices empty out as we seek a preview of the summer weather that is—we hope—to arrive in just a few short months. (At this time last year, the high temperature in Minneapolis was 80 degrees so we didn’t really need to travel for such a preview.)

My reading this month concerned a leaving of a more permanent nature. At one point in my life, I lived abroad for a while as an expatriate. This was a wonderful experience, one that I would recommend to anyone (and, in fact, one of my children has opted for this life, at least for a year or so). But for me, this temporary experience was just that—a sojourn abroad followed by a return home. 

I have always been intrigued by people who, for one reason or another, decide to abandon their native lands. Randall Robinson is a Harvard-educated lawyer who left the United States for life in the small Caribbean island country of Saint Kitts and Nevis.  The reasons stem mainly from what he perceives as the pervasive racism of American society, but many of his observations about American culture generally are interesting and, for some people, may hit a little close to home.

Robinson bemoans, in particular, what he views as the “commercialization of everything from school to pew.” From this, he extrapolates that “everything about America is big except its people, who, unbeknownst to most Americans, are mere human beings, no bigger or smaller than human beings any place in the world.” He asks, “Could it be that in America, the unexcelled bigness of all things material has resulted in the concomitant relative smallness of all values nonmaterial?”

Alas, these views are nothing new, and have been with us for a long time, long before Eugene Burdick and William Ledererat wrote The Ugly American.  Robinson is clearly disaffected, and condemns the United States with a broad brush. He does, however, leave us with something to think about: we Americans, he says, should “be more thoughtful about how we define progress and development, not just in terms of broadened material wealth but also with an understanding of how indispensable social arrangements are compromised when the market becomes the only voice listened to, its barometer the only measure of a nation’s health.”

One might argue that, without the market, progress and development is impossible, but the question of what should come first—progress or people—is a central tension within our culture, one we all encounter almost on a daily basis.