A Canadian-American journalist is getting roasted on social media over the angle of his new book.
On Tuesday, Montreal-based Sam Forster announced the imminent release of Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America, which appears to be self-published.
"Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man and traveled throughout the United States to document how racism persists in American society," Forster tweeted. "Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist. It's out on May 30th."
He didn't provide any additional information about this so-called "disguise."
The official description on Amazon reads, "Six decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, award-winning journalist Sam Forster performs a daring transformation in order to taxonomize the various types of racism that persist in modern America. Seven Shoulders is the most important book on American race relations that has ever been written."
With no listed publisher, it's quite possible Forster is assigning that level of ultimate importance to his own work.
It didn't take long for people to hop in his mentions and rip him for the premise.
"Instead of buying this book from a white author who traveled the country in Black face, read and listen to actual Black people about our lived experience," wrote @JanelCubbage. "Profiting off of Black face and racism is nasty work."
Others took a comedic approach, including user @aparkusfarce, who posted a clip from Boy Meets World featuring Mr. Feeny lecturing his students on Black Like Me, the 1961 book by John Howard Griffin that follows the same premise.
Griffin wasn't the first white writer to disguise himself as a Black man to "understand racism," as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Ray Sprigle undertook a similar project more than a decade earlier.
Check out some of the best Twitter reactions to Sam Forster's announcement of Seven Shoulders below.
