Black Klansman

Relevant to the U.S. as it is today.

Black Klansman is a mixed bag for me, but it's definitely worth a read.

While I enjoyed the story Stallworth told, this book was badly written. It was written EXACTLY like a CSPD police report, but with a few personal anecdotes thrown in. It's written so an eight-grader can understand it, it defines many words most adults already know, and it's repetitive to drive home key points. It needed a fair amount of editing to reign in the number of run-on sentences I noticed. And couple lines really irritated me, such as “All men have a little ‘dog' in them where women are concerned”... I tabbed that with one word: Ew.

I generally appreciated Stallworth's humor throughout the book. I definitely laughed at times and feel it prevented the book from feeling dragged down by the heavy topic. I really liked some of stuff he said in the Afterword too. For example “This hatred has never gone away, but has been reinvigorated in the dark corners of the internet, Twitter trolls, alt-right publications, and a nativist president in Trump. [...] It is my belief that the Republican Party of the twenty-first century finds a symbiotic connection to white nationalist groups like the Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, militias, and alt-right white supremacist thinking.” This seems so contrary to what you expect a police officer to believe, especially in the Springs. It's such an interesting account that you'll never be able to find anywhere else, and it's well worth trudging through the writing and occasional bad take.

A quick read. Haven't seen the movie, but I thought the whole case would be much more interesting than it was. Stallworth is not the best writer, despite having written several articles and such. The book was repetitive in many places (telling the same background story twice, using “arguably” twice in the same sentence) which was just annoying to read. I feel like saying he “inflitrated” the KKK is very generous. He talked to them a lot on the phone. Used words he knew would appeal to them and even he talks about how they could never tell he was a black man because there is no “black speak”. It just seemed more amusing to him that he used his real name (which he kept saying was a big mistake though it never seemed to come around and bite him in the ass) and he was pulling one over on the KKK.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, not only for the incredible story behind it, but also as an attempt to read educational historical works during Black History month (it is, however, a worthy read no matter the timing).
I found the story to be quite fascinating, especially due to the fact that until the movie trailers, I had never heard of it before. I even did some mild digging online to try to find the validity of the statements being made and it seems pretty thoroughly written (ie. I did not find anything blatantly accusing it as fraud).
I was worried before I started reading the memoir (I had already seen the film) because I had read through a few reviews and multiple people referred to it as boring or a poor writing style. I have to personally say, that seeing as it is a memoir, I was never really expecting outright excitement or action. I feel as if some of the reviews posted on here almost seem like they're coming from the attitude that this is fiction and not a tale that actually occurred? I took on this read under the assumption that it would be along the lines of a textbook-style lesson on the events that took place. I believe it delivered on that and more. Stallworth takes multiple opportunities to indulge the reading in the knowledge that it is written to the best of his ability and memory, so I must say I disagree with most people knocking its style.
However, everyone is entitled their opinions

If you are on the fence, I would suggest reading.

Great story, though not the best or most well edited book.

Definitely an interesting story; the movie was better. (The movie's big climactic finale was entirely fictional but uhhh it's a better story that way and I'm not mad about it.)

The writing here is fine. It's very straightforward and occasionally repetitive. Still, a quick and interesting read.

If there's a downside to this book, it's that Stallworth's issues with anti-racist activism could really be explored further. Like most works that cover hate groups, there's a lot of false equivalency applied to people working for civil rights because they upset law enforcement sensibilities.

“It was as if Dennis the menace was running a hate group.”

The meat of this story though, Stallworth's infiltration of the KKK, oh my! On one hand, you want to laugh at the buffoonery of David Duke and his co-conspirators. On the other, the terror of the Klan is that they somehow manage to survive and succeed in their terrorism despite their idiocy.

If nothing else, you come out of Black Klansman deeply aware that the powers that be do not take racist hate groups seriously enough. If a lone municipal investigator like Stallworth could comprehensively discombobulate regional Klan activity, why aren't more resources applied to hack such cancerous growth back to the root?

I'm glad to have read this book but I did not enjoying reading it, if that makes any sense. Stallworth's story is so interesting, but his telling of it was, in my reluctant opinion, surprisingly uninteresting.

Stallworth is detailed in outlining series of events, but I was hoping for more reflection and analysis.
I wanted him to talk more about what it was like to navigate his identity in all of these different contexts. How he encountered racism in the Colorado Springs Police Department even as he worked to undermine white supremacy by investigating the KKK as CSPD's first Black detective. How being a Black police officer resulted in both Black political organizers and white police officers distrusting his integrity. How his actual and undercover personas repeatedly experienced such close proximity despite needing to be keep separate for the investigation to survive.

Stallworth describes many occasions where he felt pulled in different directions, but instead of exploring that more deeply, he doesn't offer much beyond, “I had to compartmentalize”
And I'm sure he did compartmentalize, but I wished he would have integrated his opinion more throughout recalling the course of the investigation.

There are moments where Stallworth shares his opinions, but to me they felt a little disjointed in contrast to the dry tone in which he describes his work. You catch glimpses of passion and conviction, but they don't feel as justified as they would if he gave you more alongside the impassive “and then this happened...and then this happened” etc.

The story would be more compelling if he wasn't trying so hard to pretend he or any person can volitionally distance themselves from something like this. Maybe it was an attempt to gain credibility, to make the narrative feel less politically skewed, but I don't understand why a story about a Black Klansman would aim for an apolitical tone. I wanted him to tell us the story and then say something about the story he told, but the book was primarily the former and sorely lacking the latter.

I wanted a book not only about the impact of the investigation but also about the impact the investigation had on him. How it altered his view of law enforcement, of politics, of race, of America, and all the combinations thereof. What it reaffirmed, what it threw into question. How it's shaped his assumptions and priorities. I needed more of that.

To end on a somewhat positive note, all in all, I am glad to see Ron Stallworth's story told, and by him, even if he somehow managed to make it boring as hell.