A Practical Guide to Racism

The author, Dalton, is a fake. He does not exist. He is the creation of the humorist Sam Means and this parody of a form of book from a century ago was written to jangle the nerves and tickle the funnybones of anybody with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Nothing and nobody is sacred here. Some people won't get it. Real racists will love it for all the wrong reasons. It is brutally sarcastic. Over the top. Demeaning. Wicked. Raunchy. I laughed at myself for liking it.

A Practical Guide to Racism offers pitch-perfect satires of racism of every stripe. Humor of the Sarah Silverman variety is blended with Dadaist absurdism and its close sibling: the scientific racism of the nineteenth century (a helpful appendix compares the skulls of members of dozens of races to the skull of Friedrich Schiller). The blustery narrator Dalton parrots and exaggerates all of the brutish and inane things that men have ever said of one another. Not for the faint of heart, but then, as this book amply demonstrates, neither is real life.

In case you're worried that C.H. Dalton plays favorites, let me allay your concerns. Every race, gender, ethnicity and even species you can think of is skewered in this book. Dalton's comments are often as incisive as they are funny. At the end of the book you are left not only with a ton of laughs but also with a real feeling of the absurdity of racism.

This book touches on the most important racial issues of the 19th and 20th centuries (there is no doubt in my mind that after this book is consumed by the 21st century masses there will no longer be racism). After reading the entire masterpiece in one sitting, I was ready to interact more intimately with all of mankind. If knowledge is the key, then C.H. Dalton is the "skeleton master". A must read.