A Critical Look at Sam Forster’s “Seven Shoulders”
Recently, I came across a journalist named Sam Forster from Canada, who has stirred up some controversy online. On his page, he wrote, “Last summer, I disguised myself as a Black man,” explaining that he traveled across the United States to document how racism persists in American society. He added, “Writing Seven Shoulders was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done as a journalist.”
Think about that for a moment: one of the most difficult things he’s faced, according to him, was simply pretending to be Black for a story. Imagine the experiences of Black Americans who endure discrimination daily—not as an experiment, but as a reality.
Forster’s book, Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America, is available on Amazon for $9.93. The book’s overview claims:
“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.”
So, according to the book description, the definitive work on American race is authored by a Canadian journalist. At 193 pages, it certainly makes bold claims.
Browsing Forster’s page further, I found some of his other content that struck me as unusual. One post features a Black individual with the caption, “Syllable times rhythm equals mumbo jumbo.” Another piece includes an excerpt discussing Brownsville:
“What if I don’t want to get pushed around by some ski-masked teenager performing his initiation? What if I don’t want to cough up my phone and my wallet? What am I supposed to do? If the Second Amendment is for anyone, surely it’s for the people of Brownsville. Wallet, phone, jewelry, run your pockets. Tell it to my Glock be.”
Forster frames this as a perspective he could imagine himself taking, which comes across as performative rather than lived experience.
He also writes about other societal issues. In an article about Dallas, he observes:
“Virtually everyone that lives here seems to be either overweight or obese, a reality encouraged by a state-subsidized food complex that actively contaminates everything we eat. It’s truly appalling how little media attention this crisis receives. Far more Americans died of obesity-related illness last year than from COVID. Third, there are many people who have jobs that are pointless thanks to America’s cultural fetishization of even the most unproductive forms of employment and its cultural aversion to basic redistributive social policies.”
Forster also explores public transportation, noting what he perceives as dystopian aspects of urban life, often using images of Black commuters, which can feel like a simplification of broader societal issues.
Overall, it seems Sam Forster is attempting to tackle serious topics like racism, public health, and social inequality. But the methods—disguising himself as a Black man and framing communities through selective lenses—give his work a clickbait-like quality. His posts have garnered millions of views, yet they leave a lingering question: is this insightful journalism, or a performative spectacle that overlooks the lived realities of the people he writes about?
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