Most Recent Book: Police Community Relations

Highlighted by the recent incident with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., police-community relations continue to be an important and relevant issue in our country. As a black child growing up in Bedford Stuyvesant/New York City and New Haven, Connecticut, Edward McClure learned to negotiate the rules of the streets as well as the moral structure of the black church. As a Community Relations Officer with the US Department of Justice, he creatively used his skills as a cultural analyst, negotiator and bridge builder. McClure’s latest book challenges the reader to think about issues in a different light, illuminating the importance of proactively creating an atmosphere of mutual respect, and fostering open and honest dialogue.

Freckles

Freckles raises the question of why Nature created humans in a rainbow of colors, from light to dark, and through some daily experiences provokes thinking and discussion around how we can get beyond "labels" and come together as the "human race." Diversity is normal, and just like Nature’s design of flowers of all colors,the human race is a mosaic of people of all colors.

We Love You Mama

We Love You Mama celebrates Mother's Day every day, and serves as a timeless guide to help family members and those working with children to analyze and appreciate the importance of Mother, who gives birth, nurtures her children to maturity, and then allows them to move on. The author espouses that to understand Mother Nature is to understand mothering.

The Freckles Concept

The book Freckles started from a simple question of the author, “Why are you so dark-skinned and I’m so light-skinned? My teacher told me you’re one big freckle.” Mr. McClure starts with a clear explanation that whether light, medium or dark, we are all part of Nature’s mosaic – each of us has some degree of melanin. Just as flowers are red, blue, yellow, or pink, the diversity of Nature’s design includes people of all colors.

Each of Edward McClure’s books – Freckles, We Love You Mama, and Police Community Relations – starts from a nature-centric view. The books are meant to stimulate thinking and dialogue about how everyone’s interpersonal social and business transactions are influenced by their vision of nature. We all fall somewhere along a continuum of seeing ourselves in harmony with the diversity of nature or in an antagonistic relationship. The extent to which we see ourselves as a part of that whole affects how we view our obligations to each other as well as to a higher authority, whether in spirit or in the secular world. That vision is translated into how we handle relationships in our families, communities, on our jobs, as a nation and in the world.

Mr. McClure’s books are meant to stimulate discussion around public policy, civil rights obligations, race and diversity from top leadership to the average person on the street.