American racism traps Blacks -- even in Africa. Prof. Dennis chronicles the compulsive and repetitious nature of racism and its destructive effects on peoples and societies, Dr. Dennis's observations of the twists of irony and misplaced pride on all sides will provoke a wry smile as well as dismay. During the 1990s, Liberia descended into civil war and anarchy. African-Liberian rebel groups roamed the countryside randomly killing as they vied for power. Doe was killed by a segment of these rebel groups and warlord Charles Taylor eventually became president in 1997.
"Slaves to Racism is a historical eyewitness account of the effect of racism in two countries, one black, one white, showing how American racism traps blacks even in Africa. The tales he tells illustrate the twists of irony and misplaced pride on all sides. Prof. Dennis chronicles the compulsive and repetitious nature of racism and its destructive effects on peoples and societies. During the 1990s, Liberia descended into civil war and anarchy. African-Liberian rebel groups roamed the countryside randomly killing as they vied for power. Doe was killed by a segment of these rebel groups and warlord Charles Taylor eventually became president in 1997. In 2003, Taylor was deposed by rebel groups and is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes. Despite Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's democratic election in 2005, Liberia remains in ruins as a classic failed state in Africa. The obvious question is: Why did the Negro experiment planted in Africa in 1822 fail so miserably? Liberia was doomed from the start. The sins of the master were inevitably passed on to the freed slaves who returned to Africa to 'make a fresh start.' To assert status the Americo-Liberians blindly followed the worst habits of the whites, imposing themselves as a superior class on the 'African Liberians' who had never left. With only a superficial knowledge of Western culture, they imagined the white way without truly understanding it, and made Liberia a caricature of Southern society. Prof. Dennis compares the prejudice and discrimination between groups in Liberia with the patterns he has encountered between and among blacks and whites in the United States, from blatant bigotry to the almost subliminal boundaries that still exist even among liberal communities that 'want more blacks.'"--Publisher's description.
The papers presented here offer a major challenge to previously conceived ideas about issues like slavery, racism, ethnic relations, nationalism, and cultural identity generating responses, critiques, revisions, counterarguments, and new perspectives. This volume is not only meant to address important matters of the past but also of the present and future as racism, ethnic relations, and cultural identity - with the attendant issues of human rights, freedom, and emancipation - will assume an ever-increasing significance in our globalised but ethically, socially, and culturally divided world. The volume is subdivided into three sections: «Racism and Nationalism» containing papers dealing with issues of racism and nationalism in a broader context, «Slavery: From Past to Present» exploring the concept of slavery in different literary genres and historical periods, «Cultural Identity and Ethnic Relations» dealing with cultural memory, nationalism, and relations between cultural and ethnic groups.
Exploring the disability history of slavery Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and folklore. Prescient in its analysis and rich in detail, The Mark of Slavery is a powerful addition to the intertwined histories of disability, slavery, and race.
"An eloquent and essential correction to contemporary discussions of the American working class."—The Nation From the ongoing issues of poverty, health, housing, and employment to the recent upsurge of lethal police-community relations, the black working class stands at the center of perceptions of social and racial conflict today. Journalists and public policy analysts often discuss the black poor as “consumers” rather than “producers,” as “takers” rather than “givers,” and as “liabilities” instead of “assets.” In his engrossing history, Workers on Arrival, Joe William Trotter, Jr., refutes these perceptions by charting the black working class’s vast contributions to the making of America. Covering the last four hundred years since Africans were first brought to Virginia in 1619, Trotter traces the complicated journey of black workers from the transatlantic slave trade to the demise of the industrial order in the twenty-first century. At the center of this compelling, fast-paced narrative are the actual experiences of these African American men and women. A dynamic and vital history of remarkable contributions despite repeated setbacks, Workers on Arrival expands our understanding of America’s economic and industrial growth, its cities, ideas, and institutions, and the real challenges confronting black urban communities today.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. Fifty-one original essays cover major topics from intellectual history to contemporary social controversies in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and emphasizes cultural relevance.
The essential history of the extraordinary year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand in colonial Virginia. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly -- the first gathering of a representative governing body in America -- came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America. In 1619, historian James Horn sheds new light on the year that gave birth to the great paradox of our nation: slavery in the midst of freedom. This portentous year marked both the origin of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation's greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial inequality that has afflicted America since its beginning.
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Saltwater Slavery is animated by deep research and gives us a graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade.
In this powerful memoir, Charles Dew, one of America’s most respected historians of the South--and particularly its history of slavery--turns the focus on his own life, which began not in the halls of enlightenment but in a society unequivocally committed to segregation. Dew re-creates the midcentury American South of his childhood--in many respects a boy’s paradise, but one stained by Lost Cause revisionism and, worse, by the full brunt of Jim Crow. Through entertainments and "educational" books that belittled African Americans, as well as the living examples of his own family, Dew was indoctrinated in a white supremacy that, at best, was condescendingly paternalistic and, at worst, brutally intolerant. The fear that southern culture, and the "hallowed white male brotherhood," could come undone through the slightest flexibility in the color line gave the Jim Crow mindset its distinctly unyielding quality. Dew recalls his father, in most regards a decent man, becoming livid over a black tradesman daring to use the front, and not the back, door. The second half of the book shows how this former Confederate youth and descendant of Thomas Roderick Dew, one of slavery’s most passionate apologists, went on to reject his racist upbringing and become a scholar of the South and its deeply conflicted history. The centerpiece of Dew’s story is his sobering discovery of a price circular from 1860--an itemized list of humans up for sale. Contemplating this document becomes Dew’s first step in an exploration of antebellum Richmond’s slave trade that investigates the terrible--but, to its white participants, unremarkable--inhumanity inherent in the institution. Dew’s wish with this book is to show how the South of his childhood came into being, poisoning the minds even of honorable people, and to answer the question put to him by Illinois Browning Culver, the African American woman who devoted decades of her life to serving his family: "Charles, why do the grown-ups put so much hate in the children?"
