Book Description
Written by highly acclaimed historian Gary B. Nash, this book presents an interpretive account of the interactions between Native Americans, African Americans, and Euroamericans during the colonial and revolutionary eras. It reveals the crucial interconnections between North America's many peoples—illustrating the ease of their interactions in the first two centuries of European and African presence—to develop a fuller, deeper understanding of the nation's underpinnings. Coverage explores the interaction of many peoples at all levels of society, from various cultural backgrounds and across the centuries; African-Americans as active participants in the cultural process, drawing upon the work of African and African-American historians; the origins of racism, tracing the development of racial attitudes and the mixing of people across racial boundaries; Indians as much more than victims, reaching beyond the Europeans that "discovered" North America to explore the society that had already been here for thousands of years; profiles of the various European colonizers, examining French, Dutch, and Spanish settlers and comparing their treatment of enslaved Africans and Native Americans with that of the English. For those interested in Colonial American History.
Customer Reviews:
Don't believe the poor reviews.......2005-03-25
First of all, I can see where some would find this book boring- that is if the reader has no interest in American History. But this begs the questions- why would such a person pick up this book to begin with? For class maybe, but I imagine every student of history has read a difficult book or two. This one simply doesn't qualify. As far as books I've had to read for school, this was pretty easy to get through.
This book is not a primary source. If you are looking for such a thing, look elsewhere. This is a well-researched account of life on the early American frontier, and the interaction between different cultures.
Someone makes the claim further down that this book makes the Europeans look really bad. I disagree. This book does a fine job of looking at this time period from multiple view points. There are moments when the Europeans will come off badly, but almost any group has it's moments throughout history where it's not going to be a shining example of how to live your life. Aside from which, as this book points out, the Europeans are not one single group and the different European groups looked at within this book (The English, Dutch, French, and Spanish) all had different relationships with the various indigenous peoples of what would become the eastern United States. This book also takes a look at slavery and the origins of that horrid institution in the Americas. It is often fascinating reading and certainly doesn't deserve the one star reviews it's received.
So boring!.......2003-02-25
Like a few others on here I could not read this book. It did help me fall asleep though, lol. Anyone who's looking into reading this book, Id suggest checking it out of the library before you buy it.
..........2002-09-04
This is by far the worst book I have ever needed to read for school ever. When I attempted to read this book, I must've fallen asleep at least 10 times and I haven't even got past the first 2 chapters. I have no idea what my teacher was thinking when he saw this book. If it was a choice, I would choose negative 5 stars for this waste of paper and ink. It is, hands down, a boring book with absolutely not point at all except to critizice the immigration of the early Europeans. It almost seems like Nash couldn't give about the Europeans coming over here. Well, I would be quite upset if they didn't come over here, unless it would have prevented the publishing of his redundant, afwul book.
Exploring Nash's argument.......2002-02-05
RWB by Nash attempts to present a more accurate picture of colonial society. However, in the end, I believe Nash fails to do any real justice to his examination of this society's underpinnings. Essentially, Nash abandons this pursuit very quickly into the book and deals mostly with the facts of the era. Additionally, Nash's views seem all to decidedly Neo-Progressive. He simply will not concede a point or discuss a point, which does not fit this mindset. Another perhaps more disturbing issue is Nash's like of primary sources throughout his work. The majority of his sites are from other historians' works. But before you think of moving on and passing this work up understand a few basic things about it. First, by no means am I questioning Nash's historical ability or accuracy. Second, this work provides a novice student of history and excellent foundation to start to build an understanding of the Colonial Period on. Moreover, Nash's analysis though I find fault with it is still holds water in the historical community through refinements and redefinitions of his point. I suggest that any one seeking to get a handle on the Colonial period or start a study of this era should start here. However, do not read this work and take it as anything other then a meager beginning; instead, use it as a stepping stone to branch out into other works by Winthrop Jordan, William Cronon, Edmund Morgan, Bernard Bailyn, and Laurel Ulrich.
A View From All Angles.......2000-08-29
Gary Nash scratches beneath the surface in his analysis of the deomographics of colonial America. He skillfuly reveals the interaction between Europeans, native Americans, and Africans in the years preceding the American Revolution. Nash brings an important missing element to the mix by exploring how native American and African cultures affected European society, offering a refreshing look race relations. For once, readers are given a glimpse of the proud and unshakable cultures of these two exploited peoples.
Red, White & Black compares race relations between several different cultures and regions. Nash not only spouts statistics; he helps the reader to understand why certain peoples fought and why they formed alliances during this volatile period in our history.
Book Description
"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."
So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.
Customer Reviews:
An American Treasure.......2007-06-29
This is one of the most important books on America and American history, culture and citizenship. It would benefit the world if it were incorporated into public education. Someone said that nations are judged by their art and this book examines that subject superlatively. This study of the blues examines the evolving cosmology of the Africans and their journey and creation: the blues, one of the singular most powerful beauties of America. He shows how from the blues came all and embraced all other peoples and cultures. Baraka's ability to live the thoughts of the originators enables us to understand the profoundity of their sorrow and sublimity of their joy.
gone where the Southern cross the yella dog.......2007-02-22
The other day a friend rashly claimed that art and music were equally hard to describe in words. I asked him to tell me about a certain painting of Picasso's. He did, but claimed it wasn't accurate. "OK," I said, "you're right, but now tell me about Mozart's Jupiter Symphony." He opened his mouth, closed it, looked at me, and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean." Writing a book about the blues would be equally hard, it seems to me. So, LeRoi Jones did what he could, back in 1963, to tie the indescribable to the more concrete. He wrote a social history of African-Americans in the USA through the prism of music or---maybe on the principle of red and yellow tile floors (are they red with yellow designs or yellow with red designs ?)---he wrote a book on African-American music through the prism of social history. It is one of the most important books on American music (and American society) that you can find. It has stood the test of time. He begins from the Africans who came to North America as slaves bearing very different cultures, confronted by an absolutely different view of the world emanating from their new masters. Here he tries to show how African music became transformed into African-AMERICAN music and then American. He continues then up through the generations of slavery, to Emancipation, migration to the cities, World War I, the Depression, World War II and the bebop age of the Fifties. The book is pre-Civil Rights movement, pre-Martin Luther King. Jones may have looked down on the NAACP and its allies as "white liberal supported organizations", I'm not sure, but they don't appear. The times are symbolized by the use of "Negro" throughout. I agree, the tome is dated, but don't reject it, don't pooh-pooh the man. This is a very intelligent, very worthwhile book. Anyone, particularly from outside the USA, who wants to know the history of African-American music within its social environment ought still to read BLUES PEOPLE. He writes, "If Negro music can be seen to be the result of certain attitudes, certain specific ways of thinking about the world (and only ultimately about the ways in which music can be made), then the basic hypothesis of this book is understood." [p.153] Jones goes to great lengths to get to the bottom of those attitudes and thoughts.
My main criticism, apart from the fact that history dictates that we must be left a half century behind contemporary realities, is that though Jones obviously knew and loved the blues and jazz and all the various styles ( if not swing), his approach is coldly academic, highly dispassionate. He may criticize people who tried to make money, he may downplay all those who "abandoned" their roots, but my disappointment is that there is nothing of himself in the work barring a few mentions of his family. He does not share his enthusiasm. Music is beauty after all. I am sure he wanted the book to be taken as a serious essay, which it is. But in keeping himself removed from the discussion, being so analytic and professional in the style of the day, he has robbed us "readers of the future" of many insights.
African-American experience in the USA expressed itself most particularly in the blues, only later did that musical mode become part of the general American culture, often watered down, sometimes imitated by those who didn't wish to fit in or who wished to cash in. When conditions have changed, when the black middle class has entered mainstream America, and the urban underclass is wrapped up in hip-hop, gangsta rap culture, which is relentlessly commercialized by the powerful media, talking about the blues may seem a matter for historians or ethnomusicologists. Still, BLUES PEOPLE resonates strongly if we try to understand where we have been. As for where we are going---that old line sums it up---we're goin where the Southern cross the yella dog.
Blues People.......2005-09-22
This is a really interesting look at the evolution of black culture through the lense of music. Some of the author's opinions about later music (50's-60's) may seem out of touch to today's readers, but overall it is well worth reading.
The Best Starting Point.......2005-08-24
I actually purchased the first paperback edition this book a long time ago, and I learned that it had been out of print for quite some time. It was a time when I was a casual listener of blues and jazz, and didn't think about the roots of the music I was listening to. The book was interesting enough, but it didn't have information about more contemporary stuff, as it was printed in 1963.
Recently, I found this book in the upper shelves of my library, having completely forgotten about it in spite of my infatuation with the blues for the better part of the last two decades. It was a most welcome surprise for me, as it contained a compact but comprehensive introduction to the time period from the first Africans came to America to the 1920s when their music was first recorded, and laid the groundwork to how this music evolved in a sociological context. The rural lifestyle, the reflections of the exodus from the south on the music and subsequent refined, urban sound are discussed in this framework.
Although it would not really appeal to the casual reader and listener, "Blues People" is invaluable for the serious blues and jazz fan for setting the music into the general context of social life and external effects that made this music what it is today.
Very honest&breaks all chains.......2003-01-16
this book not only puts the music into perspective but also the struggle that still goes on too this day.very upfront&honest about problems that still linger.it traces the journey&challenges it's reader too better understand the reason for the whys??one of the best Books that I have ever read from start too finish.
Book Description
Over the last quarter-century hip-hop has grown from an esoteric form of African-American expression to become the dominant form of American popular culture. Today, Snoop Dogg shills for Chrysler and white kids wear Fubu, the black-owned label whose name stands for “For Us, By Us.” This is not the first time that black music has been appreciated, adopted, and adapted by white audiences—think jazz, blues, and rock—but Jason Tanz, a white boy who grew up in the suburban Northwest, says that hip-hop’s journey through white America provides a unique window to examine the racial dissonance that has become a fact of our national life. In such culture-sharing Tanz sees white Americans struggling with their identity, and wrestling (often unsuccessfully) with the legacy of race.
To support his anecdotally driven history of hip-hop’s cross-over to white America, Tanz conducts dozens of interviews with fans, artists, producers, and promoters, including some of hip-hop’s most legendary figures—such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D; white rapper MC Serch; and former Yo! MTV Raps host Fab 5 Freddy. He travels across the country, visiting “nerdcore” rappers in Seattle, who rhyme about Star Wars conventions; a group of would-be gangstas in a suburb so insulated it’s called “the bubble”; a break-dancing class at the upper-crusty New Canaan Tap Academy; and many more. Drawing on the author’s personal experience as a white fan as well as his in-depth knowledge of hip-hop’s history, Other People’s Property provides a hard-edged, thought-provoking, and humorous snapshot of the particularly American intersection of race, commerce, culture, and identity.
Customer Reviews:
OPP: A journey through rap, race and the making of a cultural moment.......2007-07-16
Hip-hop music, what some of us still think of as "rap," isn't easy to sort out these days. It seems to have invaded all aspects of life, even in the seemely far-removed and lilly-white suburbs.
So what counts today as "authentic" hip-hop? Is it necessarily black? If it's commercialized to identify with a product, say Sprite, does that make the rapper a "sellout?"
And if you're white, suburban and, say, over 35, what is hip-hop culture all about?
These, it turns out, are exceedingly complicated questions.
They cut deeply to the root of what was once a raw expression of black realism to a place where, even within hip-hop, debates rage. But Jason Tanz, a rap-loving white kids from suburban Tacoma, Wash., has some surprising and fascinating answers for you in this thoughtful book with a perfect title -- Other People's Property.
Tanz takes us on an illuminating journey from rap's emergence among graffiti artists and break dancers on the streets of the Bronx, through his own experience as a sometimes guilt-ridden rap music lover cocooned in safe, white suburia, to today's wildy diverse and commercially bankable hip-hop scene.
Tanz personal story will, in turns, make you cringe, laugh and cheer. But his look at rap's varied charecters is what will keep you turning the pages.
There's Grandmaster Flash's Rahiem, an icon of rap's roots on New York City's rough streets, now a "Legends of Hip-Hop" tour guide busing white fans through the Bronx for $75 a pop. There's Papa Rich, an authentic NYC street performer who teaches break dancing to the wealthy suburban children of Connecticut's soccer moms. There's Tha Pumpsta, an earnest white rap lover who misses entirely the irony when he DJ's "kill whitie" parties in the Virginia suburbs. And there's MC Frontalot, a comical hip hop anti-hero who excites nerdy white fans with his brand of "Geeksta" rap.
Tanz travels to Green Bay to explore a rap radio experiment in one of America's whitest cities and to a garage studio in suburban L.A. where a group of goofy white losers play act the part of black gangsters.
More than anything, this is a smart book. The anecdotes carry the story, but Tanz peppers in sharp analysis and displays a deep understanding of the delicate balances -- and sometimes blatant contradictions -- of race, culture, commerce and sincerity (or a lack of it) in hip-hop.
And if you ever wondered how we got here, to an America where hip-hop music and style dominate the mainstream, Tanz's book takes you through it all with both unblinking criticism and fond affection.
In a brilliant chapter on the marketing of hip-hop, Tanz concludes rap has has the potential, perhaps untapped, to be a cultural bridge between white and black America:
"Inner city black kids, seeking a modicum of respect and financial security, create a point of entry into the commerical world that has ignored them for so long. We white kids, drawn to the implicit escape that their music and lifestyles represented, bought it. Hip-hop is where we meet, we on our way out of the system, they on their way in. Is hip-hop a door that swings open between our two cultures, letting us mix freely with each other, or is it a revolving door, endlessly spinning, allowing us to pass in opposite directions without ever actually touching?"
A hard-hitting analysis.......2007-04-07
OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY; A SHADOW HISTORY OF HIP HOP IN WHITE AMERICA could also have appeared in our 'Social Issues' section but is reviewed here for its focus on the obstacles that stand between producers and consumers of rap music: a very different approach than your usual music book covering the history of rap and the evolution of rapsters. It blends a personal story of growing up in a racially divided America with cultural analysis and music insights: while this approach might defy easy categorization, it does make for a hard-hitting analysis which will reach not only college-level collections strong in social issues and music, but the general-interest public and libraries with holdings strong in ethnic issues debates.
Very impressed!.......2007-02-07
I picked up this book because I like hip hop, but didn't really understand the incredibly interesting larger cultural and social context in which it arose and operates. Having read my fair share of books on jazz, I was concerned because I know authors can take great art forms and turn them into boring academic treastises. Thankfully, Jason Tanz has richly and engagingly captured an inner city art form and its often uncomfortable, yet strangely symbiotic, relationship with white middle America. Norman Mailer, Thoreau and Eminem all make an appearance as Tanz entertainingly traces the origins of hip-hop and the way it has influenced, but also been subverted by, the white audience and market.
Book Description
Written by highly acclaimed historian Gary B. Nash, this book presents an interpretive account of the interactions between Native Americans, African Americans, and Euroamericans during the colonial and revolutionary eras. It reveals the crucial interconnections between North America's many peoples– illustrating the ease of their interactions in the first two centuries of European and African presence–to develop a fuller, deeper understanding of the nation's underpinnings.
Book Description
In this unflinching look at white supremacy, George Lipsitz argues that racism is a matter of interests as well as attitudes, a problem of property as well as pigment. Above and beyond personal prejudice, whiteness is a structured advantage that produces unfair gains and unearned rewards for whites while imposing impediments to asset accumulation, employment, housing, and health care for minorities. Reaching beyond the black/white binary, Lipsitz shows how whiteness works in respect to Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.
Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. He also analyzes the centrality of whiteness to U.S. culture, and perhaps most importantly, he identifies the sustained and perceptive critique of white privilege embedded in the radical black tradition. This revised and expanded edition also includes an essay about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on working class Blacks in New Orleans, whose perpetual struggle for dignity and self determination has been obscured by the city's image as a tourist party town.
Customer Reviews:
Cultural Struggles Produced and Encaptured by Whiteness.......2006-12-05
George Lipsitz's Possessive Investment in Whiteness exposes the identity politics of whiteness in the US state and society concealed under two prevalent views about racism: racism has been overthrown after the civil rights era, and invisibility of overt racism proves this point. Reversing the problem of racism towards identification of whiteness, Lipsitz reviews major aspects of US state, society and culture, such as immigration, education, law, housing, war, art, etc., in order to reveal the pervasiveness of white identity politics and insidious predominance over liberalism in the country.
To start with Lipsitz's usage of the concept of identity politics, he both `clears' the term from euphoria as well as maintaining it for subversive political knowledge and alliances. According to Lipsitz, identity politics is "a political project aimed at creating identities based on politics rather than politics based on identities." (67) Generally confusion stems from the birth of identity politics, the groups who entered to the political sphere by defining their identities and trying to reclaim them especially through rewriting the history. However, identity politics is not always practiced by self-defined, identity-conscious groups; whites who seemingly do not intervene in politics can indeed be the very practicers, as well as beneficiaries, of these politics. Lipsitz refers to Michael Omi's distinction between referential racism and inreferential racism; the latter, is "a system of structured inequality that allows white people to remain self-satisfied and smug about their own innocence." (46) "Americans encouraged to remain true to an identity that provides them resources, power and opportunities" (vii)
Yet, Lipsitz also counters two main criticisms against identity politics; against essentialism argument, the situated knowledge argument takes place, which, together with historical experiences and current struggles, determines the main shape and agenda of the identity politics (69). Secondly, against its fragmentary forms and egoistic agendas rather that fighting together against social inequality and injustice, Lipsitz not only provides examples of diverse interethnic alliances, but also contends that "we can be unified eventually only if we examine honestly and critically the things that divide us in the present." (58)
Lipsitz's work is crucial in establishing linkages between cultural realm and economics and state. His work is an exposure and refusal of the cultural explanations for structural social problems, while at the same time identification of the problems within the framework of liberal individualism in a Western capitalist society. Demonization of black people for their poverty stems from the illusion of present non-racist moment as well as the successful concealing of conservatives and neo-liberals of the collapse of the welfare state, the devastating consequences of tax regulations, urban renewal programs, segregatory practices in education, nepotism in hiring, etc. Similarly, immigrants are degraded in various cultural ways in order to deny them citizenship albeit paradoxically preservation of their roles as `illegal' workers. Another example, the harsh deportations of Asian-Americans have utilized cultural ideologies such as nationalism, patriarchy, and heterosexuality in justifying the war and fostering racial discrimination. Here Lipsitz reminds us "for more than twenty years, reassertions of nationalism in the United States have taken place in the context of an ever-increasing internationalization of commerce, communication, and culture." (74)
Lipsitz uses the "consumer citizenship" as the name of the neoliberal state's imagination of its subject. Consumerist citizens seek the protection of their consumer power, on the individual basis, and the expense of the others. Thus, public needs are replaced by private desires, so as to enable the continuity of the inequality through private means of accumulation and inheritance. When capitalism is ingrained in an ideology of the state, this notion of the subject is not new at all. What Lipsitz emphasizes is the backlash in public mind and the idea of public goods in the post-civil rights era, contrary to the common view.
Lipsitz also draws on the uses of cultural productions against the social injustices and its masking power. For example Gilroy's concept of `diasporic intimacy' points to the various agency formation processes of aggrieved groups drawing upon their home-based cultural reservoirs. These include not only remembrance and collectivity, but also creativity and innovation for social change. Artistic, intellectual and other forms of cultural productions, as Gilroy, West and Goldberg demonstrates, are the ways through which situated knowledges and experiences of the aggrieved people are transformed into constructive powers.
Lipsitz's work is peculiar not for its theoretical uniqueness, nor the thoroughness of its subject matters, but rather the broadness of its audience, its solid ground that almost speaks for itself, and the author's mode of speech that is neither dramatic nor arrogant (of his rightfulness). Moreover, the work is strengthened by the illuminative use of the empirical data and legal matters, not as matters of facts in themselves, but as a complementary to social and cultural history. It is like a pocket-book for an activist.
Amazon.com
Written by a pair of social scientists--Stephan Thernstrom is a professor of history at Harvard; his wife, Abigail, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute--America in Black and White is a comprehensive look at how much life has changed (and remained the same) for black Americans. The authors conclude that, while much remains to be done, life has gotten measurably better for blacks since the civil rights movement. For example, only a quarter of black families live below the poverty line, as compared with more than three-quarters of black families in 1940; similarly, where 60 percent of working black women were domestics in 1940, today a majority are white-collar workers. In what will likely prove to be the most controversial of their conclusions, the authors argue that, while many problems remain, traditional civil rights remedies, such as affirmative action and racial preferences, will not solve those problems.
Book Description
In a book destined to become a classic, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom present important new information about the positive changes that have been achieved and the measurable improvement in the lives of the majority of African-Americans. Supporting their conclusions with statistics on education, earnings, and housing, they argue that the perception of serious racial divisions in this country is outdated -- and dangerous.
Customer Reviews:
The Most Comprehensive Study of U.S. Race Relations.......2007-07-14
It's clear the Thernstroms set out to create a definitive work. Despite the claim that Americans struggle with discussions about race, they argue the opposite is true and it seems we can't stop talking about it. Race is the focus of our media, entertainment, political discussions, economic policy, education policy, etc. What they believe is missing is the `lack of analytical rigor' applied towards these issues. They believe the discussion has gotten muddled with dogma, clever rhetoric, and unproven assumptions, which has led to tremendous confusion and frustration. Exceptionally well researched and written with `analytical rigor', passion and sensitivity, the Thernstroms have produced a work that has cleared the fog on many racial issues ranging from housing, civil rights legislation, education, job discrimination, voting, crime, the black middle class, etc. This work is also highly qualified to stand the test of time.
Some may be put off by the authors right of center analysis. They question the merits of affirmative action, proportional representation, and the degree to which racism continues to hinder blacks. This work is less incendiary than Dinesh D'Souza's `The End of Racism' (which is still very good), however, this work is highly concentrated with statistics and hard data that are difficult to dismiss. They dispel many ideological shibboleths, which can be painful, but is also very encouraging. America has gone through extraordinary steps to move beyond the sins of its past. There is little doubt that the Thernstroms have a sincere interest in helping America move towards becoming a genuinely color-blind nation.
Good but not as good as "No Excuses".......2005-06-04
Because I had enjoyed "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" I read the Thernstrom's previous book. "America in Black and White" provides a well-researched historical, contemporary, albeit conservative perspective on black-white race relations in America. In "No Excuses" they held back their strong opinions at least while presenting the information. However, in this one I thought that the Thernstroms allowed their opinions to interfere with the presentation of the prodigious factual information at their disposal. However, I still recommend the book because the data presented is worth having.
Slightly to the right of center look at race relations.......2003-12-09
Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's "America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible" charts a different course from many of the scholarly books written about racial relations in the United States today. The authors agree that the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s was a resounding success, opening many doors to African-Americans as a result of the systematic dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the South. This book is necessary, claim the authors, because the ideas that originally drove the civil rights movement have since drifted into dangerous terrain. According to this book, Martin Luther King's message of one nation where all people will be judged by their individual merits and not skin color has become a land where blacks and whites are once again moving into separate camps based on race. The introduction of affirmative action programs and other racial social policies does not solve divisive problems but instead creates new racial barriers. Moreover, media and civil rights proponents today discuss black problems as though that segment of the population has made little progress. The authors insist that there are still nagging difficulties to overcome, but that a "lack of analytic rigor" leads to false perceptions about how far blacks have actually risen in society. Therefore, the authors rely heavily on statistical tables, charts, and polls to prove their arguments.
The first section of "America in Black and White" outlines the history of the odious conditions blacks faced in the American South and the resulting rise of the civil rights movement. The Thernstroms describe southern society in all of its squalor: the crushing poverty faced by both whites and blacks, the lackluster drive towards industrialization that kept many members of the population toiling in fields and small towns, pathetic levels of state spending on education for blacks, and the biases of the criminal justice system. Relying heavily on Gunnar Myrdal's groundbreaking study of race in America, the authors correctly detail the host of social structures aligned against the African-American population. For example, blacks rarely received decent treatment in the legal system because police departments run by whites often failed to protect the black citizenry from criminals. Moreover, the legal system in the South considered crimes committed against blacks secondary to outrages perpetrated against white members of society. Subsequent sections of the book take an in depth look at black progress in various social arenas from the 1970s onward, arenas such as education, politics, law, crime, and many others.
The absence of job opportunities, poor education, lack of protections in the courts, and segregation policies in the South led African-Americans to increasingly move north. The first migration came during World War I. A second, even larger migration occurred in the 1940s and 1950s. Blacks in the North did not have to deal with segregation, but did experience racism in housing and certain sectors of the job market. Better conditions in the northern states led to an increasing drive for an end to Jim Crow in the South. The authors argue that federal legislation destroying segregation in the 1960s also contained the seeds of future divisions. The Thernstroms see a sinister change of direction with the release of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family in 1965. Moynihan's remedy for the problems faced by black citizens, echoed by Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Howard University the same year, moved beyond providing for equal opportunity to call for "equal results" as well. This argument indirectly endorsed the idea of affirmative action and social entitlement programs based specifically on race. For the authors, the problems inherent in this approach are clear: to formulate policy giving special treatment to one race is just as racist as passing laws subjugating specific races.
Perhaps the most interesting section of "America in Black and White," and probably the most controversial, concerns the authors' claims that African-American social advancement was greatest immediately before the rise of the civil rights movement. During the 1940s and 1950s, the authors write, blacks surged forward in nearly all areas of American society. This growth was far from perfect, but in the arenas of education, economics, politics, and sports blacks saw remarkable gains. Almost half of the African-Americans who lived in poverty moved out of that classification during this period. Education levels for blacks, while lagging behind whites, still grew significantly compared to earlier eras in American history. This period also saw the integration of professional baseball and basketball, opening up an entirely new aspect of society to black advancement. African-Americans showed signs of vigor at the polls, as a court case outlawing white southern primaries and greater movement to the North allowed more blacks to vote than ever before. Obviously, there were still many problems to overcome: black wages still lagged behind white levels, education was still a problem, and the South still practiced vigorous discrimination against its black population. But African-Americans did make progress, and this chapter effectively illustrates that modern day claims about the complete lack of black improvement before the civil rights movements of the 1960s are patently false.
The greatest problem with this analysis of black gains during the 1940s and 1950s is that it undercuts the need and influence of activism as a force for change. If African-Americans were achieving so much, why did the civil rights movement appear on the scene? It may well be a case of a segment of the population finding some success and quickly wanting more, thereby accelerating the growth and scope of that change. But the Thernstroms spend more time discussing the overarching factors-political, economic, and social-that contributed to two decades of growth instead of focusing on what everyday people were doing on a local level to bring about advancement. Following this argument to its logical conclusion makes a reader suspect that twenty years of gradual progress would have toppled Jim Crow laws without the assistance of any sort of social activism.
The moralists of the Right.......2003-09-09
This book renders a thoughtful and persuasive treatment of the facts of racial divisions in the United States. The problems encountered by the Thernstroms in propounding on this subject can be summed up in what one anti-reveiwer on this page has written in order to smear another reveiwer with whose opinion he apparently disagrees. To wit, the anti-reveiwer does nothing more than cite a case brought by the CFTC against the son of the targeted reveiwer whom he's attempting to marginalize, much as those who don't agree with the Thernstroms' attempt to marginalize them; and with the same type of faulty facts and sloppy research, just as in the instant case I cite.
It's unfortunate that the debate of such momentous and substantive issues, such as the racial problems addressed by the Thernstroms, cannot take place in more temperate tones. It would also be more helpful if reveiwers would focus on and respond to the facts presented in this book, on the merits, rather than opposing them because they affront the complainants belief system.
This book reflects some sobering and instructive work. Let's hope the more emotionally balanced among us can use it to further the goal of racial harmony rather than to continue being divisive.
A Comprehensive Analysis of American Race Relations..........2003-07-25
Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's book is the most comprehensive survey of American race relations that I have ever read. The authors present important new information about the positive changes and improvements in the lives of African-Americans as a whole. They go on to argue, with tons of statistics to back them up, that the perception of serious racial divisions in our country are outdated, exaggerated, and dangerous. The reason for this, they show, is political: "it nurtures the mix of black anger and white shame and guilt that sustains the race-based social policies implemented since the late 1960s." Proponents of this status quo are afraid that calling attention, for example, to the rapidly-growing black middle class, "... would invite public complacency and undercut support for the affirmative action regime."
I was especially enthralled by the authors' analysis of the "War on Poverty" programs of the 1960's, particularly the expansion of welfare, and their horrifically negative effects on generations of black families since. Not only did the "War on Poverty" make things worse for the poor, but the expansion of welfare to include unwed women and children fostered a lifestyle of dependency and irresponsible behavior, and precipitated the downward trend in two-parent black families, that has left three generations of black Americans in dire straits ever since.
Liberals, especially black liberals, are terrified of books like this, and rightfully so. This book undercuts the blacks-as-perennial-victims/American-society-as-forever-racist rhetoric that keeps the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons, with support from the liberal media, in business. Along with the works of John McWhorter, Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell, this books serves as a much-needed wake-up call on the issue of race; a cold dose of reality that no doubt makes most liberals cringe.
Average customer rating:
- Fantastic!
- How Native Americans Responded to the Westward Movement
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To Be The Main Leaders Of Our People (Native American Series (East Lansing, Mich.).)
Rebecca, Kugel
Manufacturer: Michigan State University Press
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ASIN: 0870134310 |
Book Description
In the spring of 1868, people from several Ojibwe villages located along the upper Mississippi River were relocated to a new reservation at White Earth, more than 100 miles to the west. In many public declarations that accompanied their forced migration, these people appeared to embrace the move, as well as their conversion to Christianity and the new agrarian lifestyle imposed on them. Beneath this surface piety and apparent acceptance of change, however, lay deep and bitter political divisions that were to define fundamental struggles that shaped Ojibwe society for several generations. In this volume, the Ojibwe "speak for themselves," as their words were recorded by government officials, Christian missionaries, fur traders, soldiers, lumbermen, homesteaders, and journalists. While they were nearly always recorded in English translation, Ojibwe thoughts, perceptions, concerns, and even humor clearly emerge. To Be The Main Leaders of Our People expands the parameters of how oral traditions can be used in historical writing and sheds new light on a complex, but critical, series of events in ongoing relations between Native and non-Native people.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic!.......2001-05-14
This is one of the most compelling stories that I have read on the Indians experience with the Europeans. My son brought this home, it was one of his college books, and I could not put it down after I picked it up.
How Native Americans Responded to the Westward Movement.......2000-11-28
Just briefly, I am an historian so perhaps I am not the general reader. But I found Rebecca Kugel's account of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) struggle to adapt to the rush of Euro-American settlement utterly absorbing. It makes the choices faced by Native Americans, and the factional divisions among themselves, clearer than anything else I've read.
I am impressed enough with the book that I intend to use it as a textbook in my college class next semester. We'll see if my Minnesota students are equally impressed.
Average customer rating:
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American Indian Chronology: Chronologies of the American Mosaic
Phillip M. White
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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ASIN: 0313338205 |
Book Description
The rich history of the Native American brims with agriculture, hunting, crafts, music, culinary arts, storytelling, religious culture, battle prowess, medicine, and mythology. It is also a history marked by bloodshed and battle, conquest, violence, religious conflict, disease, and starvation. American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. From early Spanish and Portuguese exploration to the surrender of Geronimo, from the decline of the fur trade to the Wounded Knee massacre, from smallpox epidemics and broken treaties to the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, from Tecumseh's rebellion to the Native American Church, from the first journey across the Bering land bridge to the occupation of Alcatraz Island, the Chronology presents a fascinating look into the sweeping changes of history, wars and conflicts, government policies, social progress, and cultural changes affecting peoples on all sides in the New World. American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. Entries are organized by dates and subdivided into over 35 categories, including:
Agriculture and Farming
Death and Burial
Exploration
Legislation
Arts, Crafts, and Music
Treaties
Wars and Conflicts
Legends and Storytelling
Education
Civil Rights and Protests This concise format makes a clear and accessible student research tool, supplemented with primary source sidebars, useful illustrations, a glossary, bibliography--including print and electronic sources--and index. With updates through 2005, this chronology is the most current in its field, bringing the modern struggles of American Indians into the 21st century.
Book Description
Black and white culture has been blending and colliding in America for hundreds of years. In the 1700s, black slaves discovered their masters' Bibles and found in them a seditious faith of their own. In the 1920s, young white men fell in love with New Orleans jazz and created an underground of cultural dissidents. In the 1970s, black style began its takeover of the sports world and made Dr. J and Michael Jordan the idols of millions.
Drawing on original research and daring new interpretations of crucial events in American history, author Stephan Talty paints a portrait of a lost America: one in which musicians, writers, and ordinary people led the nation to a deeper understanding of the strangers on the other side of town.
Customer Reviews:
The Song of America sung in a Strange New Future Key.......2004-01-24
Mr. Talty has written an intelligent, wonderfully lyrical book (like a 1950s riff in two-four time). If six stars were allowed I would give it to this book.
This romp through history teems with the optimistic sounds, rhythms, smells and tastes of all we have come to understand as the proverbial American "melting pot." It is a profoundly uplifting and optimistic read. It is an essential side of the untold-American story, but not the only one. Unfortunately it is as clear to us (the reader)-as it is to Mr. Talty that he has sampled only the best of America-the mélange that is, to our collective dismay, but the fringe on top.
Thus, it is so very easy to be seduced by this book. It is so well written. It reflects so much of the author's passion and love for this country. It is so intelligently thought-out. In short, it is wishful thinking at its delicious best. I love the place in the heart and soul from which this book sprung. At some point in our lives, most of us share that wonderfully optimistic out look on America. We want the best for our country and we also want only to think the best about it. We all yearn for this 400-year old experiment to succeed.
So it is easy to be seduced by Mr. Talty's book. Indeed we want to be seduced by it. And he wants to seduce us. But if one is not careful, he may be completely taken in by it and begin to think for instance that had Dennis Rodman and Madonna had kids their Mulattos off-springs too would have inherited the earth. We might forget that the hiphoppers are also rebelling against Louis Armstrong's grinning teeth. We might think that Elvis and Little Richard were some kind of ambassador for race-mixing. But alas it is not so! It is all a self-fulfilling mirage. There is a deeper realty underlying rock-and-roll, Jazz, hip-hop and black ghetto pimps.
It is the reality of that side of America born with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation"-which the author curiously failed to include in his very selective romp through American history.No one is more aware than the author that his romp--however lyrical and well stated it may be--is but the fringe sitting atop a burgeoning "rotten egg." One that seems always just one step away from bursting at the seam. One that after 400 years still has ("soft") white superiority--an epithet that remains the unwritten subtext of his book--written all over it. But the author cannot be blamed for that any more than a fish can be blamed for swimming in polluted waters.
Of course, for cosmetic reasons (reasons of collective denial) America's ideology of racism is no longer called that any more. There are any numbers of other euphemisms, recycled, as times require, that serve that purpose-such as: multiculturalism, color blind society, paper equality, "mulatto America," etc., ad infinitum.
The one in vogue today is "Social Darwinism," a generic name for "Republican and Democratic Conservatism." Social Darwinism is a "stand in" for snow white's famous "mirror, mirror on the wall kind of whiteness." The kind that says if America is to remain a white nation (as surely it must, at all cost) it must become a "Zero-Sum Society," a "Winner-Take-All Society," the "Cheating Society," the "Cynical Society," and the "Unconscious Civilization."
If not, the mirror on the wall is likely to answer: You are still the fairest in the land... but they (those Mulattoes, and reds, and browns, and blacks, and especially those yellows) are gaining on you fast.
Why is it that one half of the contribution to our national-race-mixing salsa--that part made by whites themselves--never quites gets discussed openly until its too late? [Like Strom Thursmond's mulatto daughter? Why leave discussing whiteness to the David Dukes of the world and to the "Turner Diaries, etc.?] Why is it that "Whiteness" is either the only conceptual reality, the only subjectivity, the only worldview or it has to remain a phantom in the background--the invisible substrate, the neutral background that pulls all the strings but cannot be seen except just beyond the shadows?
There is another problem with Mr. Talty's book. It is a technical one. Compared to England, or Germany, or almost any other advanced Western society, THERE IS NO "Mulatto America." Fifty per cent of Brits are intermarried with their non-white minorities. In America, even in 2004, it is still less that 5%. And although 25% of whites have some black blood and 50% of blacks and Indians with some white blood, it is all as a result of white male-on-black female rape during slavery and the later "passing for white" that was required by these Mulatto off-springs--not as a result of contemporary race mixing-which incidentally is so minimal compared to other Western nations that it has raised concerns among sociologists.
So, where is this mulatto America that Mr. Talty speaks of?
While all this is more a critique of the context of the book, than the book itself, it reflects how deeply this book can affect one's thinking, and how much it reflects America's yearning, no matter the color.
In sum, this is a heroic effort no matter how the book affects you. Please buy it. You won't be disappointed. I guarantee it.
As a parting shot, may I suggest that we need Mr. Talty's mind, passion and superb writing skills-working behind the screen of racism as well as in front of it--if we are to ever prick the poison in the rotten egg that lies beneath. Hopefully his next book will be about what lies beneath the fringe-for that too-perhaps even more profoundly and certainly more frightfully--is also America.
When humpty-dumpty is finally toppled from the wall, only then will we be able to sing a new song of America in a truly Mulatto key.
Iconoclastic views on the American experience.......2003-07-21
The book gets off to a great start with iconoclastic tales of antebellum life in the United States. Chapter 1 covers American 'White' slavery, something that needs a lot more attention. Page 1 includes a photo of an adorable 'White' girl of about 8 whose freedom was purchased by abolishionists in the 1850s. Chapter 2 retells stories of the early 'tent revivals' now known as the 'Great Awakening'. The twist here is to tell it in terms of the slave reaction. Chapter 2 is probably the best chapter of the book. I've never seen anyone make a case for the Great Awakening enticing slaves to 'buy' the American dream, but Talty makes a good argument for it. The Great Awakening too often gets ignored in our overly materialist ethos.
The next two chapters lose a bit of energy. Chapter 3 is titled 'The Mulatto Flag: Interracial Love in Antebellum America." I'm not sure what flag Talty sees waving, because he never distinguishes 'mulatto' as a positive notion, in and of itself. Being 'mulatto' is just something that one happens to get labelled. There are some interesting stories here, though. I didn't know that there were documented cases of 'white' men drinking a few drops of their 'Black' lover's blood to claim mulatto status and get a marriage license. Apparently, this method of gaining mulatto status is written into the popular play 'Showboat.' Chapter four covers the Civil War in 6 short pages. I think this a mistake and the book never really recaptures it's narative drive.
Chapter 5 is called "Memorizing Shakespeare: The Black Elite". W.E.B. Du Bois is the central hero. Du Bois reacts against being 'whiter than white' (memorizing Shakespeare) and seeks to define a 3rd way. Talty argues Du Bois' book 'Souls of Black Folk' does this, but the argument is too abstract to gain traction.
With Du Bois out of the way, Talty spend the rest of the book doing musicology to avoid talking about the sexual taboos that define 'whiteness' or 'blackness.' I don't object to the detailed history of Jazz, but the music metaphor did little for me for the last 100 pages of the book. Explaining contemporary racism in terms of music history may provide a way to encode your thoughts without offending anyone, but whatever Talty's purpose, it eluded me.
The last chapter is called, 'The Death of Coercion'. I don't think the word 'mulatto' is mentioned once. Instead, Talty makes the mistake of hoping we will simply forget the terms 'white', 'black' and 'mulatto'. After describing Terry McMillan's 'A Day Late and a Dollar Short,' he writes, "Black style, black tradition, black suffering, the black story: all are as vital and real as one's blood type. But 'race' in the abstract - that unseen presence that defined one's essential place in the world - has lost most of its terrors and its charms."
This seems to avoid the issue. As best I can tell, despite 'race' meaning a lot of different things to different people, the notion continues to play a role in day to day life. The Supreme Court recently ruled colleges could use 'race' as a criteria for selecting new students. President Bush recently talked at a NAACP meeting while Democratic presidential hopefuls ignored a NAACP convention. Both events made the evening news. In Tulsa, legal action is being taken by victims of a 1920 era race riot.
The title 'Mulatto Nation' implies a commentary on 'amalgamation' and the 'melting pot' metaphor. Neither are popular intellectual ideas these days. 'Mulatto Nation' seems to suggest the melting is taking place unconsciously, in the music, in the way we act. Without addressing the conflict between unconscious and conscious, the book misses an important opportunity.
Personally, I object to forgetting about 'race'. Much of the 'race' problem is white fathers forgetting about their 'colored' descendents (whatever colored happened to mean). Thomas Jefferson didn't leave Monticello to his first born son. He freed him from slavery, but never acknowledged him. Fredrick Douglas came to terms with his plantation owning father after the Civil War, but he didn't inherit the farm. Until 1967, 17 states prohibited 'black' - 'white' marriages, but this didn't preclude many mixed common law marriages. What the laws accomplished was a denial of the rights of inheritance. The son of a white father and black mother could not inherit the father's estate. I don't think this sort of thing is easily forgotten. Check into the Bible for an idea of how long people continue talking about stolen inheritances.
Less and more than history.......2003-06-29
While exploring a number of interesting subjects, Talty's method creates some serious problems in the historical narrative. An historian has to make some effort to understand other eras on their own terms, and far too often Talty's narrative reminds us that he is very much a man of this time and place. Where the behavior of people doesn't accord with his modern expectations, he simply creates motivations which "explain" the behavior more to his liking. In this, the book often seems more an exercise in polemics than an exploration of the lives people led within the world as they saw it. In a great work of history, the author will fade into the background and the historical narrative will not reveal his presence, but one is continually reminded that this is the work of an American born in the late 20th Century. The simplistic racialism so characteristic of our time, across the political and social spectrum, and which so often tends to blur the complexity and reality of the world, is repeatedly in force. All too often we are told what "the blacks" or "the whites" were thinking at a given moment, far too often in greater detail than would be warranted by the historical sources in describing what even an individual may have been thinking.
This is a book which should be written, but by someone trained in historical methods rather than in journalism, so that the book would, as this one does not, transcend the present to reveal the past. This book reveals more about the author's ideological and cultural filters than about the events described.
Book Description
Whether they involved goods, words, or ideas, acts of giving and trading were fundamental in early Indian-white contacts. But how did these transactions function across the two cultures, and what did they mean to each? In this book, David Murray explores a range of early exchanges between Europeans and Indians, showing how they operated within a set of interlocking economies-linguistic, religious, as well as material.
Murray begins by examining the crucial role of gift-giving. Like the double function of the key, which both locks and unlocks, the gift-with its simultaneous action of offering something and demanding a return-expressed the paradoxical nature of early Indian-white encounters. Because the power to give was associated with ideas of sovereignty, both sides often preferred to represent exchanges as gift-giving rather than trading or selling.
To illustrate the complexities of these cross-cultural transactions, the author looks closely at the work of linguist, trader, and missionary Roger Williams, whose A Key into the Language of America at once serves the purposes of translation, conversion, and trade. Murray also examines the changing meaning and representation of wampum, the quintessential medium of exchange in the early colonial period, as well as the multiple processes of conversion taking place as Christian ideas were incorporated into Indian cultures.
According to the author, only by recognizing the ways in which objects and ideas circulated and took on value in interrelated economies can we understand the contested "middle ground" between Europeans and Indians of the colonial Northeast.
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- Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Resource for Every Gardener
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- Sharks in the Desert
- Show Me Your Smile!: A Visit to the Dentist (Dora the Explorer (8x8))
- So, What Did You Dream Last Night?
- State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
- Telling Ain't Training
- The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God
- The Areas of My Expertise
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