In this first episode, I will share with you three books about slavery, Revolt, and the construction of race in America. The first book Is “there is a river: the black struggle for freedom in America” by Vincent Harding. This book was suggested to me by one of my all time favorite history Professors, professor Allen Coleman, who teaches both at Columbus State Community College as well as the Ohio State University. Professor Coleman also suggested the second book, entitled “The White Man's Burden” by Winthrop D Jordan, a classic look at the Historical origins of racism in the United States. the third book I will be discussing today is the book “barracoon: The Story of the last black cargo” written by Zora Neale Hurston. It took about 80 years for her book to be published, and it is a fantastic oral history account of a man who was illegally smuggled out of West Africa, toiled as a slave in America, and then struggled to adjust to a post-war Southern society that still saw him as less than human. these books speak volumes about the horrors of slavery and the legacy of racial formation that slavery has left behind in the United States. With the rise of mass incarceration during Bill Clinton's presidency, the privatization of Prisons by Corrections Corporation, the criminalization of Blackness, and the extra-judicial murdering of black civilians by police, modern day lynchings, these historical accounts remain as relevant as ever. “There is a river: the black struggle for freedom in America” by Vincent Harding is first and foremost a beautiful Testament to the spirit, Power, and resilience of African Americans in the United States. it details the armed struggle against slavery, the cultural survivalism, the diversity of tactics, the culture of resistance, and the long history of the freedom struggle of african americans. The book is written in a beautiful lyrical prose that is at once compelling and compassionate, as well as a stirring Call to Arms. Vincent Harding situates himself and his work in the Deep River of struggle, and sees himself as part of the current that moves that River toward freedom. Harding Begins the story on the shores of Africa in the barracoons, and details the horror of the middle passage. he takes us to America, Bound in Chains, where the earliest accounts of human bondage and legal systems to oppress black bodies began. and he writes of resistance. The Stono Rebellion page 34 Constitution and slavery page 45 Haitian revolution page 46 Denmark Vessey page 65 Harding's text takes us through many more rebellions, maroon communities, practices of cultural survivalism, and the black presence in the Civil War. he leaves us at the beginning of the Reconstruction era with a glimpse into the Black Codes and the legal structure of Jim Crow, but warning that the river continues to Surge: that the African American Spirit will not be held in bondage by chains, nor law, nor second-class citizenship, nor terrorist violence by white vigilantes; that the struggle will continue until African Americans are, indeed, free at last. *** wake up with books *** and wake up your mind *** get woke! Sunday morning boook cluuub! **** The eloquent and moving oral history of 86 year old cudjo Lewis by Zora Neale Hurston Is delivered to us on cudjo's Alabama porch in between trips to the city, crab fishing and feasting, and workday's in his garden. Hurston captures cudjo’s voice in his vernacular, And following a short historical foreword, she relates to us his highly moving and heartbreaking life story. Capture p 45 March to the barracoon p 52 Freedom p 65 Raising children in white terrorism p72, p 84 Barracoon, at its heart, is an oral history in the tradition of the Griot. It is a story that was almost left Untold. hurston's research began in 1927, and after she finished writing the book, she looked for years to find a publisher, but was ultimately unsuccessful. the first edition of her book barracoon was published in 2018, an accomplishment that Hurston was never able to enjoy. It is now in the hands of today’s storytellers to transmit the life of cudjo lewis to future generations so that we may continue to learn from the horrors and heartbreaks he endured. The White Man's Burden by Winthrop D Jordan is a distillation of his epic work “white over black: American attitudes toward the Negro 1550- 1812.” Dr. Jordan Situates the formation of race in America in the institution of chattel slavery and Enlightenment ideology. In a brief 226 pages, dr. Jordan lays down a succinct and meticulously researched thesis that still informs relationships between white and black people in America today. early white European natural philosophers were confounded by the existence of the darker races of human beings. their obsession with taxonomy and hierarchy, the first stirrings of European scientific thought, was still deeply entrenched in the understanding that God had put man on Earth as his ultimate creation. This theory is articulated through the concept of the great chain of being, an attempt by European natural philosophers to place every living being in hierarchical order from the lowest single celled organism to their idea of god’s ultimate creation, the white man. Skulls on a shelf, p 102-103 peter camper the othering of black Africans by white Europeans, their preoccupation with the quote unquote heathen African lifestyle and cultural traditions, their inability to understand religions or cultural expressions different from their own as inherently human or civilized, and a lingering perverse fascination with imagining African having sex with Apes, are all foundational to understanding the construction of race and how it still operates in the United States. scientific racism, like social Darwinism, is a direct product of Enlightenment thought. European natural philosophers’ primitive and pseudo-scientific understanding of other cultures had catastrophic implications for Africans who would soon be sold into chattel slavery and given the legal standing of livestock. through the institution of chattel slavery, eugenics and the breeding of quote-unquote black stock, as well as the careful counting of blood quantum, which we now know has little to do with race at all, became codified in colonial and later in United States law through a series of Black Codes that aimed at controlling and policing black bodies and maintaining their status as the property of their white owners. As other black researchers have noted, these slave patrols and black codes are the predecessors of the United States police force and criminal justice system, which continues to criminalize blackness in the interest of maintaining white supremacy through the visceral violence of state power. My favorite part of doctor Jordan's book is the chapter entitled “Thomas Jefferson: self and Society.” in this chapter, dr. Jordan lays bare what a shitbag Thomas Jefferson truly was. in addition to being an owner of slaves, and a heinous misogynist, Thomas Jefferson believed that black people were mentally inferior to white people on the basis of their quote-unquote biological race. P 171 upheld as one of America's Finest founding fathers and an Enlightenment thinker, Thomas Jefferson’s Views on race were informed by his belief in natural rights philosophy. Natural rights philosphy p 167 Ultimately, Thomas Jefferson could never Square his own competing ideas that humans had some natural rights bestowed upon them by his invisible sky god, with the fact that some humans (read: African American and African slaves) must be denied those rights in order to uphold the institution of chattel slavery of which he himself was a constant beneficiary. This cognitive dissonance would pervade the American psyche until the end of the Civil War, after which it was sublimated into convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, and the prison industrial complex. Doctor Winthrop Jordan shows that the construction of white supremacy and the criminalization of Blackness were necessary to justify the inhumane and morally reprehensible institution of chattel slavery and the rise of western capitalism. Africans were not enslaved because of anti-black racism, Africans were enslaved because European slave Traders augmented an already-existing Market for African slaves and turned it into a genocidal capitalist venture. The transformation of nation funded mercantilism to free market capitalism depended on the Free Labor of African American slaves. As this development occurred at the same time as the enlightenment Revolutions in America, France, Haiti, and Latin America, and the military and economic power of these new nations, with the exception of Haiti, depended on slave labor, anti-black racism was necessary to deny black humans their Humanity and therefore any natural rights they would have been allotted as members of the human race. the foundation of anti-black racism in America is so deep in our culture, language, and legal system, that whites today are still unable to see black people as people, and still unable to see black lives as lives that matter, and lives that must be valued and protected by our society. To understand the black lives matter in a historical sense, white Americans must return to the roots of anti-black racism in chattel slavery and in the foundation of capitalism in order to see the truth for what it is. that truth, the American greatness was built on the backs of black slaves, bought and sold and breed as livestock, in this peculiar and horrifying Institution of chattel slavery -- Seeing and understanding this truth is necessary for peace and Reconciliation in America. there is a wage owed, Justice, reparations, atonement, there is a great debt that white Americans owe to African Americans. and until we white Americans are able to divest ourselves from our possessive investment in whiteness and white supremacy (george lipsitz), that Debt will not be repaid. thanks for joining us this week, May your next 6 days be filled rainbows and sunshine, as you work to put whiteness in crisis (george yancy).

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Rebecca's Sunday morning book club Show podcast. this week’s topic is teaching race to whites. now, when I say whites, I mean white people, as In US white people, as in the group of people that includes myself. I am a white person. I think it is very important for white people to talk to other white people about whiteness and white supremacy, and anti-black racism, and the formation of race, and the history of race in America. I might even say it is our duty as people who benefit from the various privileges of whiteness to attempt in our daily lives to better understand how these privileges manifest socially, and how we as individuals and as members of a collective racial group materially benefit from our white privilege. there are four books that I will be sharing with you that address the issue of whiteness, and attempt to situate it in a conversation with white people that may be constructive and mutually beneficial. ultimately, I think it is important to disturb white people's sense of complacency with white supremacy, and if you've ever tried to do this you know how incredibly easy it is to disturb a white person by talking about their own race. we white people do not like to be identified as racialized subjects, we are used to race as something that happens to the other and not to us. however, by living in a white supremacist Society we are not only always constructing the race of others, we are constantly constructing our own whiteness and our position in that whiteness. I challenge you, dear listeners, to think about how you construct race in your daily lives and how you personally work to, as the scholar and Sage George yancy says, “put whiteness in crisis.” this week I will be talking about a book edited by George Yancy and Maria Del Guadalupe Davidson called “exploring race in predominantly white classrooms.” this book was lent to me by my friend Amy De Lorenzo, who is an American Sign Language professor at Columbus State Community College, and a powerful and much-loved member of the queer community in Columbus ohio. we will also hear excerpts from George lipsitz’s book “the possessive investment in whiteness: how white people profit from Identity politics.” George Lipsitz is a professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California in Santa Barbara. I took a class with him in the early noughts on the history of jazz. Robin diangelo’s book “White fragility: why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism” and Ijeoma Oluo’s book “so you want to talk about race” will round out today's discussion with practical and tactical suggestions of how to bring up the topic of race and whiteness with our fellow whites in order to participate in more authentic relationships, hold each other accountable for our racist Behavior, and begin the work of undermining white supremacy. exploring race in predominantly white classrooms is a collection of essay by Scholars of color about their struggle not only making space for themselves in Academia but also trying to recenter classroom space away from the hegemony of whiteness and to include more diversity of experience and knowledge making.the experiences shared by the scholars open doors of understanding for white readers and Educators to viscerally empathize with people often constructed as Outsiders and Interlopers in white supremacist institutions. Yancey Characterizes the institution of the University as one that is inherently alienating for black Scholars as the predominance of white bodies marks the territory for whiteness. yancy states that whites are “embedded within the history of white racism” and only after they become aware of their race and their white privilege can whites begin to feel a sense of dispossession: that they are not fully present nor fully autonomous, but rather that their lives are indeed shaped by race and shaped by their white privilege. this dispossession and courage is cultural humility puts whiteness in crisis and allows white people to take advantage of their vulnerability to develop empathy. P 13 George Lipschitz is highly influential book the possessive investment in whiteness is a powerful critical look at how race is an economic Force in addition to a socially constructed Force. there are so many points of this book that I made notes in and underlined and stuck Post-it notes on that I can't even begin to communicate how good this book is, but I highly recommend that you read the entire thing! it is so eye opening! wage of whiteness (A term w e b Dubois created ...wage of whiteness is privilege that white workers received instead of the higher economic wages they would have earned had they joined with all other workers in an interracial class light Alliance) the war on drugs and mass incarceration the pushback of social welfare policy used by neoconservatives in the Reagan and Bush Administrations Reagan Era tax reforms that encouraged Capital flight in the industrialization tax increment financing zones that move tax bases out of poor neighborhoods and redistribute the wealth for gentrification projects Civil rights legislation that was structured to be ineffective and largely unenforceable that contributed to racial zoning and real estate discrimination such as redlining steering and blockbusting notes that “the appreciated value of owner-occupied homes constitutes the single greatest source of wealth for white Americans” likewise in attempting to determine a economic wage of whiteness lipschutz also looks at the economic downturn and how the dispossession of black communities in particular has served to bankrupt Black America. P 103 Home ownership is truly the Crux for the possessive investment in whiteness Lipsitz writes “home ownership produces about $60,000 more wealth for whites than it does for blacks. overall it is worth $94,426 in net Financial assets and $136,173 in net worth to be white.” because whiteness has a material value and is manifested as property whiteness is also protected by US law and the Constitution page 46” failure to enforce civil rights laws Banning discrimination in housing education and hiring along with efforts to undermine affirmative action and other remedies designed to advance the cause of social justice, renders racism structural and institutional rather than private and personal.” in this way the outcome of the Civil Rights era and the Neo conservative white supremacist backlash of the Reagan Era has more formally cemented racism in a legal apparatus now devoid of race. Page 74 Paradox in Reagan ideology” we find ourselves saturated with stories extolling American National Glory told by internationalists who seek to export jobs in capital overseas while dismantling the institution offering opportunity and upward Mobility to ordinary citizens in the United States” “ the role of whiteness as a defining symbolic identity that mobilizes gender and sexual elements in the service of obscuring class polarization” whiteness as shield for neoliberal globalization capitalism No one book can single handedly unravel the complicated, economic relationship between white power and politics and race, but I recommend “the possessive investment in whiteness” by George Lipsitz for developing a deeper understanding in these realities, as well as for an analytical tool to begin dismantling white supremacy. These books get me so pumped!!!!!!!!!! You watched in awe at the red white and blue on the 4th of July while those fireworks were exploding I was burning that fucker and stringing my Black Flag High eating the peanuts that the parties had tossed you from the backseat of your father's new Ford you believe in the ballot believe in reform you put Faith in the elephant and jackass and to you solidarity's a four letter word we're all Hypocrites but you're a patriot you thought I was joking when I screamed kill whitey at the top of my lungs to the cops in their cars and the men in their suits and I won't take your hand and marry the state white fragility why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism is the kind of book that you give to your mother to read when you want to start a book club with her. this book is written by Robin diangelo who has worked for years as a cultural competency trainer, teaching white people in workplaces how to better respect the people of color they work with or serve, and how to better recognize the subtle microaggression that whites continuously impose on people of color. white fragility is in its Essence the inability of white people to talk about their complacency and complicity in racist behaviors without completely shutting down and being personally offended. ultimately the goal is for white people to understand that racism is an institutionalized power structure that is harnessed by the violence of the state to oppress and Destroy black lives and the lives of people of color. when one is being called out for racist behaviour it's not that there being called morally reprehensible or that they have made some sort of personal transgression or that there is being a call on their character made, rather when one is being called out for racist Behavior they are being alerted to how they are complicit in the structural Integrity of the institution of racialized State violence. without the continual complicity of whites, white supremacy could not function. the state requires White's to give it authority and legitimacy. Two important themes in white fragility that I would like to call attention to are the breaking of white solidarity and the concept of racial stress. P 54 breaking of white solidarity page 94 race and Trauma page 103 racial stress results from an interruption to the racially familiar. to put whiteness in crisis, whites must be able to endure racial stress and to practice and exercise their racial stamina. I am comforted as a white person to know that when I talk about white supremacy and when I am able to identify my own racist thoughts & Behaviors and share that with other white people that I am undermining the invisibility and the silence of whiteness. as long as whiteness is invisible to white people we can pretend that racism is something that only exists in the minds of people of color and that we live in a post-racial society, when in fact the insidiousness of white supremacy is now more rampant, more efficient, more effective at concentrating capital in the hands of wealthy white men; With the Spectre of trump and white nationalism enjoying is Shameless moment in the Sun, with proto-fascist governments in a number of white Western Nations, and with the most powerful prison system and military industrial complex in the hands of a self about racist who gained power on a platform of ethnic cleansing… there is no time like the present to make whiteness visible and call out racist Behavior. the last book I would like to share with you today is called so you want to talk about race by Ijeoma oluo. this book reads like having a stirring conversation with a good friend I think so you want to talk about race does a better job of explaining institutionalized white supremacy then the previous book, White fragility, which ironically gets derailed in its analysis of white supremacy because of its focus on white people's inability to talk about white supremacy. the chapters in this book are topical, and are titled after questions well-meaning white people have probably asked the author 1 million times, such as: why can't I say the n word? why can't I touch your hair? but what if I hate Al Sharpton? is police brutality really about race? the author then addresses these questions with one part humor and one part humility. this book is super approachable, a light read considering the content, and refreshing in its approach to these difficult topics. for example on page 220, in the chapter I just got called racist what do I do now? we find the following Sage advice, if you are deciding to finally sit down with that one friend of yours and have that rough discussion about their horseshit racist Behavior ,I highly recommend reading this book as a kind of pep talk you can give yourself to help you stay focused, grounded, and keep your eyes on the prize: dismantling white supremacy and putting whiteness in crisis. confronting racism is not about personal attacks, it's not even personal at all. racism is a system of Oppression, it is an institution of State violence, it is One Directional, moving from those with power to those without power. by empowering ourselves, we can push back against the directionality of racism, we can undermine the basic foundations of its flawed ideology, and we can dismantle and disengage violent and murderous aspects of the white supremacist state -- disarm and defang the monster that holds all racialized subjects, white brown and black, in its grip. we can regain our personhood our autonomy our freedom, or humanity and our dignity, as we work for equity for all people. until next week sweet dreams And enjoy the illusion of freedom; next week we will talk about the war in Syria and deconstructing islamophobia.

Book Review: Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Rebecca's Sunday morning book club podcast show. This week I will be providing you with a book review of Naomi Klein’s 2014 book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism V The Climate.” I was excited to read this book after absolutely loving her work “The Shock Doctrine,” both its elucidation of history as well as the strength of its thesis, that economic, political, and natural disaster shocks are utilized by predatory capitalism to accumulate political power and capital into the hands of the evil elite who rule our lives. “This Changes Everything” start strong but falls flat. I feel that this book is redundant given the 2006 work of the radical visionaries of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, who wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.” We, grassroots organizers and community members who are trying to save ourselves from the toxic legacy of industrialism and fossil fuel extraction, are well aware from our efforts that NO, the non-profit industrial complex is NOT going to effectively challenge the institution of capitalism, because all of its funding comes from foundations owned by capitalists. Naomi Klein does share with us her insight that climate change will never be solved by free market mechanisms, and illustrates the failures of carbon trading and cap and trade markets. Great. She also shares the track records of intellectuals and academics who, though once effective in their work to pass legislation and regulation, no longer had success after the Reagan era tactic of de-regulating everything became gospel. Okay. But the problem with this book is not what it illustrates, it is what it leaves out. And this book’s glaring omission is the grassroots environmental justice movement led by communities of color across the united states who have, time and again, fought and won through bottom up grassroots organizing that lasts for DECADES, do not get the media they deserves, and are funded by the communities themselves and staffed by volunteers who have to do the work because their children are being poisoned. While rightly placing the onus of climate change on multinational corporations and western civilization, she leaves out the little guy. Indigenous struggles: Actually there’s a whole chapter on this part nevermind i just didnt read it coz i got mad This book also omits the history of anti-capitalist environmentalists who have been organizing clandestinely in the woods for decades. The book mentions the work of Earth First! twice, but does not offer up any details about their tactics, their successes, or analysis of their failures, even though Earth First! has been doing the work for generations that Naomi Klein says we need so badly. Place your body between the point of extraction and the means of extraction, the bulldozer, the oil rig, the logging team. Cut it off at the source and stop capitalism at the point of extraction. As they say, “No compromise in defence of mother earth!” Go to jail, work with local communities, have strong legal support, utilize a diversity of tactics that includes pushing for legislation, but most importantly, you have to directly confront extraction by stopping it with your BODY. I don’t like her injection of a new term, BLOCKADIA, onto the work of the grassroots environmental movement. It erases the locality of each movement, the organizations that put in the work to clean up their neighborhoods, hold corporations accountable, and pass legislation to keep it from happening in the future. This could have been a powerful history of the anti nuclear movement, the environmental justice movement, animal rights activists now being targeted as terrorists under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, or anti capitalist environmentalists who have time and time again risked bodily safety by sitting up in a tree stand, spiking trees, and chaining themselves to anything they can get a hold on to stop resource extraction. Instead it just rehashed the shit I went through as an environmental activist in losing all faith in non profits and the people who work for them to make meaningful change, knowing that money and capital corrupts everything it touches. Okay and maybe i take it personally that i was unsupported by those people and busted my ass volunteering for free to make cool shit happen, but also it is just a rock fact that if you try to make a living actually saving the world from capitalism, you will die poor and hungry in an anarchist squat fire. Klein’s central premise that capitalism must be destroyed is absolutely true. Can we give credit where credit is due though? To the people who have been fighting that fight for generations? Can we shine a spotlight on the struggles around the world that have won, and use their stories to educate activists on tactics that work? Movement building requires extreme networking and solidarity, not another glossy website for a well funded environmental org (350.com, of which Klein is an organizer) that helicopters in an anti-fracking protest once a decade to the Ohio statehouse. Movement building requires digging in and investing yourself into the community where you live, making allies, building affinity with unlikely neighbors, bridging gaps, forming coalitions, and importantly, having an intimate knowledge with the lay of the land and its people. This isn’t done while jet setting around to Climate Conferences. Maybe Naomi Klein will convince foundation funded conservation orgs to join her foundation funded environmental org in destroying capitalism. Or maybe, one day, the grassroots movement will come knocking on their door and ask why they haven’t done jack shit to support the sick and dying poor people who have been struggling for environmental justice for decades, but never seem to get enough media attention to make it into the official narrative.