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ieguiz's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This is most likely the best book I have ever read in my entire life. The insights this provided me forced me to look at the entirety of the United States history in a different light. I knew that the Euro-Amerikan proletariat was not very progressive, but to see the history laid out of their continued hostility and material exploitation of the colonized classes makes it plain to anyone that they are not the revolutionary class that will lead us forward. I believe that every single Marxist, nay every single leftist, must read this amazing piece of work. Especially if you live in a settler-colony.
dithorba's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This book has put to words a number of things I have been feeling regarding the American Left, and as a Chicano dealing with the general apathy of the society I live in. I'm just glad to have an analysis and many historical examples in this regard.
outcolder's review
5.0
I've seen some shady negative reviews on goodreads and it seems like they're from people who haven't read it. Sakai is definitely not anti-Marxist. He quotes and refers to Marx often and sympathetically. He does the same with some points from Lenin's book on Imperialism. He does write about Marcus Garvey, but only in the chapter about that time in history, and he makes it clear that Garvey was a capitalist and that is not what Sakai envisions for the Republic of New Afrika. So I think maybe some butthurt CP people are just writing reviews based on what someone told them this book was and I ask them to recognize that all struggles against oppression are interconnected and you can't build a mass movement without listening and reading the voices of the oppressed.
There are some appendixes in this PM press edition including an interview with Sakai that left me optimistic about the Settler mindset fading away or being 'replaced' to use the settler term for it. Nowadays, with the "Freedom Caucus" making the "Tea Party" look normal by comparison, the masks are off and people who want a more just world are more ready to confront these settler myths. Earlier this week Ben and Jerrys posted something about giving the stolen land back, and maybe that's not worth more than a Sacagawea dollar but it seems a million miles from when the CIO was betraying people of color. Obviously, decolonization is going to be a long, painful, at times violent road, but it's really a key part of turning off the doom loop. Reading this book with an open mind is a step on that road.
There are some appendixes in this PM press edition including an interview with Sakai that left me optimistic about the Settler mindset fading away or being 'replaced' to use the settler term for it. Nowadays, with the "Freedom Caucus" making the "Tea Party" look normal by comparison, the masks are off and people who want a more just world are more ready to confront these settler myths. Earlier this week Ben and Jerrys posted something about giving the stolen land back, and maybe that's not worth more than a Sacagawea dollar but it seems a million miles from when the CIO was betraying people of color. Obviously, decolonization is going to be a long, painful, at times violent road, but it's really a key part of turning off the doom loop. Reading this book with an open mind is a step on that road.
iconoclastica's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
historicalmaterialgirl's review
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.0
J. Sakai's Settlers seems to be pretty controversial, and after reading it, I don't know why. Are we really that fragile? This book lays out very clearly how time and time again that "socialist" whites/settlers chose to get closer to wealth over being closer to freedom. This was always at the detriment of working people of color. For instance, many white labor movements (including CPUSA, IWW, and the CIO) tried to use racial unity to prevent strikes from being broken up or because they thought it would somehow benefit them. Sakai uses these examples to reveal how race has organized class in America. Can we not handle an analysis that says "the problems with white people are deeper that just racist attitudes"?
I hear people say it's anti-Marxist, yet he quotes Marx, Lenin and Engels throughout. Sorry he expands on what the word proletariat means! I've heard unfounded claims the author was CIA/FBI. I've also heard it's revisionist, but this man has the sources and this book covers a lot of ground, for a range of national groups (he analyzes and comments on political movements for Asian, African, Latino and Indigenous American liberation). To me, this book is the more biting and readable version of Wages of Whiteness by David Roediger, or a more leftist History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter. If you want to read about whiteness, racial/class formation or the history of the United States, I highly recommend. I definitely see myself thinking about it and engaging with it over time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Colonisation
sufi_hussy's review
Just weird ways of framing proletariat under what was a slave mode of production. There’s much interesting history here, but I’d probably be better served reading Gerald Horne.
mimissyouuu's review
5.0
i can see this making A LOT of white revisionists seethe so that must mean a lot of its theoretical insights are correct LMFAO!! jokes aside, an incredibly necessary text for examining the failures of american leftism and how intra-class dynamics has been driven by settler colonialism. i feel like this has fundamentally altered how i think about certain elements of american history and the nature of organizing in general. anyways, https://readsettlers.org/ now
noipmahcnoraa's review against another edition
5.0
You’re hard pressed to call yourself a Marxist if you haven’t, or aren’t willing to, read this.