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kbc's review against another edition
4.0
This book is as old as me and it is interesting to see how our current events with the rise of Trump are mirrored in the early years of Reaganism. Marable lays out how racism and capitalism are inextricably intwined in US society and how those in power like to exploit US racism in order to maintain a capitalist society.
inkdrinker's review against another edition
5.0
Very informative and well researched. It was pretty heavy on the statistics which other reviewers have noted makes for a pretty difficult read, but it's, of course, always important to back up claims with hard data.
My favorite chapters were Chapter 3: Groundings With My Sisters, where Manning Marable talks about the contributions made by black women in the struggle for black liberation and how sexism held back gains in the civil rights movement; Chapter 4: Black Prisoners and Punishment in a Racist/Capitalist State, where he traces the transformation of chattel slavery into it's new form under the prison industrial complex (its preservation in the forms of convict leasing and prison labor); and Chapter 7: The Ambiguous Politics of the Black Church, where he talks about the very crucial yet contradictory role that the black church played in the development of black culture and politics, relating it to Antonio Gransci's theory on the role of religion in class struggle.
Reading this in 2020 made certain parts particularly uncanny, specifically when he talked about random acts of racist violence (many of the cases he discussed, which occurred in the 1980s, are eerily similar to some of the racist acts of violence and murder that have been reported, recently) or when talking about what a quasi-fascist/authoritarian American government might look like in the future - his description of which bears some resemblance to the Trump administration.
I would definitely label this as "required reading" for anyone who wants to better understand how racism is connected to our political/economic system as a whole.
My favorite chapters were Chapter 3: Groundings With My Sisters, where Manning Marable talks about the contributions made by black women in the struggle for black liberation and how sexism held back gains in the civil rights movement; Chapter 4: Black Prisoners and Punishment in a Racist/Capitalist State, where he traces the transformation of chattel slavery into it's new form under the prison industrial complex (its preservation in the forms of convict leasing and prison labor); and Chapter 7: The Ambiguous Politics of the Black Church, where he talks about the very crucial yet contradictory role that the black church played in the development of black culture and politics, relating it to Antonio Gransci's theory on the role of religion in class struggle.
Reading this in 2020 made certain parts particularly uncanny, specifically when he talked about random acts of racist violence (many of the cases he discussed, which occurred in the 1980s, are eerily similar to some of the racist acts of violence and murder that have been reported, recently) or when talking about what a quasi-fascist/authoritarian American government might look like in the future - his description of which bears some resemblance to the Trump administration.
I would definitely label this as "required reading" for anyone who wants to better understand how racism is connected to our political/economic system as a whole.
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