Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations


Joe R. Feagin - 2000
    Racist America is a bold, thoughtful exploration of the ubiquity of race in contemporary life. From a black New Jersey dentist stopped by police more than 100 times for driving to work in an expensive car to the labourer who must defend his promotion against charges of undeserved affirmative action, Feagin lays bare the economic, ideologic, and political structure of American racism. In doing so he develops an antiracist theory rooted not only in the latest empirical data but also in the current reality of racism in the U.S.

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics


George Lipsitz - 1998
    Addressing the common view that whiteness is a meaningless category of identity, this book aims to show that public policy and private prejudice insure that whites wind up on top of the social hierarchy.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses


Tom Standage - 2005
    As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again.

Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness


Jennifer Berry Hawes - 2019
    He arrived with a pistol, 88 bullets, and hopes of starting a race war. Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine innocents during their closing prayer horrified the nation. Two days later, some relatives of the dead stood at Roof’s hearing and said, “I forgive you.” That grace offered the country a hopeful ending to an awful story. But for the survivors and victims’ families, the journey had just begun.In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes provides a definitive account of the tragedy’s aftermath. With unprecedented access to the grieving families and other key figures, Hawes offers a nuanced and moving portrait of the events and emotions that emerged in the massacre’s wake.The two adult survivors of the shooting begin to make sense of their lives again. Rifts form between some of the victims’ families and the church. A group of relatives fights to end gun violence, capturing the attention of President Obama. And a city in the Deep South must confront its racist past. This is the story of how, beyond the headlines, a community of people begins to heal.An unforgettable and deeply human portrait of grief, faith, and forgiveness, Grace Will Lead Us Home is destined to be a classic in the finest tradition of journalism.

Slave Narratives


William L. AndrewsSojourner Truth - 2000
    The works collected in this volume present unflinching portrayals of the cruelty and degradation of slavery while testifying to the African-American struggle for freedom and dignity. They demonstrate the power of the written word to affirm a person's—and a people's—humanity in a society poisoned by racism. Slave Narratives shows how a diverse group of writers challenged the conscience of a nation and, through their expression of anger, pain, sorrow, and courage, laid the foundations of the African-American literary tradition.This volume collects ten works published between 1772 and 1864:Two narratives by James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1772) and Olaudah Equiano (1789) recount how they were taken from Africa as children and brought across the Atlantic to British North America.The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) provides unique insight into the man who led the deadliest slave uprising in American history.The widely read narratives by the fugitive slaves Frederick Douglass (1845), William Wells Brown (1847), and Henry Bibb (1849) strengthened the abolitionist cause by exposing the hypocrisies inherent in a slaveholding society ostensibly dedicated to liberty and Christian morality.The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) describes slavery in the North while expressing the eloquent fervor of a dedicated woman.Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) tells the story of William and Ellen Craft's subversive and ingenious escape from Georgia to Philadelphia.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is Harriet Jacobs's complex and moving story of her prolonged resistance to sexual and racial oppression.The narrative of the "trickster" Jacob Green (1864) presents a disturbing story full of wild humor and intense crueltyTogether, these works fuse memory, advocacy, and defiance into a searing collective portrait of American life before emancipation.Slave Narratives contains a chronology of events in the history of slavery, as well as biographical and explanatory notes and an essay on the texts.The editors of this volume are William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities at Harvard University.

Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization


Khiara M. Bridges - 2011
    Khiara M. Bridges investigates how race—commonly seen as biological in the medical world—is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth. Bridges argues that race carries powerful material consequences for these women even when it is not explicitly named, showing how they are marginalized by the practices and assumptions of the clinic staff. Deftly weaving ethnographic evidence into broader discussions of Medicaid and racial disparities in infant and maternal mortality, Bridges shines new light on the politics of healthcare for the poor, demonstrating how the “medicalization” of social problems reproduces racial stereotypes and governs the bodies of poor women of color.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge


V.Y. Mudimbe - 1988
    groundbreaking... clear, straightforward, and economical.... seminal... " --American Anthropologist"This is a challenging book... a remarkable contribution to African intellectual history." --International Journal of African Historical Studies"Mudimbe's description of the struggles over Africa's self-invention are vivid and rewarding. From Blyden to Sartre, Temples to Senghor, Mudimbe provides a bold and versatile resume of Africa's literary inventors." --Village Voice Literary Supplement..". a landmark achievement in African studies." --Journal of Religion in AfricaIn this unique and provocative book, Zairean philosopher and writer V. Y. Mudimbe addresses the multiple scholarly discourses that exist--African and non-African--concerning the meaning of Africa and being African.

Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective


Caroline B. Brettell - 1993
    This book takes an accessible approach to the subject matter, making coverage appropriate for students from a variety of levels.

Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development


Sven Beckert - 2016
    At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism--renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man--has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.Contributors Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.

Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found


Gilbert King - 2018
    She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese cannot stop fretting over the case and its baffling outcome. Who was protecting whom, or what? She pursues the story for years, chasing down leads, hitting dead ends, winning unlikely allies. Bit by bit, the unspeakable truths behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence begin to surface.Beneath a Ruthless Sun tells a powerful, page-turning story rooted in the fears that rippled through the South as integration began to take hold, sparking a surge of virulent racism that savaged the vulnerable, debased the powerful, and roils our own times still.

African Religions & Philosophy


John S. Mbiti - 1970
    In this second edition, Dr Mbiti has updated his material to include the involvement of women in religion, and the potential unity to be found in what was once thought to be a mass of quite separate religions.Mbiti adds a new dimension to the understanding of the history, thinking, and life throughout the African continent. Religion is approached from an African point of view but is as accessible to readers who belong to non-African societies as it is to those who have grown up in African nations.Since its first publication, this book has become acknowledged as the standard work in the field of study, and it is essential reading for anyone concerned with African religion, history, philosophy, anthropology or general African studies.

Rebuild the Dream


Van Jones - 2012
    It’s the dream of a country where, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can live with dignity, provide for your family, prosper, and give your children a better life. It’s also the uniting principle that a country that strives for greatness must also take care of its most vulnerable in times of hardship and need. But right now the American Dream is an illusion. Tens of millions of willing workers can’t find jobs. Millions of homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure and millions more are underwater. Instead of investing in our shared future, politicians are giving tax breaks to the rich and then slashing vital services families depend on. Rather than expanding protections for the middle class during these difficult economic times, workers rights are being gutted and public unions are under siege. But a new movement - Rebuild the Dream — is rising all across America. It’s a movement that is growing stronger by the day, and will continue to gain momentum until regular Americans can find jobs, afford to go to college, retire with dignity, and secure a future for their children and their communities.It was born among the teachers, students, firefighters and nurses of Wisconsin who took over their Capitol to stop Governor Walker’s power grab. Now it’s spreading as millions of other Americans–inspired by the events in Madison, Wisconsin–stand up to say “No” to right-wing attacks on the middle class. Van Jones – bestselling author, former Green Jobs Czar to President Obama, and human rights pioneer – is channeling this new wave of energy. Rebuild The Dream – part memoir, part manifesto – forms the core of this exciting movement. Rather than casting today’s political battles as familiar fights between liberals and conservatives, or even as a tug of war between Wall Street and Main Street, Jones presents the conflict in more dire terms: cheap patriotism versus deep patriotism. At stake: the survival of the American Dream itself.Outraged by the escalating attacks on America’s middle class and working families, Rebuild the Dream issues a bold defense of the progressive values that made the 20th Century an American Century. Rejecting the fashionable mantra of cut-backs and austerity, Jones makes the case for public policies and investments that will create 10 million, good-paying American jobs. Along the way, he argues that the 21st Century can be the Second American Century, if the deep patriots stay true to the American ideal of “liberty and justice for all.” And perhaps most surprisingly – Jones extracts powerful insights from the success of the tea party movement.In Rebuild the Dream, Jones spells out how a renewed movement, grounded in tough-minded American idealism, can once again inspire millions to come together and offer real solutions to America’s toughest problems.

Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology


Zdenek Salzmann - 1993
    Now with a built-in Resource Manual and Study Guide, Language, Culture, and Society is the teaching text for the linguistic anthropology course.

The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America


Adam Serwer - 2021
    But over the four years that followed, the Atlantic staff writer became one of our most astute analysts of the Trump presidency and the volatile powers it harnessed. The shock that greeted Trump's victory, and the subsequent cruelty of his presidency, represented a failure to confront elements of the American past long thought vanquished.In this searing collection, Serwer chronicles the Trump administration not as an aberration but as an outgrowth of the inequalities the United States was founded on. Serwer is less interested in the presidential spectacle than in the ideological and structural currents behind Trump's rise--including a media that was often blindsided by the ugly realities of what the administration represented and how it came to be.While deeply engaged with the moment, Serwer's writing is also haunted by ghosts of an unresolved American past, a past that torments the present. In bracing new essays and previously published works, he explores white nationalism, myths about migration, the political power of police unions, and the many faces of anti-Semitism. For all the dynamics he examines, cruelty is the glue, the binding agent of a movement fueled by fear and exclusion. Serwer argues that rather than pretending these four years didn't happen or dismissing them as a brief moment of madness, we must face what made them possible. Without acknowledging and confronting these toxic legacies, the fragile dream of American multiracial democracy will remain vulnerable to another ambitious demagogue.

A Voice from the South


Anna Julia Cooper - 1892
    At the close of the 19th century, a black woman of the South presents womanhood as a vital element in the regeneration and progress of her race.