An expert history and defense of the reparations movement that will hopefully persuade detractors.
A sharp account of the massive wealth extracted from enslaved people in America.
In this follow-up to Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network, Montero shows that this wealth is responsible for America’s rise to world leadership. The author is a diligent researcher, and he marshals his facts meticulously. Unpaid Black labor created immense quantities of agricultural and industrial production, as well as infrastructure that enriched white Americans, especially in the north. Many of today’s large corporations grew and prospered from slave labor, while southern farmers, including all but a minority of plantation owners, were “chronically in debt, many on the verge of being broke.” The author is convincing in his declaration that this extraction was “the largest money-laundering operation in American history,” although scholars might deny Montero’s claim that historians have paid little attention; indeed, he quotes liberally from their writing. Just as drug cartels profit not by growing their product (which is not terribly profitable) but by transporting and supplying it, northern businesses did the same with cotton and other commodities. Montero devotes most of the book to detailed accounts of 19th-century entrepreneurs, corporations, and banks who prospered off the backs of enslaved people, using the money to create purportedly legitimate businesses. Corporations do not perish with their founders, and many have long boasted of their staying power without mentioning the source of their vast financial reserves. A robust reparations movement emerged early in the 21st century, but its future remains uncertain. The author concludes by recounting legal actions against banks and corporations that have profited from slavery. Public demands for reparations have produced a flurry of apologies and some voluntary contributions to Black institutions, but no significant payments to date. Perhaps this book, featuring a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson, can invigorate the movement.
An expert history and defense of the reparations movement that will hopefully persuade detractors.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780306827174
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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