Best african history books according to redditors
We found 1,527 Reddit comments discussing the best african history books. We ranked the 504 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
12. Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
11 mentions
Penguin Books
If you think the media is responsible for the racial dynamic in this shooting, then you just don't understand the extent of this problem. The individual races of the cop and the decedent are not likely the core of the outrage here. It's about the fact that our society utilizes so many resources disciplining and surveilling black people that it results in a culture of racial profiling and dehumanization which has institutionalized their harassment by the cops. This results in people of color being killed or brutalized with regularity. Black people are not morons incapable of making informed decisions about what methods of political action are necessary whether or not the media is pushing an agenda. Mass "unrest" is extraordinarily complex.
From the Kerner Commission in 1968 after a slew of race riots including Rochester, Watts, Philadelphia, and Detroit:
> Our examination of the background of the surveyed disorders revealed a typical pattern of deeply-held grievances which were widely shared by many members of the Negro community. The specific content of the expressed grievances varied somewhat from city to city. But in general, grievances among Negroes in all cities related to prejudice, discrimination, severely disadvantaged living conditions and a general sense of frustration about their inability to change their conditions. Specific events or incidents exemplified and reinforced the shared sense of grievance...With each incident, frustration and tension grew until at some point a final incident. Often similar to the incidents preceding it, occurred and was followed almost immediately by violence. As we see it, the prior incidents and the reservoir of underlying grievances contributed to a cumulative process of mounting tension that spilled into violence when a final incident occurred. In this sense the entire chain—the grievances, the series of prior tension heightening incident, and the final incident—was the "precipitant” of disorder.. . . .Almost invariably the incidents that ignites disorder arises from police action. Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit—all the major outbursts of recents years—were precipitated by routine arrests of Negroes for minor offenses by white officers. . . .The police are not merely a "spark" factor. To some Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a "double standard" of justice and protection--one for Negroes and one for whites.
From Our Enemies in Blue:
> Of the instances of police violence I discussed above—the shootings of Timothy Thomas, the beatings of Rodney King and Luis Milton Morales, the arrest of Marquette Fry, the Killing of Arthur MacDuffie—any of these may be explained in terms of the actions and attitudes of the particular officers at the scene , the events preceding the violence (including actions of the victims), and the circumstances in which the officers found themselves. Indeed, juries have frequently found it possible to excuse police violence with such explanations. The unrest that followed these incidents, however, cannot be explained in such narrow terms. To understand the rioting, one must consider a whole range of related issues, including the conditions of life in the Black Community, the role of the police in relation to that community, and the history and patterns of similar abuses.
So if you're actually interested in understanding what's going on in Ferguson you need to understand several things.
It's easy to blow the racist dog whistle and say that “thugs” are just rioting and make facile, reductive arguments about what's happening in Ferguson, but the reality is that there is nothing at all surprising about the huge divide in opinion on this shooting and its larger resonance. White communities generally have a totally different type of interaction with the police than black ones, and as such it's very difficult for them to imagine a cop being forceful and unnecessarily violent with a citizen, while it doesn't surprise many black people at all to think a cop grabbed a guy and choked him for not obeying fast enough. Just like many whites mistakingly thought that the Rodney King riots were all about that one recorded beating and the acquittal of the officers involved, few knew about [Operation Hammer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hammer_(1987), the shooting of Latasha Harlins, and the fact that of 2000 complaints filed against the LAPD for excessive force from 1985-1990 less than 2% were considered valid by their internal affairs department. Complaints against police brutality have been central complaints of black people since the Civil Rights Movement. MLK even mentioned it twice in his “I Have A Dream” speech.
If people are serious about understanding what's going on in Ferguson, they need to understand a lot of things about how racism currently works in American society. Individual cops need not be racist when the institution of the police enforce laws along racist lines. They are considered the vanguard of structural oppression, and represent the strong arm of the laws that are the result of huge public policy failures (such as the revenue generation fiasco I mentioned above) that are directly descended from segregation and slavery. You have to be seriously deluded to believe that the people of Ferguson just got really mad after one black kid was killed. But keep your smugness and racist hive mind analyses of the uproar among primarily black people this has instigated. I'm sure you'll be scratching your head the next time some other town no one's heard of explodes after another black person is beaten or killed by the police.
TL/DR; Nope. Mass civil unrest can not be summed up in sound bites. Race relations in the US have a long and complicated history. Read and make an informed opinion or don't run your mouth.
EDIT:
Thanks kindly for the gold(s)! My first ever! I'm adding some new observations below. Tried to add them in this post, but it was too long.
EDIT 2: I also think the governor preemptively declaring a state of emergency will become a self fulfilling prophecy. The public officials in Missouri seem single minded in their determination to careen this tragedy into absolute catastrophe. I see several comments questioning the efficacy of violence in enacting social change, but I would challenge people to question what courses of actions are available if and when it is the state itself (which unfortunately determines what is and isn't a crime) that is criminal.
To give you the short and obscenely over-simplified version:
That's some cliff notes. I tried to keep things neutral, though I suspect that many would still take issue with my interpretations.
edit: I should point out that the above almost completely leaves out the influence of conflicts between various religious groups in the region. The whole Sunni/Shi'a conflict, for instance. "They exist and hate each other" is a gross oversimplification that you see bandied around all the time, but I suppose isn't all that far from the truth. Essentially know that Islam, like Christianity, has several subgroups that are distinct, discrete demographic groups, and in some regions are often in conflict. Like Protestants and Catholics have very often been in conflict.
EDIT2: I'm thrilled that so many people appreciate the effort I put into this post. However, given the amount of attention it is receiving I feel obligated to mention that I am by no means an expert on this subject, merely an enthusiastic student of history and politics in my free time. So I hope that people don't take my word as gospel, and are inspired to read more about the region on their own.
If you're looking for places to expand upon your knowledge, William Cleveland's A History of the Modern Middle East is the book I started with, and was a great primer to understanding the region.
Edit3: Wow, thanks for the Gold!
This is incorrect. The UN has 95,000 uniformed peacekeeping forces all over the world. Having countries negotiate through the UN has led to a decrease (but not elimination) of conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, and North/South Sudan. The UN set up tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Of course much more could have been done, but they don't do nothing.
They DID do something in Rwanda. While the whole world stood idly by, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire joined their peacekeeping force and saved thousands. Again, of course so much more could have been done, but that's not nothing.
When I was in school in Belgium in the 1960s, we were taught that the Belgians did nothing but good things in The Congo. My mother confirmed that at the time, all that most Belgians knew about what went on there was on the same level: it was all good, Belgium brought light and civilization to the natives. More recently, of course, people learned the real story: slavery, torture, mutilation, rape and downright genocide, lasting for decades.
It's true that some people in Belgium knew about this, or parts of this, but for the general public the lie was all they ever heard. I remember how shocked my mother was when she read Adam Hochshild's book, King Leoplod's Ghost a few years ago.
This is such a broad question. I want to recommend our AskHistorians Master Book List to you as it isn't focused on American history. Maybe you will find an interesting book and subject in there.
My personal recommendation would be reading up on the colonial history of Belgium, starting with King Leopold's Ghost. I couldn't put it better than the book description: In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.
If that's not what you're looking for, maybe the history of East Germany with a focus on daily life and the Stasi could be interesting as well. But I don't have a good book recommendation for you here. The book Stasiland is very interesting, but maybe too narrow. The movie The Lives of Others could be a good starting point to get you interested.
for those who may not know why this is here:
it would be akin to saying: "christians persecuted themselves and that's why we have rhode island." it's kidz bop history.
If you wanna read about soil, I'd recommend Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan. If you're looking for a soil science textbook, I'd go with Brady & Weil. If you're looking for just general reading recommendations, I've really been loving King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild.
No, these regions would not be described as peaceful decades ago. Places that have large amounts of terrorism/ fighting may have not had those elements a few decades ago, but they were ticking time bombs. Regions just don't erupt into war and destruction over night, there are deeply rooted historical reasons for the current state of affairs in the Middle East and most are rooted in the European colonialism of the region during the 1800s and 1900s.
i would recommend this book if you want to learn more about the history of the arab people and the middle east in general.
> Dang, I'm a white guy dating a biracial woman (black/white). People definitely read her as just "black"
It goes back a few hundred years and we've never shaken it. Laws dating from 17th-century colonial America excluded children of at least one black parent from the legal status of being white. Laws defined all people of some African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent. Some 19th-century categorization schemes defined people with one black parent (the other white) as "mulatto," with one black grandparent as "quadroon" and with one black great grandparent as "octoroon." The latter categories remained within an overall black or African-American category.
> I've heard all these comments before (not often but it happens) and things get more complicated when she mentions she's mixed race.
It's so sad too, because race isn't anything scientific, we invented it. And being "white" is an invention of America. In France, "black" people think of themselves as French. When immigrants came to America they weren't white, they were Polish and German and Dutch and so on. Irish immigrants, who were so oppressed in the North that their treatment would be considered the original sin of America if not for slavery in the South, were not considered "white" until the Civil War. And for Italians it came much later:
> When Italians poured into America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were not considered white upon arrival. Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Slavs and other European groups, at the time called “new immigrants,” sought to overcome their subordination by showing, through their behavior, to be deserving of being considered white. In 1911, Henry Pratt Fairchild, an influential American sociologist, said about new immigrants, “If he proves himself a man, and … acquires wealth and cleans himself up — very well, we might receive him [consider him white] in a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us, and the burden of proof rests with him.” Economist Robert F. Forester wrote in 1924, “in a country where the distinction between white man and black is intended as a distinction of value … it is no compliment to the Italian to deny him his whiteness, but that actually happens with considerable frequency.”
And a little more...
> The construction of the "white race" in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slaveowners from slaves. The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people.
Read up on your history before making assumptions
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618001905/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_aB8TBbCQ7Q6M1
First time commenting in AskHistorians, and although I'm not a historian, I am a huge Hannibal/Roman Republic fan so maybe I can offer my services.
Hannibal was one of the greatest generals of all time (opinion) for multiple reasons, two of which most apply to your question:
> 1. His battlefield ingenuity
>Hannibal used multiple ingenious tactics to stomp the Romans. From large scale ambushes to the double envelope at Cannae, he was always able to keep the Romans on their toes. Due to this fact, we can safely assume that due to the sheer number of "good" maneuvers, he must have known what he was doing. The Battle of Cannae was his masterpiece - he took a smaller, less cohesive army and triumphed over a Roman army on their home turf. Hannibal had mostly resorted to ambushes before, but he didn't even need one at Cannae. From the initial placing of his troops and their subsequent movements, it is clear that this was a well thought out plan determined to use the Roman advantages and hybris against them. Roman soldiers and generals were consistently the best of the ancient world, but they prefer to fight hand to hand combat, up close and personal with large shields and short shorts, so they would want a close fight. Their war-like culture encouraged daring feats in battle and rewarded accordingly. The Roman army was controlled by two consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. Sources tell us that they had very different styles - Varro, the younger and more ambitious, wanted to make a name for himself and was more aggressive, while Paullus was more reserved. The day of Cannae it was Varro's command and he brought out the troops in battle order against the advice of Paullus. Hannibal knew all of this, and wanted to take advantage of Varro's aggressiveness. Like, they had Roman senators just chillin' at the battle cause they were so convinced their larger army would be victorious. Anddd then 80 of them died. Talk about arrogance, what if George W. Bush and 79 of his bros just decided to go watch the invasion of Iraq... from the frontlines... shooting guns... Insane.
> 2. His ability to bring all types of people together
>He had no baggage train like Alexander, yet he was deep into enemy territory with an army mixed of Gauls, Iberian, Libyan, and Numidians. Keep in mind, at this point in time the Roman army was primarily consistent of Romans, with some allied Italians. This is a huge disadvantage for Hannibal - his army speaks a variety of languages and the majority have no personal ties to him whatsoever and mostly fighting for money. I guess one can make the argument that the Gaulish soldiers probably had some vendetta against Rome, but thats beside the point. Any type of army cohesion would be incredibly hard to create, and as such the morale of Hannibal's army from the get-go was weaker than the Romans. This needs to be highly emphasized when looking at Cannae especially.
So where does this leave us? Let's look at the initial army placements - Romans in their typical 3 line arrangement, and Hannibal with his front forward and his wings slightly back. The Carthaginian center was made up of Gauls and Iberians, and both of his wings consisted of his hardened veteran Punic infantry, who most likely fought in phalanx formation. The Gauls and Iberians did not; the Iberians used a large shield and short sword and the Gauls were probably using some Roman equipment from the previous battles. And his cavalry was placed on both flanks. They deserve less focus than the infantry because there is nothing special to say about them besides the fact that they basically always beat the Roman cavalry, as we shall see, but note how they reacted to their victory.
Hannibal's center is more maneuverable due to the differing in fighting styles of his troops, for in order for his plan to work, he must put his Iberian and Gaulish, who are not Carthaginian, in his middle. Typically, the center of an army is the strongest point, but Hannibal threw that out the window. And where did Hannibal reside? It is mostly overlooked and sometimes given attention, but he was directly behind his center, encouraging and yelling out orders.
As the battle goes, the Roman attack the front, and Hannibal feints a retreat - feints as a decision. Varrus assumed that his larger, superior army could smash Hannibal's center... and look at that! They are backing up! It is only time before they fall and the Carthaginian army will be fall and run back to the Alps!
And then Hannibal gives the halt command, his Gauls and Iberians hold their ground. His veteran infantry on his flanks make a pincer move and double envelope the romans. While a smaller army and less deep, the Carthaginians have effectively completely surrounded the Roman army. Excuse me if that doesn't make you giddier than a schoolgirl because I have the biggest smile on my face right now.
Oh yeah, and those cavalry units? Of course they beat their Roman counterpart for the 50th time, and they return and effectively charge into the back of the Romans. Why is this important? Sometimes in these battles, if one cavalry triumphed over another, they would not necessarily turn and help out their infantry. Sometimes they would leave and plunder the enemy's camp, which is more rewarding for them, but thank goodness Hannibal's brother leads the cavalry and turned immediately after defeating the Romans. A full surround, 50,000 men around 85,000 men. And then they were slaughtered mercilessly.
Back to your question:
> 1. Did Hannibal tell his center to fall back?
>Yes, 100% due to the layout of his army, the maneuvers of his center and the lack of movement from his flanks, his personal placement of himself, the recalling of his cavalry, and the fact that he was just an all-around badass are all reasons why we know without a doubt this was all planned.
> 2. Did he assume it would happen?
>Probably, as well. Keep in mind he had his weakest and least trustworthy troops in his center, and so had to place himself there to personally watch over them. His plan would have been completely foiled if his center fell, and took all measures to assure that it would not. In fact, if his center had fallen, modern historians would probably think much less highly of him because - assuming it collapsed and the invasion was over - it would have been an awful decision. Why would spread his smaller army out, so it's less deep, and put his worst troops in the center, the seemingly most important part of an army. Oh because he's a genius, that's why.
Hope that helps!
Sources - The Ghosts of Cannae by Robert L. O'Connel, Hannibal by Robert Garland
*edited for grammmmar and format
There was a really good book I read many years ago called "How the Irish became white" it talked about how over time Irish at least in American western culture came from a group of people considered to be "White Niggers" to being considered parts of the dominant white culture.
In the end the book was all about how "whiteness" is really a social construct, it doesn't truly exist other then to be used as a means to separate us from them. We can be parts of many cultures Anglo-saxon, Germanic, etc. But really the idea of a white race (or really any race) is just a means of separating and controlling others.
There's actually a decent amount of Academia dedicated to figuring out how the Irish transitioned from identifiable ethnic minority to other white people. The most famous example is about how the Irish came to become oppressors, which is oF cOuRsE synonymous with white.
But the most profound way in which they became what was... they assimilated.
The Fate of Africa
>Can I just toss in a 'fuck you' to them right there, the ”white race” never existed at all, it was made up as an excuse to support racial discrimination in America against African peoples because America already had just about every ethnicity from Europe so they couldn't claim it was the French/English/German/Russian people who were the ”superior.”
It's almost as if race is a political concept.
I think you're making a joke, but there's actually a really interesting book with that title that goes over Carthage's history and Phoenician origins.
​
If anyone has even a passing curiosity about Carthage beyond the surface level you learn reading about Hellenistic history, that book is probably one of the best.
​
Title of the book is Carthage Must Be Destroyed in case the previous post goes away.
White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves
Not an article, but King Leopold's Ghost is a great book, as is The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila
Or if you have an hour to kill White King, Red Rubber, Black Death is a very well made documentary.
Yes! Thank you for bringing this up because it's absolutely influenced the way I engage my activism. Here's a photo of me running one of our first 5ks for Women for Women International with Utah For Congo. It's actually the first time I met /u/JohnDehlin in person because he came and supported the race!
I had read Half the Sky and was horrified to learn of the plight of women around the world. I'm not one to hear of something bad and sit around so I do what I do best, I organized. My friend Missy and I started 5k's to raise money for post-rape survivors in the DRC. It was a great, feel-good experience. We did it for a few years but as we both got more involved, we also got more educated.
I read King Leopold's Ghost which radically shifted my take on how I saw the world. What I saw was a history of white women who would hear about the horrors of the global south, clutch their pearls, and organize.
What this usually meant was women's societies (relief societies!) who felt like their white, western presence could save the savage from their heathen state.
If you know the history of Congo and the conflict there, they were colonized out of missionary work and the intentions of white westerners intent on rescuing them. It was horrifying to look in that mirror and realize I was complicit in a system of colonizing. A system that got them in the mess to begin with.
Colonization is violence. Mormonism too often engages in colonial ways of engaging the world and I can't support it. (However, fundamentalist are usually more intent on saving their own, including the LDS and that approach is better than trying to tell the rest of the world they need to be fixed).
Anyway, it's so hard to not be complicit in systems of violence since we are all part of these systems, but I do try my best to not reinforce them. I try and support charities where local people are working in their own corners of their own communities and let them take the lead. That is how I would vet charities. If they are outsiders trying to rescue other communities, I get suspicious.
I've tried to scale back on global activism and focus on the corners of my own world and my own community for this reason.
People are often like, "Why are you so focused on Mormonism?" Because that's the community I know and I know our struggles better than outsiders do and I'm committed and invested in making them healthier.
Alright, so we're sure that southern states fought for slavery not "states rights", and that northern states were gunning for abolition.
So my question now is, what exactly was the north's motivation? Was it purely moral? Or were there selfish incentives, such as economic, social, political, or otherwise systemic?
The textbook answer of why the north and south were bound to collide is that northern industry was incompatible with the southern plantation economy. But there's this relatively new book called The Half has never been Told, (disclaimer I have not read this book I am somewhat ashamed to admit, I merely heard the author talk about it on NPR at some point). If I understand correctly, this book claims that far from being incompatible, the south's slave system was the critical ingredient that catalyzed and drove forwards America's whole entire industrial revolution. The south makes the cotton, northern factories pump out textiles. American capitalism was based on slavery, the sweat and blood of slaves was the seed capital that was invested to create the exponential powerhouse that is the american economy.
So, that's in a nutshell why I ask this question, if we put aside all the very clear altruistic imperatives, what incentive did the North have for abolishing slavery? What incentive did the north have for wanting to limit slavery's expansion? Why did northerners want to ban slavery in their own states in the first place, other than moral reasons?
The followup question is, if the north acted totally amorally in it's self interest only, would some sort of compromise have avoided the civil war? No doubt such a compromise would involve somehow guaranteeing slavery in the southern states for perpetuity.
And another followup question is, given that the north had economically benefited so much from slavery, if "The Half has never been Told" is to be believed, would they have benefited further if they hypothetically did manage to pull off a Grand Bargain with the south?
There's a book you really need to read, called "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism".
It was a business. That does not mean is was not extraordinarily violent and deeply racist and degrading and evil in very mundane ways on a daily basis.
I'm glad this study is getting some visibility, because people seem to be largely unaware of the explicitly white supremacist history of the fight against entitlements.
Welfare programs created under the New Deal were intensely prejudiced toward African Americans and immigrants. They contained many mechanism for states to segregate and deny access to these programs for minority groups.
What killed the welfare programs in the US was the civil rights movement which guranteed somewhat equal access to public services, including welfare programs, to non white people. Welfare reform and entitlement reform has always been first and foremost anoit perpetuating white supremacy.
https://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/welfare01b.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Americans-Hate-Welfare-Communication/dp/0226293645
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393328511/
Relevant: http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1048-the-invention-of-the-white-race
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white11.htm
Everyone repeat after me: Race is socially constructed. "White" as a racial identity was manufactured by the ruling classes following Bacon's rebellion in the late 1600's in order to divide lower class whites/blacks, the former who were eventually freed of indentured servitude, the later who went from being indentured servants to chattel slaves.
Highly recommend reading "King Leopold's Ghost" to anyone interested in the history of Belgian colonialist atrocities in Africa. Warning: it makes for grim reading.
https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1G6I5DTX3TBOH&keywords=king+leopold%27s+ghost&qid=1574558091&s=books&sprefix=king+leo%2Cstripbooks%2C143&sr=1-1
If you want to understand the Geo-politcs better I'd recommend maybe digging into the history a bit. If you read some good survey books about the ME a lot of things/groups in Syria gain context.
Also no need for a foreigner to 'pick a side' -- it's a tragedy not a sporting event.
Generally, I would say your point about being open-minded and understanding others perspectives is valid and a great thing to do.
However, the recent links with Republicans (through conservatives) to racism, though Trump and others, deserve to be automatically judged. Any group that espouses outright racism should automatically lose.
Also, there as been the recent post showing John Lewis being for Net Neutrality and local Republicans at the federal level being against it and as well as their comparative campaign contributions from Comcast etc. Surely lobbying effects every congressman etc, but it's painful when it is so clearly obvious your representative cares more about specific business interests than what you want.
Though both Democrats and Republicans are now involved in instituting neoliberal policies (such as privatizing prisons) that unequally effects non-white and poor people, these policies did come into Vogue under Nixon and Regan. A capitalism (and therefore business) first attitude means a citizen last attitude.
I understand their perspective, generally. More importantly, I understand the historical and modern consequences and causes of their policies and actions. Racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression exist systematically throughout our society as it is, we don't need to fuck people over more now when we already have stolen and murdered and subjugated and basically fucked billions of people over historically.
I am positive there is a lesser evil, and even if we just base it on racist tendencies alone, the answer is clear; assuming one is anti-racist.
*Edit: I can cite some academic sources if anyone desires.
Some Sources, mostly dealing with US history:
Knocking the Hustle - Lester K. Spence - for neoliberalism and related issues
The Case for Reparations - Ta-Nehisi Coates - inequality/racism in the 20th century
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney - How Europe and the United States benefited from the slave trade and how Africa was harmed.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism - Edward Baptist - How all citizens of the US benefited from slavery and how it was responsible for US's quick growth/power.
A People's History of the United States - Zinn Ch1 is about Columbus and settler colonialism. Invasion/land theft/murder.
Legacies of the Dawes Act -Berthrong Land Theft from Native Americans.
For sure, the text we read was When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
Well, no that's the Congo. They had great teachers. You remember of course, King Leopold II who cut off people's hands if they failed to meet rubber production quotas.
I'm at work right now, but I have a journal with a few brief interviews with some victims of the genocide. I'll transcribe them in the evening.
Also, watch Sometimes in April instead of Hotel Rwanda.
Excellent books on the subject: We wish to inform you that tomorrow you will be killed with your families, Machete Season (the genocidaires speak...), and Shake hands with the devil.
Also, I think it's very unlikely that PK steps down in 2017; there was talk of amending the constitution during the last round of elections.
I have a decent amount of insight, having lived there for 2 years and change, but am in no way an expert FWIW.
edit: formatting
she's an ardent zionist, served in and actively defends and promotes the israeli "defense" forces, most notably vocally supporting the 2014 massacres in Gaza where israel killed over 2500 civilians, including over 500 children. for over 70 years israel has been administering a system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in historic palestine. in 1948, when israel was founded, over 500 palestinian villages were ethnically cleansed, their populations either murdered or forced to flee as refugees. the villages were then either destroyed or renamed with hebrew names and populated by zionist settler families, mostly from europe. arab citizens in israel are second class citizens in many legal ways including where they can live, work, and travel.
the rest of palestine occupied illegally by israel and the palestinian population has zero political freedom, freedom of movement, or economic opportunities while simultaneously more and more of the land under military occupation is seized (again illegally according to several international conventions and laws) by settlers.
and it's not just in palestine, the israeli government is an ally of right wing forces around the world, including the trump administration. they were a key alley of the apartheid regime in south africa. they've sent guns to the neo-nazi azov battalion in ukraine.
israel, like the united states and canada, is completely indefensible. these states are founded on genocide maintained by apartheid. it's settler colonialism.
These people:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Starred Review. In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation.
Actually, I have kind of been following the comments and there are some fine texts that have been suggested in the comments. If you are interested in the topic:
I would also say that part of my perspective is from somewhere else. I have read 26 biographies of American Presidents. Most are boring but there are two people who shaped US political ideology much more than others: Theodore Roosevelt and John Adams. They defined the century that followed (particularly Roosevelt). In telling their stories, the authors must describe the context--you learn a lot about history by simply seeing the people and the ideas that did not win. The other thing that modern biographers do--they tell the truth about the real goals. Once a person has the power... what do they do with it and why.
The short answer is Redlining, Drugs, and manufacturing.
Here's the defacto book on redlining these days.
Edit: Spelling.
Wait, they're not white, they're Irish!
Dagfari has just finished reading "How the Irish became White"
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
I would argue they were treated much more similarly than many would think, with Roman slavery being horrible and somewhat comparable to the Atlantic Slave Trade (even if I think its healthy to be more uncomfortable with the race based slavery that has an ongoing legacy)
This is a bit of a pet issue of mine since I feel that there are quite a few reasons why the horrors of ancient slavery (in particular Greece/Rome) are ignored. I (or we) don't know enough to entirely answer the question but I do think its important to inform that we do know that Roman slavery was pretty nasty.
The overwhelming majority of Roman slaves were not household or city slaves but field slaves and other labour intense occupations who worked in horrible conditions. Mining in particular was a death sentence, if I recall correctly from Carthage Must Be Destroyed for a 500+ year stretch at any one point there were over 40,000 mining slaves in Spain alone. That's with a mining life expectancy of 3-5 years. If you read some of the descriptions of Roman field slaves it is reminiscent of the conditions of plantation slaves in the America's.
There was also the lack of rights for slaves throughout much of Roman history. Owners could essentially do whatever they wanted to their slaves, sex could not be refused and it was a fact of life that slaves could be raped. There is a range of sentimentality of these house slaves that we see on things like grave stones but again these slaves are a small minority of slaves.
Now a lot of this (the horrible conditions, rape, ect) is similar to the slavery in the America's but without the racial/religious aspects of the Atlantic slave trade (at least in America, the racial aspect gets more complicated in other places). I don't think we have the hard numbers to properly compare and contrast to my satisfaction but my perception of the issue is that they really are similar. People generally don't think of mining slaves when they think of black slaves but Brazil in particular had hundreds of thousands of slaves die in the mines with an even lower life expectancy than the Roman slaves in Spain. I do think that this is an example of one trend which is that as horrible as Roman slavery was from what I've read the comparable hard labour job would often be even worse in the America's (because of things like tropical diseases/conditions, racism, profit margins, ect) .
Tldr: Surprisingly similar in many horrible ways but on average slaves in the America's would be treated worse.
***
Of course there should also be the usual disclaimer about Rome being a very long lived empire so even "ancient Rome" arguably spans over a 1000 years and especially post Christianity there are some changes.
Sources: Carthage must be Destroyed, Slavery in Brazil (not the best source), and Roman Slavery
Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.
Books - General History of the Middle East
Books - Middle East Military History
Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Think Tanks
Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
Black Reconstruction in America by WEB Dubois is, hands down, the best book about this period in American history from a Marxist perspective.
Also Shake Hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire, the leader of the UN mission in Rwanda during the genocide. It givesa fascinating perspective.
http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0786715103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457145353&sr=8-1&keywords=romeo+dallaire
I'm currently reading Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace," and while I just started it, it's pretty clear that the Russians and Brits were instrumental in setting the course for the modern Middle East. We (the U.S.) just threw our shoulder to the wheel later on.
That comment was supposedly said by Maharbal, one of Hannibal's lieutenants, after Cannae. Cannae was the third and most devastating in a series of victories Hannibal won against Roman legions immediately after arriving in Italy. Rome was genuinely crippled after the battle and the City was almost entirely undefended. Hannibal hesitated to march on Rome though, as he didn't trust his army's ability to maintain a siege against the most heavily fortified city in the world. Because he didn't deliver the coup de grace, Rome gradually recovered and ultimately defeated Hannibal and Carthage after a war of attrition that lasted nearly twenty years. You can read Livy's account here (the exchange with Maharbal is in 22.51).
Even though the hesitancy to march on Rome is sometimes seen as a strategic blunder, the decision wasn't so obviously wrong at the time. Hannibal hoped to strip away Rome's Italian allies after demonstrating his ability to crush Roman armies. He underestimated the nature and durability of those Italian alliances, but he continued in Italy for another sixteen or seventeen years, defeating nearly every army that was sent against him. He only left when Scipio Africanus invaded Africa and Carthage recalled him to defend the homeland. Hannibal's tactical brilliance is absolutely undeniable--he is one of the most imaginative and successful generals of the classical world--and his strategic missteps are I think somewhat over-exaggerated.
If you're interested in Hannibal, the two best classical sources are Livy and Polybius. I would also recommend The Ghosts of Cannae. It's a highly engaging and readable account of Hannibal's invasion written by an historian with a great deal of military expertise, and it goes into some detail about the precise tactics Hannibal employed.
This image gives sort of the essential idea of what has happened. I'd advise the book "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine" by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe to start understanding the history.
The Irish weren't always considered white. I haven't read the whole thing, but this book, How the Irish Became White, is pretty interesting.
That's actually kind of accurate. You should read How the Irish Became White and Low Life Gangs of New York is really curate, even down to the awful accents of the characters.
Possibly cheaper per hour worked (though I'd really want to see your citation on that), but definitely not cheaper per unit of product. You couldn't whip wage workers into faster picking, while whipping slaves into faster picking (something like a 200% increase in cotton picking efficiency between 1800 and 1860, which dropped like a rock once chattel slaves could no longer be used) was one of the foundations of the Southern economy.
Please see The Half Has Never Been Told for more information on the economics of slavery in the antebellum South. Slavery made America what it is today.
http://www.kulturemedia.org/
I want to give you this example and you can see the parallels today.
 
 
So, yes, propaganda is real and it is effective. It's not conspiracy. When I say whites cannot be trusted people think I'm nuts too, but I just gave you three examples of things that happened to just one nation.
 
It is pervasive. They do control a lot of the media and they fill it with lies
 
Also, whites are even more full of shit than most ever imagined. Look at all that fair trade in the "rules based order".
http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/
http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/
https://i.imgur.com/OMawpLS.jpg
https://www.amazon.com/Settlers-Mythology-Proletariat-Mayflower-Kersplebedeb/dp/1629630373/
https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X
Rather than giving you foreign policy/political-science books; the two books I highly recommend for interested people, to getting a proper understanding of today's Middle East, would be these two books:
"The Arabs: A History" Eugene Rogan
A History of the Modern Middle East William L Cleveland, Martin Bunton
If you want to understand the situation today, its important to take a historical approach to it, rather than a political-science one, written by pundits and politicians, who carry a lot of the interests of their respective backers.
They are standard University texts, very well written, and updated as well. To understand the "present", one must first understand the "past". And so if you want a truly unbiased understanding of the Middle East in 2015, its important to understand how events got to there.
Maybe take a look at this documentary to get a little perspective on the current situation in the Congo. Canadians are among the top consumers of electronic goods, and it's the materials used to make these good that come from "blood minerals." There are also a few articles on the subject here, here and here. The west plays a large part in the violence in Western African nations. Canadians should at least realize that our lifestyles contribute (whether directly or indirectly) to some degree to political situations in third world countries.
And to say "it's shit because they made it shit" is so ignorant I don't even know where to start. Perhaps take a look through this book to realize how fucked up the Congo was from its earliest days of colonization.
> it coudl be argued much of africa has a better life and opportunity under colonialism
Read King Leopold’s Ghost from cover to cover before you ever make this claim again.
Oh, Gavin. We used to be friends, why did you throw your lot in with Biscotti? :/
Yes, the Irish were discriminated against, heavily. Because they weren't considered white at the time.
How the Irish Became White
https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
Adam Hochschild wrote an excellent book about it
Yeah, you picked a bad hill to die on, saying I " generically blame "Europeans" " when I clearly pointed out that there were Europeans calling out chattel slavery as evil as it was happening. You really should have caught that before responding.
Somewhat realated, another podcast you can check out is Behind the Bastards, which did a two part episode on Belgium's crimes in the Congo. https://www.behindthebastards.com/podcasts/part-one-king-leopold-ii-the-first-modern-bastard.htm
Did you know Leopold raised capital for his African venture by claiming he was doing humanitarian work fighting the Arabs who were enslaving Africans? And that he then used those funds to create his own slave armies and workforce to extract rubber wealth from the region? I didn't, until I took the time to listen and learn. And that's why I called you out on trying to shift blame to India and it's slave trade, bc that's an old racist tactic to muddy the waters and derail a conversation on slavery.
maybe add King Leopold's Ghost to that list: https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905/ref=sr_1_1?crid=V66OOWR7ZQFJ&keywords=king+leopold%27s+ghost&qid=1573326603&sprefix=king+leo%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-1
edit: also, don't start an apology with feigned innocence on this subject, especially on r/blackfellas. Just own that you response was bad, and trust that we can see the effort to change course.
I'm about half way done converting Our Enemies in Blue (as mentioned in the article) to EPUB/MOBI and a cleaned, properly formatted PDF (the version floating around the internet is awful). The book is sort of hard to find and no digital version exists (outside of that PDF) so I figured the internet could use a proper ebook edition.
If there's any interest, I'll put it up here when I've finished the conversion (tedious, manual conversion that is due to the poor PDF OCR). Should be done in about a week.
This will give you all the context you'll need, though not directly related to transit, explains a lot about why/how Baltimore is the way it is today.
https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437
The book King Leopold's Ghost is all about this genocide. It's a very good read and I highly recommend it.
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild is really good. Its about the Belgian King's rule over the Congo.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevich is an account of the Rwandan Genocide of '94.
That's more recent history, but the fact is little is written about pre-colonial Africa (not dealing with Egypt). I haven't read much, but I'm sure theres some decent readings about the Mali Empire (maybe start with Mansa Musa?).
If anyone is interested in a good read on how racial prejudice has shaped the very fabric of Baltimore, check out Not in My Neighborhood by Antero Pietila.
One surprising fact he dug up out of the dirty (open) secrets was that the anti-Semitic sentiment was so strong in Baltimore, a third segregated tier of housing (i.e., in addition to segregation for whites and blacks), unique to the city, catering specifically to Jews developed and was even used into the early 1970s. It was so bad that Joseph Meyerhoff (yes, that Meyerhoff), a Ukrainian Jew who's family fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire when he was 7, refused to sell or rent to other Jews (Pietila 2010: 136-140).
For starters:
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538798550&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+ethnic+Cleansing+of+Palestine&dpPl=1&dpID=51nAwSlj65L&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Israel-History-Power-Knowledge-ebook/dp/B00EGMBK4I/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538798577&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+idea+of+israel
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GXATG2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
This was definitely true of the socdem policy in James Baldwin's lifetime. This is a good overview of how New and Fair Deal policy was deliberately constructed, as the NAACP said of the Social Security Act at the time, "like a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through." This on top of practices like redlining that seriously limited black people's ability to build a robust middle class with the GI Bill. While I agree with Leslie's thread and I think even the most mythical BernieBro wouldn't exclude PoC the way southern Democrats did, you can't completely dismiss that skepticism out of hand.
Ignatiev wrote an outstanding book on "How the Irish became White". It's worth a read for a phenomenon that, I agree, seems hard to believe.
I think this caricature from the end of the 19th century is pretty telling.
The Irish were stereotyped as uncivilized, unskilled and impoverished and were forced to work at the least desired occupations and live in crowded ethnic ghettoes. Many ads for employment were accompanied by the order "NO IRISH NEED APPLY." Does this remind you of anything? They were certainly not black, but also not really white.
That was the big problem American society faced at the end of the 19th century. When immigrants from other parts of the world, not just central Europe came. Are Russians white? But why are they so different from us other whites? Are Italians white? But they are anarchists and they speak a different language. Are the Jews white? But they are not Christians as we all are.
Doesn't make a lot of sense if your society is built on the difference between black and white and grey areas don't fit into the narrative.
> My family and ancestry are all from Ireland.
I stopped reading. I didn't ask for the oppression olympics and, back then, the Irish were not considered "white".
Now, why don't you go look up how you all got welcomed into the "White" race and get back to me?
It's not a pretty fucking story. So no, the Irish were not oppressed for being white. They became White and now fully enjoy White privilege. Sorry but I am good and fucking tired of the Irish card.
I recommend you read this book if you want to understand why your words are earning the Side Eye.
We weren't always. This is a good read, How the Irish Became White.
Los Irlandeses no eran considerados blancos cuando recién llegaron a Estados Unidos, pero eso cambio con el tiempo.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
I would say that understanding the necessity of AA is more of a matter of understanding the history of the socio-economics of our society and remember that these events were still happening up until just a few decades ago, which means that it affects cultural acceptance of people who grew up under institutionalized racism.
Here is a great book for putting things in perspective, especially for understanding the difficulties of changing a suspicious culture that is wary of any programs that are designed to help minorities.
http://www.amazon.com/When-Affirmative-Action-White-Twentieth-Century/dp/0393328511
I've a traced direct paternal lineage to a group who were taken from Mullingar in the 15th century to work in Dublin's docks, 10 generations of those men up to my great grandfather living in absolute poverty in tenement houses. Then there's the horror show of the West of Ireland, people subsisting off a 10x10 plot of potatoes, labouring at gunpoint for landlords with vast estates. Then of course millions died when the potato blight came, not because there wasn't food produced in the country, but because the country was a breadbasket. They went as far as blocking donations of aid to the Irish from other countries. The squalor, indignity and suffering of the Irish under British rule is scarcely worth trying to quantify. Chattel slaves suffered also, obviously, they were subjects to a whole other system of oppression, but ultimately, it seems like they've been unable to shake the oppression complex because they continue to experience or perceive it in many aspects of their life to this day. Irish people, by comparison can blend with British society better now, but even up to the 2000s, because of the conflict in Northern Ireland, Irish people were regarded suspiciously in the UK, had civil rights movements against sectarianism in government services (protestants being privileged over Catholics for many years). Many British people also still tell stupid Irish jokes. The point is, all that is there, and still experienced, but we don't flinch and snarl like a beaten dog every time we encounter it. Here's some further reading around the subject if you're interested.
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
According to "How the Irish Became White" author Ignatiev , Irish people were basicially treated as an 'other' race in the US initially.
Hey on that topic here's a book about how slavery is the foundation of American capitalism that I've been reading: https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X
"The Largest Street Gang in America" explains it in under an hour. "Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America" explains it in an accessible book, the history of police' role as evolved from slavery, white supremacy, and strikebreaking.
The police are the biggest gang, or, second to the state's military gang. They exert a territorial monopoly on force. They have no legal requirement to enforce any specific laws; it's up to the commander's wills and the individual mercenary's desire to keep his salary intact. In each region these gangs usually have the most organization, expertise, experience, weapons, ammo, armor, vehicles, communication systems, snatch squads, detention facilities, interrogation manuals, sense of righteousness, formal training in strategy and tactics, group solidarity, desire to cover up for their comrades, sense of legitimacy, propensity to stabilize power differentials, and established monopoly.
When a man spends more than half of the waking hours of his everyday life, five days a week, acting as an agent of repression toward deviancy and dissent, when he spends his time patrolling and profiling and interrogating, beating and snatching and caging, everyone outside of his organization's subculture starts to look like a hostile foreigner, every other domestic population an internal colony. Where once he might have had companionship, community and creativity, now he has only coercion, command and conformity. His world becomes one of paranoid policing and perceived persecution, rationalized repression and uniformed vengeance. And surely his heart becomes callous and dead. Now, a cop might have a charming personality outside of his role, but in his role he acts primarily as a force of repression. In situations of chaos they tend to escalate their monopoly (e.g. confiscating legal firearms) and become even less accountable. Monopoly shackles and power corrupts.
Like Rwanda, where nearly a million people were killed in about a month. With machetes. Many of the early deaths when the killings started were done in churches. Since that's where people initially gathered looking for safety, that's where the genocidiers went to kill. Shake Hands with the Devil is a pretty tough but good read.
If anybody's down for some really interesting reading, Black Hawk Down tells the whole story that they couldn't fit into the movie.
The author, Mark Bowden, has lots of other great reads too!
I'm almost positive it's in the book by Mark Bowden
Amazon link
I highly recommend it, the story jumps around perspectives from solders on both sides as well as civilians. It's a great representation of modern combat.
Read this book
Maybe not the greatest military victory in the sense of a single engagement with outstanding commanding and tactics, but the conquest (fall) of Constantinople was a hugely important and arguably "great" military victory. Let's set the scene: it is 1452, Sultan Mehmed II ascended to the Ottoman throne in the previous year. By this point, the Ottoman Empire has taken over all the land formerly controlled by the Byzantine Empire, on both the Asian and European (into Greece) sides, except for the city of Constantinople. This city, bridging Europe and Asia, on the Bosphorus straits, had been a thorn in the Ottoman side for years, this being their third major siege of the city. Mehmed begins building a fortress on the European side of the strait, Rumelihisarı, opposite to the previously built Anadoluhisarı on the opposite side of the strait. This effectively cut off the strait and inhibited any support coming from the Genoese colonies in the black sea. One story recounts of how a small ship carrying supplies to the city attempted to run through the "danger zone" but a giant block of stone, not even a cannonball, was fired from Rumelihisarı and suddenly there was no more boat. Nobody else tried to pass through the strait. Understanding the dire situation he was about to be in, Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI, sought help from the West, contacting Pope Nicholas V in hopes of garnering support in case of a siege. As it turns out, there was too much bad blood remaining between the Eastern and Western Churches so the Pope didn't offer very much help to the Emperor so he was pretty much on his own, except for the few men who came on their own accord, including Giovanni Giustiniani who took control of the defense of the city, and the Venetian ships that were in the bay (aka the Golden Horn) at the time. Besides the few ships that were stationed in the bay, the defenders also built a chain across the mouth of the bay to inhibit any ottoman ships from entering and laying siege to the city from the water. There were about 7000 defenders for the city as opposed to somewhere upwards of 80000 men and over 100 ships for the Ottomans. Besides men alone, the Ottomans also brought an arsenal of cannons including one 27 foot long behemoth named "Basilica" that was able to fire a 600lb ball over a mile away (fun fact, it would take 3 hours to reload apparently). This was supposedly one of the biggest cannons ever made at the time. And this would have been necessary because the walls surrounding the city were regarded as some of the best ever built. Nobody figured that the walls would fall, some believed that Constantinople was the best defended city in the world.
Now the siege begins. The Ottomans have enough men to completely encircle the city where there is land, the defenders can't man the entire wall. All day every day Basilica fires upon the walls but because it is inaccurate and slow to fire, the walls are mostly maintained and repaired before any serious damage can be done. Because of the chain, the Ottoman ships couldn't make it into the Golden Horn for the entire beginning of the siege, but one night, the entire Ottoman fleet was beached and put on logs. The boats were sent over the coastal hill, back down the other side, and right into the bay, behind the defending fleet. Soon thereafter, in a desperate attempt to strike at the Ottoman fleet, the defenders attempted a daring night attack with the plan to sneak up on the Ottoman fleet and destroy it with Greek fire. The Ottomans were tipped off of the sneak attack prior and prepared accordingly, proceeding to cripple any semblance of a fleet the defenders had, and thereby gaining control of the Golden Horn. Back at the land battle, men were thrown wave-after-wave at the walls, all repulsed with great casualties. The Sultan decides to attempt sapping the walls. Tunnels were dug but were quickly intercepted and destroyed by the defenders' counter-tunnelers (led by a Scot). At this point, Mehmed was at his wit's end, he was ready to give up the assault and was advised so by one of his grand viziers. The other though, Grand Vizier Zaganos Pasha, a man known for his blood-thirst, supposedly gave such a stirring speech to the Sultan that all it would require to take the city is one last major frontal assault, that the Sultan assented and plans were begun to prepare for the big assault in the coming days.
It is now the night of May 28, 1453, the siege having begun 52 days ago. Knowing that the end was imminent, the defenders held one last major ceremony in St. Sophia, members of both the Latin and Greek churches attended. Soon after midnight, the assault began. A veritable torrent of men was sent against the wall, Christians conscripted to fight, Ottoman soldiers, the elite Janissaries, all died in droves in the attack. But recently a small section of the wall had been damaged and this allowed for the Ottomans to gain purchase. In the ensuing fight for the walls, Giustiniani was gravely injured so the few men that came with him attempted to carry their leader to safety, abandoning the wall, thereby eroding the confidence of the Greek defenders. Soon the Ottomans were able to take the rest of the fortifications and the defense fell. Some say the emperor shed his imperial regalia and led the troops in a final attack while others say he hanged himself when he saw that the walls had fallen. Mehmed enters the city through the "liberated" main gates atop his white charger resplendent in his Sultan outfit cutting a resplendent image against his newly conquered city. The attackers were allowed to plunder for 3 days after which order was restored, but not before the city was sacked and thousands of inhabitants were sold into slavery. Mehmed was able to protect some of the city, though, re-purposing St. Sophia into a mosque, Hagia Sophia, as it remains to this day.
That was a very short version of the story, if anybody is interested in learning more, I would recommend 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
The sentiment here seems to be "Not in my neighborhood", which is also a book title.
yes i totally agree. and to piggy back on the bootstrap ideology, when you really look at the past 60 years the majority of white America has gotten to where they are today because of government programs like the GI bill, getting special privileges with FHA loans, and better funding for schools. they didn't pull themselves up by their boot straps they benefited from white affirmative action
a lot of those types who claim the only thing holding black americans back are black americans like to point out how they worked so hard for what they have, but in reality it was passed down to them by their parents whom largely benefited from gov assistance.
When Affirmative Action was White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
http://www.shmoop.com/early-american-immigration/race.html
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
http://professorwhatif.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/what-if-youre-not-quite-white/
Most Catholics were not considered "white" in America, hence Italians having the same oppression issues. I am surprised to see reddit so misinformed on race in America, really. "White" is a constantly evolving, and growing, ethnicity in America.
Which is why it is so peculiar to see current "white" people abused for their privilege. Tell my ancestors about that privilege please. I got invited to that party after the keg was tapped out, the queso was gone and there was nothing but chip crumbs in the bottom of the bag.
For a comprehensive read on the subject, can't recommend How the Irish Became White enough. The myth that the Irish ascended into the mainstream for meritocratic reasons obviously has wildly racist undertones, but the book does a great job of laying out exactly how it actually occurred: by demonstrating to the existing white power structure that they could readily participate in the brutalization and marginalization of blacks. Eventually the Irish came to dominate police departments in major cities, and spent most of their time on the job rounding up both other Irish people and black folks. They were also welcomed into various industrial occupations as alternatives to black people, and eventually formed a variety of labor unions that also excluded people of color. That's not to say all Irish folks gleefully traded solidarity with another oppressed group for whiteness, the book also goes into detail about Irish abolitionists and later union organizers and agitators who actively fought racism as well.
Any "rags to richest" story about minorities tends to ignore one glaring feature of the American racial ideology: That anyone who wasn't black immediately had a leg up over black people, because blackness by definition denoted the lowest possible status. That's not to say there aren't another 100 nuances and complicating factors in these stories, e.g. wealth and educational status of incoming immigrant waves, but the particular "constants" of the American race equation is a big one.
Yeah I'm pretty sure they weren't considered black but they were considered non-white.
Amazon's summary of How the Irish Became White:
>The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a land of opportunity – they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person’s skin. Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book – the first published work of one of America’s leading and most controversial historians – tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became White.
No. The Irish were never brought to America as slaves. There are a few parts to this:
Long and short.... no, there was no systemic or wide slavery of Irish people in the Americas.
For anyone wanting to read the whole story https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
It's not often you get to say "Fuck Belgium"
> If they are in the same situation, that's the same situation. But until I get it, I'm ignoring anything about her parents or grandparents when it's HER situation.
Thats the thing they weren't the same. I'm 30. My parents grew up at the end of Jim crow when you could pay black people a 1/10th of what you could pay white people. They didn't have the same opportunities because of racist laws and systems.
> "And Systems"??? From what I can tell the only systems in America about race actually BENEFIT black people. What systems are you talking about?
What are you talking about? Affirmative action? The thing that has benefited white women the most? Here's a book about it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393328511/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AaHWCbMP2ZEM8
The justice system will unfairly give black people harsher sentences to black people than their white counter parts.
Or judges litterally selling black youth to jails.
Or the wells Fargo using predatory loans on Black and Latinos.
Those systems.
> Doesn't seem like being white is a huge advantage for white trans Denise.
Yes. Yes she does. She doesn't have to deal with a school to prison pipeline. She doesn't have predatory loans based off of her skin tone. She is still likely to have had a better education than her black peers.
> . really don't get your point here. Or really how the issues are different. Please explain.
There is no way you're a trans person. Trans people have different issues than black people. And black people can also be trans and have to deal with both issues of being black and trans.
To break it down:
A black person can be shot and killed by the police and receive an unfair sentence.
A trans person can be detained in jail for the wrong gender, and lack the medical care needed while incarcerated.
A trans black person has all of the above.
Trans people and black people face different issues, and it is pointless, unless discussing intersectionality, to compare the two.
> Because my point is that being white isn't automatically a privilege.
Yes. Yes it is. Other aspects of your identity do not erase the benefits you receive. IE a white woman still benefits from the oppressive systems of minorities, while still facing the oppressive systems of sexism. A cis latino man still benefits from being cisgendered and male, while still dealing with racism. Whether they turn into a sum benefit or negative, is not the point anyone is making. Only that whitness has a benefit.
> But we shouldn't just blame everything on white people's existence for being white.
No one has said this. Stop saying this. White people benefit from a system of oppression that makes it much harder for people of color to succeed and play on an even playing ground.
> 1000% bullshit, I see it on here literally every day.
Show me please. Because what I see is people going, "Man white people gotta do better." Which to translates to, "white people are devils!"
> Disagree, help yourself don't expect others to do everything for you.
Please tell me how black people correct the racist justice system in each state with only 13% of the national voting pool.
> Black people, believe it or not, do have rights now. This isn't the civil war era.
No one is saying this. Only you are because you're not listening.
> Also, who the hell would purposely make thier own life harder to help strangers? Almost no one. I mean I doubt you have homeless people living with you to help them out.
How do you get from, we have societal issues against racial minorities to, "I bet you wouldn't let a homeless person live with you!"
I constantly vote to make my life harder to make stranger's lives easier. I want universal health care, better schools, better roads. All of that has to come out of my paycheck, and I'm fine with it. Better society means better life for me.
And don't be silly. Inviting a stranger into your home to live with you doesn't even begin to help homeless problems. I vote for additonal low income/homeless housing, as well as make monthly donations to food banks and homeless shelters. Thats way better of an impact than opening my home up to what one stranger?
> Black people aren't our slaves, they can do thier own shit if it's apparently this divided. I'll make sure my black friends know they actually can't do anything to help themselves, I have to do it for them
Again no one but you is saying this. I'm saying there are systems that make it difficult for black people to succeed in America. Its not impossible but its harder than it should be, and white people need to help fix it so we don't have to struggle as much, because the white people are the majority and majority in power.
Stop being obtuse.
I realize this is off topic, but there is a fine scholarly book called How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev. Essentially, a cataloging of how Irish immigrants to the United States altered their social position by acquiring "white privilege" long before the word was even known. I recommend it to those interested in the American immigrant experience.
I haven’t read it yet, but I believe the answer to your questions will be found in the book How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
It’s been on my list to read for a while, but instead I started playing Skyrim
Can someone who's knowledgeable about this issue comment on the racialization of the Irish, which the author of this article claims didn't exist? I've heard of this book but I haven't read it, but the title and summary alone would lead me to believe that the Irish were somehow racialized and then integrated into white society as a means to oppress people of color.
No - the Irish became white.
You might benefit from reading How the Irish Became White.
It's absolutely true that Irish, etc. have faced discrimination. And there are still Irish-American, Italian-American, and Jewish clubs and organizations where a vast majority of participants are of that ethnicity. Are those organizations racist? I would argue no. On the other hand, an overtly "white" organization basically serves no purpose other than the reinforcement of structural racism based on skin color.
https://www.amazon.com/Slaverys-Capitalism-American-Economic-Development/dp/0812248414/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_5?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0812248414&pd_rd_r=VV6K0B54G4C4D7FRX8J5&pd_rd_w=k09jp&pd_rd_wg=OEStf&psc=1&refRID=VV6K0B54G4C4D7FRX8J5
check out every author in this book. I've specifically heard good things about these two:
https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Cotton-History-Sven-Beckert/dp/0375713964/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CBC4DEDY0KK072A8T0A6
There is a good book about the Congo and King Leopold, called King Leopold's Ghost.
https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
If anyone wants to learn more about this topic, there is a book called King Leopold's Ghost. It has a very well-researched and heartbreaking view on the crimes committed.
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
Check out King Leopold's Ghost for a really interesting non-fiction book about Leopold in the the Belgian Congo and the men who brought the genocide to light- it's an incredibly engaging read.
King Leopold II to be specific.
And he devastated the Congo. This is a book everyone should read.
Also, this book is an essential read on "ordinary men" in a Nazi reserve batallion and how they coped with (or outright enjoyed) the tasks entrusted to them. Some ran away, some drank themselves to oblivion, severe depression, etc.
I just finished King Leopold's Ghost, which was one of the most eye-opening historical books I've read. Though not about the Americas, it goes into great depth by which the European colonists committed savage atrocities against relatively peaceful indigenous populations to enslave them to produce goods and services to fuel their war machines. In this case it was rubber in the Congo.
All of this sets the stage for our current global geopolitics. It often seems like the narrative hasn't changed much, it's only pushed out of the mainstream foci, conveniently. Apparently, we're condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past due to, as you implied, revisionist histories that are spoon-fed to the young.
If you want to learn about our colonial history in the Congo you should read "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild.
Amazon Link.
We don't really need to speculate endlessly, there are entire books written about how the disparities in our community came about. We need to continue using the data and scholarship we have, including publications from professors at local universities and longstanding members of the community. It isn't simple and it is complex, for sure. But it's not a situation where we just throw our hands up and say "oh well, just send in people with guns, it's too hard to think through this situation."
I only know something about Africa, and even then it's hard to find exactly what you are looking for, but these sites might be of interest:
Congo Siasa - a blog by Jason Stearns (author of the excellent Dancing in the Glory of Monsters), mostly focusing on the Congo and the Great Lakes region.
African Arguments - not exclusively geopolitics, but a lot of in-depth analysis on political and other contemporary African developments.
The Africa section of the Daily Maverick - an interesting critical and independent South African magazine. Not as in-depth as some of the other sites here, but with pretty regular features.
John Campbell's blog on CFR: Africa in Transition - the most important political, security, and social developments occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.
LSE's Africa blog - particularly the Conflict section.
African Futures at the Social Science Research Council - The digital forum African Futures explores protest movements and resistance to authoritarian rule across the African continent, with particular attention to the oft-neglected democratic currents south of the Sahara.
Also at SSRC - Kujenga Amani - a forum for the exchange of ideas and information on peacebuilding in Africa.
This irregularly updated blog calling itself a new online journal dedicated to the exploration of fresh ideas to understanding peace and security issues in Africa.
http://allafrica.com/conflict/ is a useful African news aggregator, although you really have to scrutiny the article sources.
That should keep you occupied for a while. I'll add to it if I can think of any more.
Let me help you:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. "In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well."
> Definitely not apartheid please don't use that word flippantly
no... its apartheid.. when people like Desmond Tutu(someone who has actually lived under apartheid) call it apartheid, its apartheid. Im guess you aren't familiar with what is going on in the west bank...
As for the other thing, I recommend reading Noam Chomsky or Israeli Historians like Ilan Pappe and maybe look into the Nakba and specifically the Deir Yassin Massacre or the Lydda Death March.
I also recommend reading - White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves by Giles Milton. Not only is it an informative true account about little known white slavery in Africa it's also really well written and reads like a novel.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704
May I suggest Jared Diamon's "Guns, Germs and Steel" to you? Good book that in very clear, detailed and well-sourced way address how Sociohistorical factors explain differences between groups/cultures in their development and why the genetic explanation is wrong in many levels.
Just briefly, and only as it pertains to modern U.S. history, the very same concerns you bring up are the ones that have been brought up about basically every immigrant group to the U.S. since its inception and people who today consider themselves "white" were once upon a time not considered so, and they were feared and seen as an existential threat to the nation. Ben Franklin fretted about the "swarthy" Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, Swedes and Germans. The Irish were considered subhuman and decidedly not "white' by their English overlords and the stigma continued in America for at [least three generations] (https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251). Don't have to tell you about the negative views about Jews but many did not make it to America as the holocaust unfolded because of restrictive quotas and fears of "miscegenation" with all sort of eastern Europeans coming to America. Hell, the "Polish" joke is not about how intelligent they are, is it? The Chinese were literally excluded from the country because their supposed inferiority was a "yellow peril." The Japanese were considered so alien that we rounded 12,000 into internment camps during world war II. And yet, all of these groups through time and assimilation became "white" or a model minority.
The supporters of genetic differences in IQ measures, including the creators of such measures, would go though some interesting intellectual acrobatics to explain how these Southern Europeans who had scored so low on their tests, after only 10 years had caught up to the average of the "native" Anglo-Saxon(another made up term after deciding Germans counted as white in America). They went through even more acrobatics when trying to explain why these Italian, Polish, Jewish, Spanish, Greek, kids whose parents' inferior genes would create hordes of inferior Americans, did not differ once they had access to same education as those of the dominant culture of time. Might there be lessons for our present in how we consider managing our current immigration anxiety?
Finally, there is a real danger in equating scores on IQ measures with intelligence. We owe much of what we know of science and math to civilizations and empires that are not "white" in the Anglo-saxon sense in the least. The Maya had a concept of the number zero 1700 years before Europeans, and they had to receive it from Arabian scholars. There are many reasons for the differences you ask about, but inherent genetic factors linked to intelligence do not appear to be it. Still don't believe me? The measured IQ of American born Mexican-Americans has been steadily increasing in the past 30 years, and at a much faster rate than that of "white" Americans which will put it at parity probably in 5-8 more. Has some mutation made just Mexican Americans be on track to be our intellectual overlords? Is Tex-Mex the ultimate brain food? Or might the same phenomenon of assimilation that happened to the Germans et al be at play? I'll let this lengthy column from American Conservative fill you in on the Flynn effect for further contextualization.
Best wishes,
A part "white"(Swarthy Southern and Northern), Part Asian, Part Native brown guy.
EDIT: Added a line for clarity.
You should read this book called How the Irish Became White
I was going to ask a pretty similar question re: just how well these ideas apply to an African context. (Basically I think they're lacking in nuance).
On the Irish front, I suspect that /u/jazzarchist will bring up the idea that the Irish weren't always considered "white"
to summarize, it will depend on three points: [1] your race (or the one you pass as) relative to [2] its history in the place you go to, as well as [3] the purpose of your visit.
[warning: a lot of generalization] for example, as a Chinese person in the US would be viewed as a model minority in most spaces (especially employment) and would not face disproportionately higher incarceration rates as your black or latinx peers. To assimilate into the local lifestyle and culture can help you blend in, but it definitely won't completely prevent incidents of name-calling, racial aggression, etc.
On the other hand, if you went to Indonesia for job opportunities, despite still being Chinese, you are probably more likely to be met with hostility and discrimination, because the impressions Indonesians have on their local Chinese populations is different to what Americans have on theirs. HOWEVER if you make it clear that you are there as a tourist (and not a threat to their employment opportunities) the reaction might differ.
Of course, all of these are generalizations to be taken with a grain of salt; they are simply there to illustrate how there can be differences in how you are treated based on the abovementioned factors. I'm here not to help you predict what you, in your context, will face in the country you would be visiting/residing in, instead I am here to introduce to you factors that you have to consider and apply to your particular situation.
Here are more examples to further illustrate how history can further complicate how you can be treated based on race:
The answer to such a broad question is truly more complicated than what the analogies in the comments section can give. The solutions to helping cope with or reducing the incidents of racism in such circumstances will also differ, and you might have to look beyond the advice of "just assimilate and you will be fine".
Do your research!
Nobody said "caucasian", they said "white". The fact that you now equate (to some extent) white with caucasian (in the US) is a historic process that you can read more about in this book among other sources.
It's time once again for the AskHistorians Book Giveaway! This month we picked two winners: Eric Hacke and Alec Barnaby! The selection of books we have available this month are:
Want a chance to get a free book? Help support the podcast via Patreon!
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
Glad you looked that up, last time I checked she was proposing $100 billion which MIT Grad/Duke economist Sandy Darity said was inadequate.
>Thanks for including my comments in this important article. Just one proviso; while I do think that @marwilliamson's initial proposed amount for reparations, $100 billion, is paltry, I also think she is open to modifying her proposal toward a much larger sum.
@emarvelous:
>"Universal programs are not specific to the injustices that have been inflicted on African-Americans." Talked to some smart folks on the 2020 conversation on reparations including @SandyDarity. All say start with HR40, first proposed 30+ yrs ago:
SD:
>Thank you for writing this excellent article. I am especially curious about one matter: Would Whit Ayres endorse black reparations if it was not financed "by taking money away from white people and giving it to black people"?
-
He's been interfacing with Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore and was on Ezra Klein's show a few months ago:
Sandy Darity has a plan to close the wealth gap | The Ezra Klein Show
>Published on Nov 6, 2018
> Here’s something to consider: For families in which the lead earner has a college degree, the average white family has $180,500 in wealth. The average black family? $23,400. That’s a difference of almost $160,000 — $160,000 that could be used to send a kid to college, get through an illness, start a small business, or make a down payment on a home that builds wealth for the next generation, too.
>
> Sandy Darity is an economist at Duke University, and much of his work has focused on the racial wealth gap, and how to close it. He’s a pioneer of “stratification economics” — a branch of study that takes groups seriously as economic units and thinks hard about how group incentives change our behavior and drive our decisions.
>
> In this podcast, we talk about stratification economics, as well as Darity’s idea of “baby bonds”: assets that would build to give poor children up to $50,000 in wealth by the time they become adults, which would, in turn, give them a chance to invest in themselves or their future the same way children from richer families do. Think of it as a plan for universal basic wealth — and people are listening: Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a past guest on this show, recently released a plan to closely tracked Darity’s proposal.
>
> I know, I know, the election is in a day. But right now, we don’t know who will win. So how about spending some time thinking about what someone who actually wanted to ease problems like wealth inequality could do if they did have power?
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>Recommended books:
>Caste, Class, and Race by Oliver Cox
>https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Class-Race-Social-Dynamics/dp/0853451168
>Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams
>https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Slavery-Eric-Williams/dp/0807844888/
>Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. DuBois
>https://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573/
> increased troop presence in somalia destabilizing the country while ignoring genocide in rwanda
For anyone interested in the Rwandan Genocide, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by a Canadian General in charge of peacekeeping in Rwanda is a MUST read. It really lays out the frustration they were feeling trying to get the UN and its super powers more involved. The US sat by mainly because of how badly we got beat up in Somalia and that the US public was dead set against losing soldiers to conflicts that didn't directly affect them :/
Anybody interested in this may also be interested in reading Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City
http://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457468272&sr=8-1&keywords=not+in+my+baltimore
The answer to this is incredibly complex and involves a myriad of factors. To be honest I dont know if you can really ELI5 it, but here goes.
ELI5 - Colonialism really, really sucked, the international aid & assistance system often hurts more thatn it helps and Africans didnt do themselves many favours.
The first thing I will say is do not thing of africa as 1 entity, it isn't. Africa contains the most ethnically diverse set of people on the planet, who live in a geographically and geologically diverse continent (everything from the largest desert in the world, to impossibly dense jungle, to grasslands to luscious arable land), now that is out of the way lets try and answer our question.
1. Colonialism - had a massive impact on the continent whose legacy is still felt to this day.
so at independence you had countries, whose people had no stake in the idea of the Nation they were now a part of, very little capacity to govern, competition between various groups for very limited resources, and economies tied to their former colonizers.
2. The international aid and assistance system is fucked A lot of money has pumped in, you are right, but often not for the right reasons or in a manner that didn't help at all. During the Cold War both the West used aid and assistance to support/prop governments they supported (i.e the USA's support to Mobutu in Zaire).
3. Africans fucked up I say this as an African myself. Despite the disadvantages with which we were hobbled at independence, it does not mean that we had to spend the second half of the 20th century becoming caricatures and that is squarely a failure of leadership on our part. African leaders post Independence were short sighted, self indulgent and (worryingly) violent and murderous. Botswana proves this, that proper leadership can be a stimulus for development.
In my opinion those are the three main answers to your question, but as i alluded to earlier there are more reasons and the depend upon which country you are talking about, and how far back in time you want to go. If you are interested I would suggest reading "The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith" its comprehensive and accessible and will give you a good understanding of Africa's history and what went wrong (and right).
All this being said Africa is changing, fast. It has over the last decade consistently had some of the highest growth rates in world, its economies are evolving, the middle class is growing and innovation and technology are changing millions of lives. There is still a very very long way to go but it is not at all despair and death (despite what you may see in the news.).
Edit: I am a terrible speller
Ive heard it called Africa's 30 Year War more than a few times due to its frightening scale, variety of factions and massive piles of corpses generated. I honestly cant remember it getting any serious coverage in the west though, just the occasional blip on the news that made it seem like a bush war flare up.
Ive been intending to read this book about it for a while now since I do feel like I should learn more, but on the flip side Im kind of hesitant since it just seems like such a misserable and depressing topic.
Here's an excellent publication by an Israeli professor, documenting Israel's mass slaughters of Palestinian villages and forced expulsion from their territory.
Highly recommend you read it. Let me know what you think!
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Actually the ethnic cleansing process started 6 months before the war started. This is well documented by Israeli historians themsevles. Over half the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and many thousands more were murdered before a single arab army had stepped foot in the region.
Technically it wasn't a "newly formed Israeli army" as you claim because Israel had not been founded during most of the ethnic cleansing. The Zionist forces included trained Jewish militias and many radical Jewish terrorist groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, who committed countless massacres against small Palestinian villages, causing many Palestinians to flee in fear of an attack.
I highly recommend you read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe. http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407139475&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ethnic+cleansing+of+palestine
I read every page back to back; it was a truly horrific mass expulsion that ended centuries of coexistence.
It sounds like you're trying to justify Imperialism by the actions of modern Zimbabwe.
If you want an example of European Imperialism being harmful in Africa, look no further than King Leopold II of Belgium's rule over the Congo where over 10 million people were killed while he extracted ivory and rubber from the country. This was not "self-inflicted". Source
The original point was the difference between Chinese power and European power in Africa. You brought up the failures of Zimbabwe's self rule. Nobody else was talking about self rule, we were comparing Europe to China. Since European involvement in the Congo resulted in upwards of ten million deaths over a period of twenty years, I'm going to go ahead and say that European control of Africa was not good.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda and Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.
Also Survival in the Killing Fields
My sources? History books on the modern middle-east!
Here's a good start: http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Modern-Middle-East/dp/0813348331
You know, a book that contains a vast comprehensive analysis of the entire issue from the beginning and not just an opinionated news article?
In college, Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East was my favorite history book about the Middle East. A little clinical and textbook-y but I thought it was very objective with a good level of detail.
Edit - I also thought From Beirut to Jerusalem was excellent. This was before Friedman became his current hacky self, and is very different from his work the last 10+ years. This book was very enjoyable and easy to read, and therefore would be very accessible for somebody just treating it as pleasure reading. The big downsides are that it may be a bit outdated and it isn't comprehensive or complete - it largely focuses on covering the highlights of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Lebanese civil war; it also isn't as academic.
Once you start accepting orphans, how are you going to feel if you have to turn away children because you've reached your limit or they don't fit your age group? This is one of those things a lot of people struggle with.
I think that having some foreign volunteers is great, but I'd caution too much about depending on foreigners volunteering (or being paid) for too many things. Remember that any time you can hire locals you're providing a much larger contribution to the local economy than when someone volunteers for a year. Not to say you won't need volunteers or use them, but try to be careful to use locals when you can.
I'm not sure what you have as far as land, but hopefully you can set up a small scale farm, so as to provide most of the food for your orphanage as well as have some to sell/trade for the things you don't grow/raise. Vegetables/bananas/Chickens/etc are all fairly easy to raise and provide a return very quickly. Also, children can learn valuable skills as well.
While their may be profit in minibuses and other ventures, remember that you're a foreigner. It can be difficult to deal with all the petty theft and extra bribes that come with the knowledge that the owner is a Mzungu. Not to say don't try-but be careful.
Africa is an awesome place, and I often long to go back. You'll learn to love it too. It does have some issues from time to time though, as you're noticing. Long term you are likely going to want to invest in a generator and perhaps some solar panels. Until you're more developed and established though you probably can't plan out that need.
These books don't quite relate to orphanages, but more in general to Africa and aid throughout the world-if you haven't read them I'd recommend you get your hands on them as it can help with understanding a lot of why things are the way they are in Africa.
Africa Doesn't Matter
The Fate of Africa
Festival Elephants and the Myth of Global Poverty
And not quite related, but a nice story from a wonderful woman (who's sadly now passed away) that went to Africa in her youth, lived there her entire life, and ran an orphanage: Land of a Thousand Hills (Disclaimer: I lived very close to her house at Mugongo and I knew her as a child; I last saw her in 2005 on my last visit to Rwanda.)
Sadly, my work keeps me busy where I am and I don't really get a chance to volunteer... I'd love to transition to working with an aid agency though instead of what I do now. No luck so far, but I'll keep trying...
>The Western method of obtaining natural resources from the colonies in Africa was a cancerous mentality, and just because the skin color changed, the method has largely remained the same
EXACTLY. Nothing has changed for the better. No poor innocent African children were "saved from whitey's oppression" they just got a new mid-level manager who claims to be a Christian but is actually a fucking cannibal who is much more ruthless than anyone since the Belgian Congo.
>It was unsustainable, and as many commodities have decreased in value over the past decade, Whites in power would be having similar troubles.
Agreed, but I still think that the manner of decolonization was a mistake, as was letting white people drift in the wind because being white is no longer cool among Western college liberals.
>You're stormfronting the hell out of your history and it's clouded your ability to look at things objectively.
Nah, no stormfagging, I'm actually really into African history and read on the subject extensively.
I highly recommend this book: Dancing in the Glory of Monsters It really helped shape my understanding of African politics and political violence.
All part of the Israeli land grab. Make the place as unlivable as possible, then after the people leave, Israel can claim they left on their own and build Jewish settlements on it. It's not the first time Israel has done it.
What do you know about 1948? Did you live through it? Did your immediate family get affected by it? My family was and would never wish it upon anyone.
Being locked up in rooms in your own house by [Haganah militia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence) (terrorists, led by the likes of Tsipi Livni's father) watching your family members executed in front of you and being forced to drink your own piss while watching your aunt get raped.
Tell me kind sir what the living f*ck do you know about 1948? Please enlighten me.
Educate yourself and read Ilan Pappe's Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine please.
You can always google this stuff, it's pretty common
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/nelson-mandela-grandson-slams-israeli-apartheid-190707053146087.html
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and with regards to ethnic cleansing by Israel one of Israel's top archivists made a book an it because there was just so much of it but never reported by main stream
article about ethnic cleansing by Israel
https://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-scheme-bury-nakba/5683236
book
https://www.amazon.ca/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
>Worked with:Robert Faurisson and Alison Weir
Defending the right of someone to free speech is not the same as condoning their opinion.
>Demonizes Israel
You mean "criticizes" Israel
>doesn't discuss the conflict in an even-handed manner.
One, you have not given an example on how he "doesn't discuss the conflict in an even-handed manner". Second, in a conflict that was started based on the Systematic Ethnic Cleansing of one side is very hard to be "even-handed":https://www.amazon.ca/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457747715&sr=8-1&keywords=ethnic+cleansing+of+palestine
>"Denies anti-Semitism is a major issue in the world today."
1)Citation needed
2)"Major Issue" compared to...?
3) Assuming the presumption of question is correct, What are the main causes of it?
OP you should do a Bit of reading as to the Origins of the conflict.
might I suggest you familiarize yourself with The Nakba
and other events surrounding it like the Lydda Death March
and the Deir Yassin massacre
here is good book from Noam Chomsky on the matter of the conflict.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War against the Palestinians
Perhaps read About The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Israeli historian Page semi-protected
Ilan Pappé
I would recommend Richard Miles' Carthage Mvst be Destroyed. It may focus too much on Carthage for your liking, but much of the beginning sections are focused on a summary of Phoenician civilization. In particular there is some good information on their religion, how they interacted with their neighbors and the establishment of various colonies.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143121294
https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704
Not saying FDR didn’t work to improve the lives of the working class, but it’s important to note that he didn’t really challenge the position of white supremacism in American politics, and so the New Deal disproportionately benefited white people while ignoring many black communities.
I highly recommend everyone read When Affirmation Action was White, by Ira Katznelson.
I just have to mention that the Irish weren't really traded as slaves. That's become a weird meme amongst white nationalists in the states. There's an amazing academic on twitter who's doing his PhD on slavery who works very hard to disprove the "Irish slavery" myth. Definitely worth a read, it's interesting stuff.
Regarding the question of how we climbed up the racial/social ladder in the US, the book "How the Irish Became White" covers it well. Long story short, we cuntishly threw black people collectively under the bus to distance ourselves from them, and worked hard to be more WASPy than the WASPs themselves (see: Lace Curtain Irish).
It's not a nice history.
Regarding race relations in Ireland now, they're not bad. Definitely better than most of Europe. To be honest, having an Irish accent is better than a passport, regardless of skin colour. If someone grew up here, they're unquestionably Irish.
"Black" has a specific ethnic and socio-cultural meaning. White does not except insofar as it means "not black" or, more specifically, "not other" where other has sometimes meant people once not thought of as white, e.g. Irish (see How the Irish Became White).
Technically, the accomplishments of, say, the Irish cannot be considered "white" accomplishments until well into the 20th century. Similarly, Jewish (although the Jewish ethnic identity is a whole nother kettle of fish) accomplishments could not be considered "white" accomplishments until even later.
It is fine to be proud of who you are as a person, but due to their history and continued oppression, black people have a special interest in holding some pride in their identity, and, mostly due to Racism (with a capital R, i.e. structural racism) that identity coincides with the color of my skin. 99.9% of the time I don't think of myself as white because I don't even have to think about it. If I buy something that is "flesh colored" it is going to match my skin. If I am not hired for a position I can be sure my skin color had little to do with the decision. If I am stopped by the cops (which is statistically less likely to happen) they will treat me with less suspicion, consciously or unconsciously.
Being white affords me a considerable amount of privilege but does not, in my opinion, confer any kind of cultural identity.
As for the other question ive explained it here like a thousand times.
its more tied to the social construction of "whiteness" than anything to do with skin color or ethnicity. please see this
there is some good writing on the matter by W. E. B. Du Bois, Theodore W. Allen, and a few others, on the phenomena. Noel Ignatiev actually has a pretty good book on the matter, its called "How the Irish Became White"
this is a critique over sociopolitical status, not skin color, nor ethnicity, its not a discussion about english people, or Irish people, or Italian People, or german people. nor is it based on skin color, there are Iranian(literal Aryans) with white skin, there are people living in the Caucasus(literal Caucasians), they not classified as "white".
The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan targets this time period and should be on your reading list. I'm just getting started on it, and it's already quite detailed and insightful.
I'm currently working through King Leopold's Ghost. It's interesting and well-written, but it is pretty darn dense. I haven't read Stuffed and Starved except in excerpts in a class but it's on my list to bring during service. Guns, Germs, and Steel is also on my list. Very popular and while there is some controversy around it I think it could prove to at least be a very entertaining read.
I read and enjoyed this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474766447&sr=1-1&keywords=carthage+must+be+destroyed
So I recently came across this awesome book:
https://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294
It's basically about how Carthage got a bad rep in Ancient times amd by scholars today. Good read!
There's a brilliant book on this subject called 'White Gold' by Giles Milton https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1495273413&sr=8-8&keywords=white+gold. It tells the story of how a million white slaves were sold into North African slavery, and follows a young English lad, William Pellow, caught by the Barbary/Moroccan sailors and sold into slavery, alongside Americans, Dutch, French etc.
Most were tortured into converting to Islam, and if did then their home nations wouldn't see them as Christians and wouldn't try and rescue them.
Strangely, this slave trade was still going on after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, and were only rescued after the Royal Navy bombard the Sultan's towns and ports.
Man I just want to say that this is an incredibly white-washed view of modern racism. Throughout the course of American history, Black people have suffered from institutional racism that has barred their access to the voting process, property, land access, economic opportunity, social security access, veteran's rights, personal freedom, you name it. This continues into the modern day. These modern issues will not be fixed by colorblindness; instead, they can only be fixed through race conscious affirmative action.
Here are some great books if you want to get more informed on historical and modern racism, proper reactions to it, and why "colorblindness" is not an acceptable form of dealing with it:
How The Irish Became White
(spoiler: they showed the WASPs that they cold be just as shitty to Black people as any other Americans)
Ever read this book?
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
The Irish did not become white until they started treating blacks like the rest of them did.
I digress, as much as black people had it worse in many instances, I'm not here to play oppression Olympics. Black people and Hispanic people sneer at me and tell me to my face they would rather be thought of as "smart and hardworking". Guess what, if I fail, all the blame is on me according to American society rather than other minorities whom are disadvantage and can mention that. Asians are seen as more "privileged" even by white people and that can be further from the truth. You want to know the reason why most Asians are "doctors" or "engineers" or whatever? It's because American society has made it difficult for Asian Americans to enter other sectors of the American workforce such as the entertainment industry and business in order to perpetuate white as the greatest. So don't invalidate my experiences by claiming that everyone else experiences this because maybe they do. At the same time, the difference between other minorities and Asians is that Asians and half asian problems are dismissed.
> That's not true. Yes, the irish were oppressed for being catholic. But they were considered white.
Why are you just announcing this? This is a real argument that people make. It's not like anyone's skin is literally white, so it's just a category with cultural input.
See "How the Irish Became White".
The police force exist to enforce the bureaucratic order.
Democracy under capitalism is the bureaucratic management of capitalism for the enrichment of the bourgeois, imposed on the proletariat. Police enforce it locally, military enforce it internationally
Police are members of the proletariat given privileges to enforce this system. And I don't just mean the hero worship, being in the police advanced your social standing. Look up how the Irish became white. Irish people "became white" by joining the police force to work against PoC.
Dividing the proletariat into different classes (which in America usually means different race classes) makes it harder for the proletariat to combine as a unit against the bourgeois. "Bad cops" revel in this. "Good cops" are in the force to help people, but are still a part of a system designed to work against the poor.
Look at the United Airline incident. Airlines deliberately oversell planes to keep the costs down. That practice catches up with them at a predetermined calculated rate, and when it does they have to kick people out of the plane. When no one wants to volunteer with the cash voucher, they send the police to violently drag someone off (a PoC flying economy), completely ignoring his logic for staying.
So the large corporation deliberately screws over individuals in the name of profits, then the police enforce that with violence. There are not evil reasons why people join the police. And there are "good cops" who just need a job or were promised that they would help people. But the police are still an occupying army.
I said living memory.
The Irish integrated and no longer experience the institutionalized xenophobia in America that they once did. Sorry.
Like lol seriously, we even get a parade every year where people try desperately to prove how ''Irish'' they are.
Now if you want to talk about how the Irish are treated in Europe, that's a different story. And one that has pretty much nothing to do with modern-day ''Irish'' people living in America.
So yes and no. The irish weren't considered to be black, but they weren't white people. They were segregated and seperated. Being involved with the irish was bad form, etc. etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
My choice would be King Leopold's Ghost. I would want them to read a book that is somewhat less academic because I would want as many people as possible reading it to understand it. I also deal with many people who do not understand the costs of colonialism and the deep scarring impact of colonialism. I remember reading this book a while after reading some of the pro-colonialism work by Niall Ferguson and wanting to force him to read this book and justify his views on benevolent colonialism.
A really good book on the subject of the time was King Leopold's Ghost
Here's some suggested reading you ignorant shithead.
Or if you'd rather a quick source, here. It's even got this picture.
>Nsala, of the district of Wala, looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year old daughter, Boali, who was killed and allegedly cannibalized by the members of Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (A.B.I.R.) militia. Source: E. D Morel, King Leopold's rule in Africa, between pages 144 and 145
> "King Leopold's Ghosts
Do you mean King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild? I have that one, it's great.
We actually had to read about it in my undergrad core class. Very dense, very disturbing read.
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
edit: failed hyperlink...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618001905
This refers to rule under Leopold well before the time this picture was taken, but it's a great read.
Well, I would highly recommend renting some textbooks on American politics, American political history, and American political theory. Perhaps start here and work your way up: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-American-Politics-Samuel-Kernell/dp/1568028911
If you find textbooks too dull, then here is a good list of books to get you started:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1495446697/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453181599&sr=1-1&keywords=federalist+and+anti-federalist+papers
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-Penguin-Classics-Tocqueville/dp/0140447601
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ideological-Origins-American-Revolution/dp/0674443020
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573
http://www.amazon.com/The-Nine-Inside-Secret-Supreme/dp/1400096790
http://www.amazon.com/Congress-Electoral-Connection-Second-Edition/dp/0300105878
http://www.amazon.com/What-Should-Know-About-Politics/dp/1611452996
http://www.amazon.com/The-Race-between-Education-Technology/dp/0674035305
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
*If you actually take the time to read these, you will be better informed than 99 percent of the voting public. <-- And after you read these, that sentence will terrify you because you will realize each of these books is just an introduction, and the world is being run by technocrats. JK, but not really.
Edit: But really.
> It's used as an attack by some people, and you can't fault people for correctly reading a word according to its 1000 year old definition rather than your recent metaphorical meaning.
Ok, I'll bite. First you said privilege used to have a legal meaning. Well... it still does. It has multiple meanings, like most words in the English language. The first definition in the dictionary I could find is, "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people." That's not an attack... it's an observation. And frankly, the legal definition doesn't explain the idea of an attack either. Regardless that first dictionary definition has been around for a long time. I don't know if you speak French, but I do. And the word privilege means exactly the same thing in French, because at the time French and Middle English were derived partially from Latin, privilege no longer exclusively or primarily had the legal definition it did in Rome. And the use of the word privilege in the context of whiteness isn't recent either. In fact the first use of the word privilege in this context goes all the way back to 1910. W.E.B. Du Bois isn't some obscure academic, but one of the most prominent members of the early civil rights movement. All of this happened before you or I were born... likely long before. And then in 1988 when Peggy Mcintosh wrote that invisible knapsack article... she continued the tradition of using the word privilege precisely because when she uses it everyone knows exactly what she's talking about. There's no confusion over the word, it means exactly what the dictionary says it means.
So it seems like people aren't unaware of what the word privilege means, they just have a hard time confronting what it means to them and to their skin color. It simply means their skin color entitles them to benefits that others do not have. Regardless of what the definition is, what does it say about white privilege that we're more concerned with whether or not we should hurt white peoples' feelings over calling a system what it empirically is?
I love this idea.
I'll add some of my own, and I hope others do too:
You could, of course, interpret it damned near any way you please, but the more you familiarize yourself with the actual historical background, the more difficult that particular interpretation will be to maintain.
The fact of the matter is that Iran and Iraq are products of the attempt by Western powers (primarily Britain, Russia, and France, but also the U.S.) to stage manage politics in the region during the very periods you're talking about. Prior to World War I, present-day Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire. With the dissolution of the Empire, Mesopotamian territory fell into British hands, and it was the Sykes-Picot Agreements that largely determined the borders that defined the modern nation of Iraq. For a more detailed picture of Western influence in the Arabian peninsula during WWI, I'd suggest A Peace to End All Peace.
Iran was mostly successful in navigating the Great Game, right up until World War II when the British and Russians decided that it was too chummy with Germany and invaded it to control its railroad lines for their strategic value. After the war, embargoes by Britain and the U.S. disrupted the political status quo there, ultimately leading up to Operation Ajax, which instigated the coup d'etat of Iran's democratically elected prime minister and his replacement with authoritarian client rule. That set the stage for the Iranian Revolution in '79, which is more or less how we got to the present state of affairs.
So, if anything, I would say that our recent stance against Iraq and Iran have been, at best, attempts to rectify problems we helped created, and at worst, failures to learn the lessons of those periods
There is a terrific book about the machinations of Great Britain and France to use WWI to break up the Ottoman Empire and grab the Middle East, that explains in fascinating detail how we got into our present mess. Check it out
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.
Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).
If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.
He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.
If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.
Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.
For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.
However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:
Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston
The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster
A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp
For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.
For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.
Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:
The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch
The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.
I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.
For other interesting topics:
The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.
Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy
Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)
I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.
I'm tired of people who hate cops. You can accept that not all men are rapists right? And not all black people are criminals? Not all 4channers are furries? Armed with the knowledge that profiling is wrong, can you take this "Our Enemies in Blue" (sadly, that's an actual thing) shit seriously? Didn't think so!
Even though I know this is a loaded question and you really don't care, here are some books for you to read that will answer your question.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
This is one is more Baltimore specific Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City .
Some more than others though. Baltimore has this horrible history of racist housing policy that segregated the city to this day.
Great book on it
> It's a poisonous mentality with zero long-term planning, equivalent to Rwandan tribalism
The RPF ruthless plan to get and hold power (and then pillage the Congo) was long-term, and it worked out and still works perfectly.
https://www.amazon.com/Praise-Blood-Crimes-Rwandan-Patriotic/dp/0345812093
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Lakes-Holocaust-1996-1997-Africa/dp/1909384658
https://www.amazon.com/Africas-World-War-Continental-Catastrophe/dp/0199754209
https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Glory-Monsters-Collapse-Africa/dp/1610391071
Africa has a rich history and experience with Marxism, especially the Maoist inspired anti-colornial revolutions. It is interesting to see the neo-liberal ideological turn of many parties such as the South African Communist Party.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Marxist analysis of how Europe underdeveloped and exploited Africa
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters - This book covers the Second Congo War which was the deadliest conflict since World War 2. It occurred between 1998 and 2003 and shockingly few people are even aware it happened at all. Definitely worth reading up on.
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa is a phenomenal book about postcolonial central Africa, the Rwandan genocide, and the two Congo wars. If you've ever wondered what drives conflicts in the world this book is a great place to learn.
The next one on my tap is: Ghost Wars: the CIAs Secret History in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to 9/11
Of course!
What prompted my support of Palestine was the way my father was treated when visiting for a business trip.
He was a businessman for a large American company a few years back, and the one of the best in their history. He was invited by a prestigious Israeli institution to negotiate a sale.
Before that, he was in favor of a two state solution, and generally supported Palestine. He was then detained at the airport for eleven hours, had all his belongings seized, was interrogated and verbally harassed by Israeli officers. This was all because he was Muslim.
On his trip he met many Palestinians and talked to them about their struggles, and it really opened his eyes. Many of them still have the keys to their now demolished homes.
The history of the state of Israel is one of the most complicated and hard to navigate, so it’s understandable that many people have a hard time forming an opinion.
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli-Jewish historian, wrote a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , which is very insightful in explaining the complex history of the region, which I’d get into, but is too long and difficult to condense into a reddit post.
This Video is very powerful and pretty non-partisan, and more accessible than the book I linked above.
I’m glad you asked, and I hope you can inform an educated opinion on the issue!
All Israel is doing is creating thousands of new angry, raging Muslims (and many non-Muslims too including me and many Europeans). The seeds for vengeance are being sown today. Ten years from now when Americans have forgotten about this massacre, Americans will be asking "Why do the Muslim world hate Jews so much to kill thousands of them?" Because the hatred for Jews today started with this:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
The renowned Israeli historian revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing".
Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the Middle East.
"In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation."
Iran's democracy was formed in 1906 in a popular pro-West Constitutional Revolution led by actual freedom fighters againt colonialists; Israel was officially "created" by the colonialists in 1948 on the smoldering heap of Palestinians dead bodies
https://www.haaretz.com/1.5262454
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Israel is a "Democracy" that has racially segregated schools and laws that prohibit intermarriage, among other things that would not be tolerated in any actual democracy
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-could-you-marry-in-israel-1.5250455
https://www.thedailybeast.com/israels-most-liberal-city-introduces-racially-segregated-kindergartens
And government officials who shout about the Superior Jewish Race - literally
https://shadowproof.com/2012/06/03/israeli-interior-minister-this-country-belongs-to-us-the-white-man/
https://www.newsweek.com/jews-are-smartest-race-world-and-superior-humans-israeli-lawmaker-claims-977896
That's why the Gaza Strip today has a population of 1.8 million people, about as high a population density as Hong Kong, out of which 1.6 million are refugees who were forced there after Israel took their lands
im using the benny morris / ilan pappe definition. ilan pappe even wrote a book with that title: https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
benny morris wrote a book comprised almost entirely from zionist archival material where he describes the ethnic cleansing in detail, called The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004)
So called genocide and ethnic cleansing? Dude, acts of Genocide, ethnic cleansing and terrorism began literally a couple of years of the second world war ending. That's pretty fucked up don't you think? It's going today as well. Villages being destroyed and homes being bulldozed forcing people out of their homes and land is ethnic cleansing. Shooting people's babies out of their hands and using white phosphorus to burn people on the streets is Genocide. People pulling up chairs to watch it like a fireworks show are fucking sick in the head. This is what you get from the terrorist state of Israel for many decades now and still ongoing.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-deputy-defense-minister-called-palestinians-animals/
Also look at the language. The Nazis used to call Jews Vermin, Zionists calling the Palestinians animals or wild beasts or snakes like your bitch of a 'justice' minister. They are all itching for the extermination of these people they can't even see as humans. If you can get to that level of hate then it's easy to murder them because they aren't seen as human.
Also you want me to post up the charred bodies from the white phosphorus chemical attack? You sure this is the place to do it? Just type in Israel white phosphorus attack on Gaza and you will see the images. Fool, it's clear examples of genocide get your head out of your ass!
Here's a good book for you to read.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
>The state of Israel was established by a decision of the UN from November 29th, 1947. That's the legal warrant.
It was only a non-binding recommendation. It didn't grant the zionist party the authority to unilaterally implement the partition plan. The execution of the plan could only be justified if both parties consented to it. The Palestinians rejected it understandably because it was not equitable towards them. By establishing Israel in the face of Arab and Palestinian rejection, the Zionist committed an egregious act of war.
>Access to Jordan's only seaport of Aqaba and to Israel's only Indian Ocean seaport of Eilat is contingent upon passage through the Gulf of Aqaba, giving the Straits of Tiran strategic importance. Egypt's blockade of the Straits to Israeli ships and ships bound for Israel in 1956 and again in 1967 was a catalyst to the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967.
I understand but none of that can be reasonably interpreted as an act of war. In fact a good case can be made that those Egyptian actions were done in the effort to avoid war. The fact remains Israel started the hostilities in both 1956 (along with France and UK) and 1967. The brute facts can lead to no other conclusion
>There goes your justification for Hamas violence against Israel.
What? I support the Palestinian struggle against Israel as they are righteously fighting for freedom, liberty, justice and self-determination.
>Under the Alon plan, the territories that Israel grabbed in its war of defense in 1967 would have been returned in return for full peace. The Arabs rejected that plan. They could've gotten the territories back pretty much for free, but they chose to fight a war, and lost.
Wikipedia describes it as a plan to “to implement the "Jordanian option" to the Palestinian refugee problem (also known as "Jordan is Palestine").” That is unacceptable. You hold a strange definition of “free” here.
>No. I justify the invasion because towns all across Israel's northern border were under constant Katyusha fire. The assassination attempt in the UK was just the last straw. Moreover, I don't justify the way the war turned out. It was presented falsely to the Israeli government and fought under false pretenses. I don't deny that. This is a case of a good cause poorly executed.
Well, that admission is commendable but one has to consider the Katyusha fire in the context of the Palestinian refuge crisis and the illegal occupation. It is not honest or fair to leave this out of the picture whenever discussing Palestinian (and Arab) hostility and aggression against Israel.
>I actually ran into an account of these refugee camps from 1961. Apparently not too squalid.
Are you arguing that since some of their camps aren't that bad (and this is just one eye witness account of dubious reliability, since the American media has always been extremely partial towards Israel) it is unreasonable for the Pals to hold ill-will towards those who expelled them from their ancestral homes?
>It's true that Israel expelled some Palestinians. However, most of them ran away so as not to get in the way of the "soon to be victorious" advancing Arab armies, without having seen an Israeli. They were planning to return shortly.
That is at best groundless conjecture and at worst outright fabricated propaganda. Most of the evidence indicates the Pals were expelled in a systematic campaign of terrorism and ethnic cleansing. They were in fact strictly told by the Arab governments to stay put and not leave their homes under any circumstances. This is how wikipedia describes the effect of the Dei Yassin massacre, for example:
> Contemporary reports, originating apparently from a commanding officer in Jerusalem of one of the irregular forces involved (the Irgun), Mordechai Ra'anan[6], gave an initial estimate of 254 killed.[7] The size of the figure had a considerable impact on the conflict in creating panic and became a major cause of the 1948 Palestinian exodus.[7][8]
This book provides a good historical account of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians: http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1239164330&amp;sr=1-1
>There are ways to rectify these grievances other than allowing them to return. In fact, most refugee crises don't end with the refugees returning home. They end with the refugees being settled in the countries that gave them refuge.
Even if that is true (which I have doubts about) the moral and just solution would be to allow the Palestinian refugees back to their ancestral homes. But I learned a long time ago that moral considerations doesn't figure much in the thoughts of the zionist.
>I didn't claim that it justifies "ethnic cleansing" of anybody. I claim that it justifies not allowing the Palestinian refugees to return.
You are arguing that the the direct consequences of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine should be maintained. There is really not much difference between that and justifying and defending ethnic cleansing.
> It is as necessary to address the grievances of Jewish refugees from Arab states as it is to address the grievances of Arab refugees from pre-1948 Palestine. My point was that there is more than one way to address these grievances.
Those grievances must be addressed in a just and equitable manner for the conflict to be truly resolved. Your (non) solutions will not get us there. Sorry to tell you that. Further the Mizrahim are not stateless refugees any more. The situation is not similar at all any more.
>I'm pleasantly surprised to find someone who has opposing views to mine, and is able to discuss them by addressing my claims and without reverting to insults.
De nada.
You should read "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe
It's very enlightening. I haven't finished it yet, I keep giving my copy away.
Yawn take this sad and wornout hasbara revisionism elsewhere, even Israeli historians admit to the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
https://www.haaretz.com/1.5262454
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Hi, new to the sub. It just so happens that I'm reading a book on the history of Carthage. I'm only a hundred pages in and have been busy with school-work, but it did touch briefly on the Phoenician "colonization" of southern Spain and there is a chapter on Barcid rule in Spain that I haven't gotten to. This book looks more like a comprehensive primer on ancient Carthage but it might be useful if you find a copy in your local library.
Carthage Must be Destroyed
Hey, I'm glad to be of service! :D And again, if you need any more, please don't hesitate to ask. On to the points!
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization - Richard Miles
There's also White Gold by Giles Milton
http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704
Also the current behaviour of ISIS with Yazidis
http://www.reddit.com/r/ukipparty/comments/2fpckg/french_british_is_fighters_discuss_use_of_yazidi/
&#x200B;
An excerpt of the description of the book:
"This is the forgotten story of the million white Europeans, snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of North Africa to be sold to the highest bidder. Ignored by their own governments, and forced to endure the harshest of conditions, very few lived to tell the tale. Using the firsthand testimony of a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow, Giles Milton vividly reconstructs a disturbing, little known chapter of history. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco who was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. ... " Read more in White Gold Paperback – by Giles Milton
https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Giles-Milton/dp/0340794704/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=white+gold+Islamic+enslavement+of+white+women&qid=1555012918&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0
This goes back a long time...
http://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704
Speaking of melanin merit, whites were in favor of affirmative action programs when they were the prime beneficiaries.
whitevictimhood
This is how America works.
Once affirmative action started being applied to black people, somehow all the courts magically found it illegal or curbed it heavily. Affirmative action was implemented for and majorly benefited by white women. I know you guys are almost all far rightwing psychopaths, but this book is a great historical overview on affirmative action.
OK, first of all, colleges do a ton of affirmative action based on students' wealth and first-generation college attendance in the status quo. Even still, all of the correlations to race that you point out are results of the racial laws that may be off the books, but left a lasting impact on minorities today.
Let's start with economics. The implementation of New Deal/WW2 veteran benefits that created the middle class in America discriminated against blacks in America, particularly in the south. We know poverty is transmitted intergenerationally, meaning that those racial laws impacted not only blacks living in America in the '40s, but generations afterward. This is particularly true with the transmission of housing wealth between generations, as the home is the central asset in most American families with any sort of wealth.
As to living in a bad area of town, residential segregation, housing covenants, white flight after Brown v. Board of Ed. (made possible by the GI bill, and other wealth benefits afforded mainly to whites), mean that there is a direct correlation between race and housing. Race is still the cause. See, for example, the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation, which ultimately re-segregated schools (in my post about Milliken v. Bradley above). A study of the five largest cities in the US found that 68% of poor whites live in areas where the majority of their neighbors are not poor. The same is true for only 15% of poor blacks and 20% of poor Hispanics. We can trace exactly how racial discrimination in laws and practice caused the poverty we see reflected in the statistics (Cite is from Racial Domination, Racial Progress by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, p. 166).
Have bad parents. This is again pretty directly correlated to the issues above, like poverty. If we're talking about absent parents, things like the overcriminalization of black and Hispanic students and the Rockefeller Laws don't exactly help.
And all of this is moot, because as I mentioned, I agree that affirmative action is imperfect. The thing is, no alternatives mentioned here have yet addressed the root cause of the problem. I would love it if someone had an idea that could undo the effect of hundreds of years of explicitly and/or implicitly discriminatory policies that created a disparity in the statistics. I think opponents of affirmative action haven't put out alternative that addresses the root causes of affirmative action that is better than affirmative action. Getting rid of racial laws isn't enough to do that--it doesn't create a level playing field by itself, but instead makes an unlevel playing field appear colorblind.
Edit: formatting
I literally read an entire book on the subject earlier this year.
In political science there are two great books about this:
I would highly recommend reviewing the two books so you can see what sections are useful for your lesson plans.
https://www.amazon.com/When-Affirmative-Action-White-Twentieth-Century/dp/0393328511
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
>Slaves didn't have to worry about starving constantly which doesn't make a lot of sense in reality, but instead were subject to brutality...They chose to go to a strange country ... They had no political presence but could VOTE (1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote ) before Native Americans
FTFY
You clearly aren't familiar with the black codes of the South. Not to mention those events in Irish-American history is a mere dustup. You don't have the entire South identifying itself with locking up Irish and abusing the Irish. You also don't have the Northeast trying to secede to preserve their "peculiar" institution of subjugating the Irish.
Here is the rub, the Irish eventually became WHITE, thereby shedding all of the negative status connotations held by their forefathers. Assimilation works best when you look like the dominant group.
The American underclass has always been defined by lack of wealth. Race was just an excuse to maintain an underclass. The difference now is that we're all being primed to join the underclass. We are the 99%.
Um... this
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
Quite a good book. I highly recommend it.
A seriously good read if you're interested in this sort of stuff.
Related: How the Irish Became White
You should read How the Irish Became White.
If you want more info https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
Who didn't used to be considered white… at least according to the title of How the Irish Became White
The Irish weren't considered "white" in the US for a very long time.
http://www.theroot.com/when-the-irish-weren-t-white-1793358754
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/01/10/getting-know-know-nothings/yAojakXKkiauKCAzsf4WAL/story.html
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
>Except that there are plenty of white people who don't perpetuate problems in society.
So? Yes, there are lots of white people who are actively fighting racist or who are, at the very least, not overtly racist. That doesn't erase the fact that most of the people who are perpetuating issues of racism (either via direct action or via failing to acknowledge the systems of oppression that exist in the US in the first place) in this country are white.
>It's similar to the way that it's not acceptable for white people to criticize rap culture as perpetuating problems in society because rap culture is tied closely to black culture. Not all black people subscribe to rap culture but an attack on it, regardless of the fact that there are problems with it, is often seen and intepreted as an attack on "blackness" instead.
This is more of a "stay in your lane"/"don't punch down" kind of thing. Plenty of black leftists, such as Dr. Cornel West and Aaron McGruder, criticize the culturally harmful aspects of rap culture (such as the glorification of violence and misogyny). In the end, black people are the only people who can really solve those sorts of issues. White people and other allies can certainly help by working to reform oppressive systems and institutions to make things more just and equitable, though.
>No, it was all wealthy white people. It's pretty much always wealthy people. These ones just happened to be white.
I acknowledge that in my post. Racism in the US cannot be understood without also understanding class struggle in the US, since the two issues are very intertwined. As I said then, proletariat white people may not have been responsible for putting in place the systems of racial oppression and exploitation, but they did perpetuate those systems. That includes the Irish, who were not even considered white back in the day until they made it clear to other groups of white people that they were no friends of the black community.
>I mean, yes, they perpetuated the problem by not standing up, but can we really be that angry at average people for keeping their head down and trying to live their life when they grew up being told "This is the way things are"?
Irish didn't just perpetuate segregation and other systems of anti-black racism by "keeping their head down and try to live their [lives.]" The Irish deliberately terrorized black people in their communities and workplaces in order to push them out of their jobs and neighborhoods. They did this in order to establish themselves a place in the white community.
There's a good book about this very topic that I would recommend you check out if you're interested in Irish-American history: https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
And here's a review of it I found that summarizes some of the book's main points from the intersection of class and race, which explains that the Irish did such terrible things out of economic self-interest: https://endofcapitalism.com/2009/02/15/book-review-of-how-the-irish-became-white/
>I gotta ask, are you white? Because that's not what I've gotten from them at all and I know that race/gender can greatly affect the way you interpret things. I'm not asking to shut down your opinion, I'm asking because it might explain why we're seeing completely different things when we read these articles.
I'm a straight, cis, white man. If you're not getting that from those sorts of articles, then I have two guesses as to why that may be the case.
I'd be interested in seeing some of the blog posts or articles that you're thinking of, in part because doing so may reveal that my two guesses were off base.
Wasn't always true... http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
How so? Italians and Irish were, at one point in time, not considered white and so discrimination against them would, indeed, be racism, at least back in those days. What I'm saying is that deporting everyone except for one race will just lead to the creation of new races to discriminate against because, at its heart, racism is the desire to assert one's superiority based on inherent, inborn qualities -- if this desire is thwarted, people will simply find new outlets.
I think these would help you understand the key arguments and points made about whiteness:
Political Sociology articles that might interest you:
I'm not expecting you to go away and read all this, but the books and articles can be found online (look up libgen and scihub if you need free access), so there's nothing to stop you skimming them or reading scholarly reviews. There's more where that came from so let me know if you have anything in particular you'd like to read about.
Yeah so here's the thing about that: you are wrong and an idiot.
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
>In the first half of the 19th century, some three million Irish emigrated to America, trading a ruling elite of Anglo-Irish Anglicans for one of WASPs. The Irish immigrants were (self-evidently) not Anglo-Saxon; most were not Protestant; and, as far as many of the nativists were concerned, they weren't white, either. Just how, in the years surrounding the Civil War, the Irish evolved from an oppressed, unwelcome social class to become part of a white racial class is the focus of Harvard lecturer Ignatiev's well-researched, intriguing although haphazardly structured book. By mid-century, Irish voting solidarity gave them political power, a power augmented by the brute force of groups descended from the Molly Maguires. With help, the Irish pushed blacks out of the lower-class jobs and neighborhoods they had originally shared. And though many Irish had been oppressed by the Penal Laws, they opposed abolition?even when Daniel O'Connell, "the Liberator," threatened that Irish-Americans who countenanced slavery would be recognized "as Irishmen no longer." The book's structure lacks cohesion: chapters zigzag chronologically and geographically, and Ignatiev's writing is thick with redundancies and overlong digressions. But for the careful reader, he offers much to think about and an important perspective on the American history of race and class.
Whiteness is not fixed and it evolves. In the antebellum period Americans distinguished between swarthy Anglo-Saxon races (not white) and pure valiant whites of Norman stock. Now they're all white, plus even the non-Saxon Irish and, increasingly in America, Latinos, who are being assimilated into whiteness as the Irish were. Die choking on your own stupid vomit thanks.
Sorry, what was that?
I'm often told I'm not a "real American" both by other Americans and by Kazakhs back home and by Asians in general. I think it's clear that while American society claims to be tolerant and progressive and multicultural, that the default ethnic group are white Americans of European descent. And all of these "white ethnicites" that Americans claim to be (American Irish, eye-Talian-American, Greek-American, Norweigan-American, etc.) were long ago assimilated into whiteness. I studied anthropology at my university and I cited this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
Basically all of these ethnic groups lost their distinctiveness 60 years ago or so.
>I mean look at irish and italian immigrants around the turn of the 20th century in america. they weren't seen as 'white' and they received a lot of hate and lynching. once they assimilated to the dominant culture the hate dissipated rapidly. Keep in mind race != ethnicity.
Yes, indeed. Literally look at Irish and Italian immigrants. They had something that other immigrant groups didn't have and you can literally see what it is if you look at them. Recommended reading.
No, they aren't.
I am a white person. That is my race, but that is not my ethnicity. My ethnicity is a mix of variety ethnicities, primarily Portuguese and Irish.
Race is a social construct, so it changes based on society's decision about who belongs to which race, (and which race is favored over another). Black and white are races, not ethnicities.
That's why we have books entitled "How Jews Became White Folks" and "How The Irish Became White," but we don't have books entitled "How The Irish Became Irish." That's because ethnicity is unchangeable - no one needs to know how an Irish person became Irish - while race is malleable.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
Interesting book on the topic
White is actually a very complicated term. Until relatively recently, a lot of groups with pale skin were not considered white. Whiteness originated as a way for predominantly British and French colonists to differentiate themselves from slaves and native peoples. The Irish, for example, were not considered white and therefore were not afforded certain legal protections.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States#European_Americans
In a contemporary sense, white refers to people with pale skin because most pale skinned cultures actively tried to achieve this status by conforming to the established western vision of white culture. However there is a complication when discussing white privilege as it pertains to inherited financial privilege due to the fact that not all white cultures have been in this country long enough to become established and profit from exploitation.
Again, to use the Irish as an example, an Irish person currently has white privilege because of how society as a whole centres skin colour and not racial heritage. However, anti-Irish bigotry was very real for a period immediately before world war 2, and so Irish people are more likely to come from financially underprivileged backgrounds.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism https://www.amazon.com/dp/046500296X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Qj0-zb50EJPJ4
Except the untold sums of money and forms of wealth created by slavery and the resulting discrimination that this nation is still repairing itself from:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Half-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X
The Half Has Not Been Told (http://www.amazon.com/The-Half-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X) apparently pretty solid in this regard.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Arabs-History-Eugene-Rogan/dp/0465025048
We read that guy in my intro to the middle East course. Great book, bad class. Starts in the 1600s and covers major events until it was published around the time of the Arab spring. It's focused on the Arabs as a people, rather than just the Arab-Israeli conflict.
I would highly recommend:
or
Hourani's is a bit more thorough and is available in audiobook format, whereas Rogan's is an easier read and gives more attention to the modern day Middle East. Both offer insight into the cultural, colonial, and political histories of the peoples living within the Middle East, which is really the only way to understand how and why the states operate the way they do today.
King Leopolds Ghost 3 books in one: rivetting Indiana Jones about the Stanley-Watson expedition, history politicial, how Belgium got this enourmous colony, and a detective story on how the world discovered Leo's atrocities (a lowly clerk in an Antwerp shipping company wants to know why full ships come in and empty ships go back)
https://www.amazon.com/Fly-Cathedral-Cambridge-Scientists-International/dp/0374157162/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=fly+in+the+cathedral&qid=1566474821&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/D-Day-June-1944-Climactic-Battle/dp/B00A2ATJ1Y/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=d-day+ambrose&qid=1566474874&s=books&sr=1-1 or anything by Stephen E Ambrose (also great is his history of the first railway through the US, or the Lewis expedition.
>Wtf? Ya pas de différence entre le Congo sous les Belges et le Québec (autrefois canada-français) sous l'Angleterre.
Oui, c'était exactement la même chose. Et c'est moi qui faut apprends mon histoire...tu peux commencer ici http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
>Parler français...Être indépendantiste...
La Charte n'a rien de faire avec parler Français ou l'indépendantiste. Si tu es un Anglophone fédéraliste qui soutien la Charte je dirai la même chose.
Some schools of thought use majority and minority in the terms of power, as opposed to population. So the Belgium's colonizing the Congo for rubber would be the majority because they hold the power. A group with a lot of power can then systematically discriminate against a certain race because they believed that they are superior.
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
King Leopold's Ghost-Adam Hochschild
I just got a Kindle a few weeks ago and it was my first purchase :)
I read "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad in high school and loved it and this book gives a lot of historical context to the formation of the Congo Free State and the atrocities that happened there. Really really interesting read.
Also any 'classics' they have for free which is really nice (stuff like Alice in Wonderland, Faust, Pride and Prejudice, etc, etc).
After finishing Heart of Darkness, I immediately picked up a copy of King Leopold's Ghost, a history of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Really puts things in perspective.
King Leopold's Ghost is a great read on the subject.
King Leopold's Ghost is an engrossing read that would be a great companion book to Heart of Darkness, which I saw you're reading now. Even if you weren't reading HoD, King Leopold's Ghost is a book I would still be recommending.
If you're interested check out King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hothschild. It's really a great book and isn't up its own ass. I read a few chapters for a class and ended up reading the whole thing. Very interesting in a non-nerdy way.
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
A work I recently finished that you might find interesting was King Leopold's Ghost. It was a rigorous study and explanation of Belgian colonialism in the Congo under King Leopold in the 19th and 20th centuries; I found the book gave a very vivid summary of that, and filled in a bit of a blind spot of mine to the exact horror European colonialism could reach to. I was familiar with colonialism in the general, but I think it furthered my understanding to see such a detailed work on just one example of colonialism in history.
A couple books ago, I also read The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution which, although a work of historical analysis primarily, still informed me in the process of elaborating its historical analysis of quite a bit of history to which I was hitherto unaware. I've heard its arguments come across even better if you're acquainted with Francis Fukuyama's other political philosophy work (famously, The End of History and the Last Man), but I had not read that and its arguments still came across well. It was fairly wide-spanning in history like the title says, but as a fairly long work it was still able to go into detail. The book shined the most for me when it was exploring state building in India and China, while relating and contrasting these processes to the mechanics of European state building, something I was more familiar about. He describes the story of state building in all these areas, starting from the very beginning, and attempts to answer why it went certain directions in some places but differed in others. He makes the very convincing argument that religion was an essential factor, relating it to the rule of law and informing me in the process a lot of the details of how religion operated in India and China historically. I'm not really qualified to accurately evaluate the book's core theses, but disregarding them, the journey to those theses was still very enlightening.
Also, I think I've seen you mention elsewhere on this subreddit your interest in phenomenology and philosophy at large. I was wondering how you would recommend approaching the canon to say, have a good understanding of someone like Heidegger. It feels a bit overwhelming to look at the sheer complexity of later philosophy like that and confront it. Do you think it would be best to try to start at the beginning of Western philosophy and move up from there, work by work? I have a basic knowledge of some philosophy, mostly gained at random from secondary resources and occasional primary sources I found really interesting, but it's all very scattershot and not super rigorous. I'm currently reading through a history of Western philosophy which I hope will give me a broader perspective, and some more insight into how all the ideas relate and developed. Anyway, I was just hoping you might have some thoughts or advice on this, thanks.
The last time I saw this image someone commented and recommended the book King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Someone gave it to me as a gift recently and it's on my stack, but I haven't gotten to it quite yet. I think I'll move it to the top. Before I saw this image last time I had no idea these things had happened.
Technically, this is the flag of the front International African Association (1876) and The International Association of the Congo (1879–1885) before it was ever the flag of a nation.
If anyone wants to read an extremely interesting history of the Belgium's (really, Leopold II's) relationship with Africa (awful as it may be) I highly recommend King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
It mentions the history of this flag, and discusses the organizations who used it along with harrowing tales of incredible cruelty and greed.
Pick up a copy of King Leopolds Ghost or The Kaiser's Holocaust. Both very readable although not much fun.
joseph Conrad arrived in the Congo in period before it got really bad. It inspired him to write "Heart of Darkness" which is good read. and this:
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1208965024&amp;sr=1-1
is King Leopold's Ghost which is a history of the whole awful mess. And also a good read. Its not all bad. There are some heros. The catholic church is not one of them. Niether are any "western" governments. They behave dispicably. Mark Twain spoke out against it as did many afro americans. But its mostly pretty wretched. And not many people know about it.
I'd like to caution you that "reconstruction caused this mess in the first place" is a bit of a weird way to frame such a complicated political period.
If you want to get a good understanding of the period here are some good books you can read that are either on the period or have some material that overlaps with it.
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution by Eric Foner. I've linked you the abridged version, but there is a 600p version if you're really interested.
Nothing But Freedom by Eric Foner.
Capitol Men by Philip Dray
Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society by J William Harris
A Nation Under Our Feet by Steven Hahn
At the Hands of Persons Unknown by Phillip Dray
Black Reconstruction in America W. E. B Du Bois
[I hear good things about this] (https://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573)
Shake Hands With The Devil - the story of the Rwandan genocide by Romeo Dallaire, the Force Commander for the UN at the time.
We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. - Stories from the people who lived through the genocide on both sides.
I'm a 19-year-old boy from Ottawa, Canada (you may have heard of our little country :P ). While I was not homeschooled per se during my public school years (I went to regular English schools), I definitely learned more quickly, more thoroughly and more widely due to my parents' constant efforts to teach me things that went way above and beyond what I was "learning" at my high school.
My parents are both high school teachers, and have each spent roughly 30 years teaching their respective subjects.
My dad actually just retired last year, but he taught most of the Social Studies curriculum during the course of his career (History, Philosophy, Psychology, World Religions, etc.). He is a bilingual Francophone from Ottawa, so he taught at one of the French Catholic high schools in our area. He also happens to be somewhat skeptical of religion (not an atheist, but damned close). Odd combination, yes, but it has resulted in him introducing me to
military history, everything from the Roman legions to the Knights Templar to the Taliban.
My mother was born in Ottawa, to Greek parents who had left Greece after the Second World War; my grandparents are from a village about 20 minutes away from the modern city of Sparti (Sparta). During the war, the village was at some point occupied by Axis forces (I'm not sure when or to what extent, because my grandparents' English is not great and only my mother speaks Greek).
I decided to include a list (below) of works that I've found particularly interesting (I've never actually written down a list of my favs before, so this may be somewhat... sprawling and will be in no particular order :P ). Depending on the ages of your kids, some of this stuff might be inappropriate for them right now, but they can always check it out when they're older. It's mostly military/wartime history that interests me (it's what I plan on studying in university), but I've learned so many little tidbits about other things as well from having access to these works. Since your kids are all boys, I hope they'll find at least some of this stuff to be interesting :) .
Books
Movies and TV
This is all non-fiction. If you like this list, let me know, and I can expand on it further, and also include my favourite works from other genres, as well as my favourite fiction books as well :) . I left out tons of stuff that I'm too much of a lazy teenager to type in here, lol.
Correct
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War https://www.amazon.com/dp/080214473X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_okomDbPWGERE3
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden which was turned into an okay film
In no particular order:
http://www.amazon.com/Beirut-Jerusalem-Thomas-L-Friedman/dp/1250015499
http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making-ebook/dp/B00BH0VSPI/ref=zg_bs_4995_5
http://www.amazon.com/My-Promised-Land-Triumph-Tragedy-ebook/dp/B009QJMXI8/ref=zg_bs_4995_4
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=zg_bs_4995_10
http://www.amazon.com/Arabic-Thought-Liberal-Age-1798-1939/dp/0521274230/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3
http://www.amazon.com/History-Arab-Peoples-Albert-Hourani/dp/0446393924/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Gender-Islam-Historical-Modern/dp/0300055838/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9
http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Modern-Studies-Eastern-History/dp/0195134605/ref=cm_lmf_tit_10
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805068848/ref=cm_lmf_tit_17
As a non-Muslim, non-Jew, non-Arab, non-Semite, American, and having read these (yay strict immigrant parents!) and some other histories, as well as having had the attacks of 9/11 give me a neurosis about following the news in the Middle East/Central/South Asia as regards potential US involvement and issues:
A lot feels familiar to me, some of it even seems like stuff I know a good deal about, and a few things about "The Middle East" which is a massively rich and complex sociopolitical place and slice of humanity are things I'd consider myself very well read on.
And I don't know shit.
I can tell you as a native born American and US voter what I think my country's policies (in a limited, broad strokes sense) should be - - - but beyond that, there's very little I've ever seen as conclusive and firm coming from anyone who by dint of identity didn't have 'skin in the game' .
Ditto on Dan Carlin. Probably the most comprehensive thing you'll find since he sources so much and does such a thorough job.
I'm currently listening to the Ghosts of Cannae audio book off of Dan Carlin's recommendation. Great stuff: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghosts-Cannae-Hannibal-Republic/dp/0812978676
It's pretty metal. By "fire whirl" they mean "gigantic city burning fire tornado."
EDIT: btw, if cannae is something you're into, I quite liked this. Not as easy to read as Tuchman or Beevor, but still good.
https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Middle-East-5th/dp/0813348331
I recently read this book and it is really what you are looking for.
This book is one of the most valuable tools in learning about the context of modern events in the middle east
our enemies in blue by kristian williams
I haven't encountered any novels about that particular event, but I can recommend some pretty good nonfiction!
Steven Runciman's book, while old, is a pretty good summary.
This one's a bit hyperbolic in my mind, but it does the job, and it is pretty well-written.
If you really get into it, Nicolas Barbaro's eyewitness account is absolutely fascinating, though it is his diary and translated from medieval Italian, so it's a bit clunky if you're looking for something that reads well.
Yeah it's a great book. It started me now on a whole path of reading about the Crusades.
This is the Amazon link... https://www.amazon.com/1453-Holy-Constantinople-Clash-Islam/dp/1401308503
If you haven't already read it 1453 by Roger Crowley is a great read on this event.
Indiana (where my folks are from) was the klan capital for several years. It’s still pretty backwards there. When my dad thought about retiring there, my mom said she would have to call a divorce attorney if he did. :) They’re both really, really liberal and I don’t think it would have been a good idea.
I used to live just north of Boston (in a town known for its own long past problems, Salem) and I gotta say I heard the n word in Boston almost as much as I heard it when I lived in Tennessee.
It’s fucking everywhere.
I live in Baltimore now. We’ve got the Black Butterfly/White L issue because of years of decades of racist policies. Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City is a great book all about it!
> I disagree because, much like the "Left vs Right" rhetoric, I think that labeling things as "racist" and blaming issues on "racism" is just too shallow of a discussion. Every issue that a country faces is almost never caused by a single factor. There are decades, if not centuries, worth of ongoing circumstances that lead to the present state of affairs.
Well, I'd say at least the problems we are seeing now have started with a racist foundation that was built upon rapidly without equal hastily accountability, and in the case of Baltimore, it's the White flight of the early 20th century in response to affluent Blacks moving into places like Bolton Hill that were the catalyst. This then spread to actions and polices implemented by municipal officials, realtors and housing developers like someone above mentioned such as Redlining. Add in Blockbusting where realtors used White Flight to sell the same property that was sold for pennies on the dollar for more than their actual value to Blacks. The exemption of Blacks from the G.I. bill after World War II that basically propelled many white families(which worked in tandem with Blockbusting as the rowhomes were abandoned for a suburban lifestyle) and was itself a key factor for laying the foundation for the American middle class. There's a few others like the creation of the interstate highway system(bottom of page 14) that also helped segregate these communites further.
So, to answer your question,
> Is racism a part of it?
Yes, in fact it's overwhelmingly the case here.
Annnnnd if you're interested in some light, well-sourced reading, I think you should check out a book that was recommended to me in this very sub called "Not My Neighborhood" Which focuses primarily on how Baltimore's segregated communities came to be.
Hi, here's a good list of books to get things going. https://www.reddit.com/r/Geopolitics/wiki/book
/u/alexderlion /u/n4kke /u/thucydidesnuts
Recently, there's quite a bit of interest in starting a book club in /r/geopolitics. It would be a great idea to team up.
/u/uppityworm and I were talking about working together with them, and he has contacted /u/fusionsc2 about that. /u/fusionsc2 is a fellow book lover and is interested in discussing geopolitics with people of similar interest.
Given the large amount of responses to reading a book about Africa in the thread mentioned above, we were thinking about doing a book on Africa for our next book. Let us know about your opinions.
/u/fusionsc2 has mentioned African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks. In the book list listed above, there are also some additional great books on Africa,
[The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence] (http://www.amazon.com/Fate-Africa-History-Continent-Independence/dp/1610390717), a critically acclaimed book that provides a comprehensive primer on political, economic, and major social developments in post-colonial African nations.
Season of Rains: Africa in the World, This book captures the broad spectrum of political, economic, and social foundations that make Africa what it is today. According to the Amazon reviews, it touches on recent economic and tech development in reviews. So might be good for future estimates.
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence Among the specific topics tackled here are China's interest in African oil; military and security relations; the influx and goals of Chinese aid to sub-Saharan Africa; human rights issues; and China's overall strategy in the region. It seems to be THE book on the relationship between China and Africa, according to many of the Amazon reviews.
So take a look at the books and also the book list, and we can discuss our next book after the our 3rd sessions. It would be great if you have any other additional books to recommend on Africa.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
It is indeed a complex situation, but these would be a good start:
Earlier history:
For more contextual books, I would recommend:
For Belgium and the Congo both, I would instead recommend King Leopold's Ghost.
The book "explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. The book succeeded in increasing public awareness of these Belgian colonial crimes." (Wikipedia)
I don't think that's the book their ambassador would want us to read, though.
I just realized I haven't read a non-fiction book other than a textbook in years. Not a huge fan of sermons, so I would probably never want to read that last one. The older history books are neat though. They are closer to old events, but they also have their own skewed view, so yeah, "abandoned window to the past" is a good take on them.
That does seem like something original Starlight Glimmer would go for.
For an interesting non-fiction book, I have a HEAVILY annotated copy of King Leopold's Ghost with me, though I haven't opened it in a while. It goes a bit into colonial Africa as a whole, but mostly focus on the Belgian Congo around the turn of the century. The author does a good job turning it into a story, but its all true (at least as far as I can tell), which is more horrifying.
Are you suggesting that India and Pakistan, before partition, weren't subjected to 200 years of British colonial rule? That the arbitrary colonial borders drawn up by the British didn't involuntarily mash together a part of the world that was largely Muslim with a part of the world that was primarily Hindu? That atrocities and human rights abuses did not occur on a regular basis, including intentional famines? Have you done any historical reading about the actions of the East India Company in SE Asia? Do you have any thoughts on why many in the Middle East have a deep-seated, generational resentment of the Imperial behavior of the West?
Perhaps it has something to do with the firebombings and mustard gas?
>But most of the unpeaceful ones are Muslim.
This sweeping generalization is laughably ignorant. But engaging you further will not be useful, as your worldview is grounded in faith instead of historical research. If you don't think the atrocities committed by Western imperial powers didn't permanently fuck-up and fuck-over India, Africa and the Middle East, I can't help you.
Your use of the world "unpeaceful" suggests to me that you don't have a college degree. This is not to put you down, it's just to say that engaging you further will be pointless since you already have your mind made up about the "bad guys."
I can make a book recommendation though, if you have the stomach and the balls to read the historical events that inspired Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
Nah man i read 3 books about it, from different authors. Stop being a little r/imnotlikeothergirls by trying to look cool for dismissing the norm. Your source is a extremely biased website made for people desperate to be part of some backwards movement.
Edit: read a book
If you count all white slaveowners in the USA they were less than 2% of the population.
The first US slaveowner was a black man. Black men continued to own slaves alongside white slaveowners, because slavery was a class issue and not a race issue (at least not until the Jim Crowe bullshit).
And white slaves existed.
Some starting points for people who didn't know some of this stuff (and the stuff in OP's tweet) -
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Reconstruction-America-1860-1880-Burghardt/dp/0684856573/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yextpoQw-w4 & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGQmDArU-o
> wonder what the UN achieved there.
They saved the lives of thousands or even tens of thousands of people while the rest of the world sat back and did nothing.
A little recommended reading on the subject: Shake Hands with the Devil
Huh, never heard of that before. Seems to have happened years before the genocide and whether that influenced anything is debatable, after all the genocide was committed mostly with the help of machetes.
Annan on the other hand was head of peacemaking during the genocide and according to the UN forces commander it was him who ordered the peacekeepers not to intervene multiple times.
Shake Hands with the Devil is on the list, so I'll throw that in here.
Library in the other end of the room. And it is three:
http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0786715103
http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/dp/1451628978/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375278381&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=clash+samuel
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ding-Village-Yan-Lianke/dp/B005FOG3X4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1375278398&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=ding+village
These are the books we read in my Africa in Popular Media and African History classes in college. I highly recommend all of them:
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky
God Grew Tired of Us
A Long Way Gone
A Continent for the Taking
Black Hawk Down
Country of My Skull
Kaffir Boy
Machete Season: the Killers in Rwanda Speak
The Graves Are Not Yet Full
An Ordinary Man
>Journalism demands briefness and articles have rigid schemes to follow, so creativity wasn't always welcome.
Fuck them.
Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden.
Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, by Hunter Thompson.
Roughing It, by Mark Twain.
These are four books--all creative, funny, dramatic, informative and beautifully written--by reporters.
Read them and study them. Copy the techniques they use, how they craft sentences, how they lead into the stories they tell, how they turn interviews into characters narrating their events.
And then practice. Over and over and over.
That's just not true. Losers write a lot of history:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D9&amp;field-keywords=Vietnam+War
...and:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Hawk-Down-Story-Modern/dp/080214473X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373240741&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Blackhawk+Down
...and:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=Bay+of+Pigs
...and:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=Little+Bighorn&amp;rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3ALittle+Bighorn
...and
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Third-Reich-Albert-Speer/dp/0684829495/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373240790&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=Albert+Speer
This chap was on the losing side in two world wars:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_8?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=mein+kampf+by+adolf+hitler&amp;sprefix=Mein+Kam%2Cstripbooks%2C142&amp;rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Amein+kampf+by+adolf+hitler
Then again, losers of battles and wars have good reason to think about what they did wrong and write about it.
Also you need to understand that victory and defeat are not always decisive and clear-cut. Victors like the Sioux, Vietnamese, and Somalis, were not in a position to dictate terms and do whatever they wanted with the vanquished.
The context is modern Middle Eastern history.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement, as well as the Balfour Declaration are the key points in modern Arab history, that unfortunately most Arabs know nothing about.
It is also important to remember that this man who began the Arab Revolt due to promises made by the English, intended for one Arab state only.
The Arab revolt remains to this day the only war of independence fought by Arabs, unless you choose to count Kuwait's hiring of the US to fight Iraq a popular independence movement. The armies that fought during the Arab revolt were made up of Arabs from various tribes of Arabia, as well as from Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, etc. It even contained some Muslim volunteers from India. The Arab revolt saw the emergence of some great Arab heroes of the past century, such as Dhuqan al-Atrash, his son Sultan al-Atrash, Prince Rashed al-Khuzai, Ezz el-din al-Qassam, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, and many many others.
The context is the creation by colonial powers of national states where non existed before.
The context is key to our history as Arabs in a time where we care more about the next iphone than how our countries came to be made.
If you care enough to verify the statements I've made, feel free to read A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin, or Inventing Iraq, another great book.
We did not create our countries, they were created for us and the statements and documents made by Balfour and others exist till this day, bragging about how he "drew lines on an empty map" based on accents and oil fields.
>I didnt say we do all the fighting for them. I said we are the bouncer.
and that they were a 5 year old, implying that they are defenseless. Your metaphor is still crap.
>If isreal was attacked by Iran, would we then attack Iran? How can you say that us being the strongest ally that Israel has doesnt effect the region? If we backed out and said we no longer supported Israel, they would be obliterated within the year. The other countries would take back the land that was theirs before Israel took it and we backed them. Is this not true? Is this not a logical deduction?
Yes, it does seem likely that Israel would be attacked if we abandoned them. It does not follow that they would lose.
It also would not be good for the US to abandon Israel. Remember what I said about saying one thing and doing another? Our friends will trust us less and our enemies will see it as weakness. Its not a simple situation, we cannot just walk away.
>If there is a toy shared by the class right...
You are misrepresenting the history of the region. Its not as simple as "The Jews walked in one day and took over Palestine" There is history there. Neither side is the innocent victim you want to portray the Palestinians as. A Peace to End All Peace has a lot of good info about the creation of the modern middle east. If you want more detail (or a replacement for your sleeping pills) try A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
>I am saying that if we left Israel to sort out their own issues, we would be left alone. There would be no reason to attack us. How is that logic flawed?
There are more issues that drive terrorism than just our support for Israel.
>We lead the world in nothing at this point
Nothing? Why do people want to come here to work then? They must just like hamburgers and SUVs.
>There are times when yes, a war is justifed. However, it again should be the last resort at all costs.
Agree.
>I think sometimes the situations are made to be more complicated than they need to be. Israel was not a country. The area was occupied by palestinians. Israel moves them out, moves in and we back them.
Too simplified. Jews->Arabs->Crusaders->Arabs->Ottoman Empire->WWI->British. Under the British, before the Jews moved back in, land was owned by wealthy Arab landlords and worked by the Arab tenants. As more and more Jews moved in the trend was for them to pool their money and buy land from the landlords. The landlords make some huge profits, but this displaced the Arab tenants who lost their homes and their jobs, which fuels resentment already growing due to British rule. The Jews haven't really done anything wrong, they are just guilty of not being very neighborly or charitable. Arabs riot, some Arabs kill some Jews, some Jews kill some Arabs, the Brits don't do a very good job of keeping the peace. Jews wage asymmetric war (bombings, sabotage) against the Brits. Brits give up and turn to the UN for a solution. UN says two states Jews and Arabs. Arabs say no. UN says too bad. Israel says we are an independent country. Israel's Arab neighbors attack. In the villages Palestinians leave, some expecting to come back after the Arab states are victorious, some scared off by Israeli neighbors telling them that their safety cannot be guaranteed. Israel wins, and keeps the territory it gained. Off and on wars, the rise of Palestinian terrorism. The Jews haven't treated the Arabs entirely fairly, the Arabs haven't treated the Israelis entirely fairly. Pretty far from "The Jews stole Israel".
>This understandably has upsset, well pretty much everyone one in the region. Then we call them terrorists for wanting what was theirs. They dont want anything above, just what they originally had.
I call them terrorists because they target civilians. The Israelis' hands aren't spotless, but at least they aren't targeting markets, buses, and schools. I would have a lot less to say if they only targeted Israeli military, but they go after the civilian targets first.
>Do different countries advance at different rates? Again yes.
Of course, but does that mean you cannot pass judgment on their culture and customs?
This is a good point (though it could do without the "douchebags") and should not be downvoted (it was at -7 when I saw it).
I contend that although violence has been reduced, Iranian influence has increased and underlying sectarian tensions remain unresolved. Meanwhile, resentment of the U.S. occupation has risen. National unity, even within the army, is as weak as ever (witness the desertions in the incursion into Basra). Support for a continued U.S. presence appears to be dropping, according to a BBC/ABC poll.
Iraq's government cannot be strengthened and protected with only an unsustainable burst of decreased violence. Political issues, some of them fairly intractable, must be settled by Iraqis themselves. The U.S repeating the blunders Britain made a century ago; it is helping various factions fight each other more effectively and thus prolonging the conflict. I recommend you read A Peace to End All Peace. (This isn't some political diatribe, it's just a great history written in 1989 about mistakes much like these.)
Good book to check out about the Second Punic War with a heavy focus on the Battle of Cannae.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Cannae-Hannibal-Darkest-Republic/dp/0812978676
I know the whole second Punic war's first history was written 70 years after... Second some 120-130 years after. the only actual physical evidence that Hannibal existed? a passing reference on a piece of tablet that was a dedication.
Source: Ghosts of Cannae
The Ghosts of Cannae does a great job of describing Hannibal's methods.
A History of the Modern Middle East
> This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies. After introducing the reader to the region’s history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, A History of the Modern Middle East focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. Although built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account. In updating this fifth edition of the late William Cleveland’s popular introductory text, Martin Bunton provides a thorough account of the major transformative developments over the past four years, including a new chapter on the tumultuous Arab uprisings and the participation of Islamist parties in a new political order in the Middle East.
Indeed, there is a lot of history to it. Essentially it's all about oil and geo-politics. I recommend reading this book if you're interested in middle east politics.
You should check out this book. Get back to us.
Yeah well, police suck.
http://www.amazon.ca/Our-Enemies-Blue-America-Revised/dp/0896087719
It's been like this from the start, it's only gotten more intense.
Anyone interested should really read Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
I don't have anything specific to recommend on labor history, but WP gives a pretty good overview and there's lots of goods writers on the subject. The major labor struggles are just drenched in state crackdowns and bloodbaths. It was brutal in Europe too, but the US is just beyond comparison.
The tl;dr of the industrial revolution, which is when police departments were first established, is that independent farmers were basically being driven into what they called "industrial slavery." Industrialists needed the urban slums filled with cheap, disposable "free labor" and that's more or less what they got. Along with it, they got a lot of antiquated, belligerent ideas they wanted driven out of people's heads. You couldn't have people organizing and demanding some different political order. The police were introduced to crack down on truancy, punish populist insubordination, beat organized labor into submission. Class control is still what they do today. For example, the war on drugs has never had anything to do with drugs. Chomsky explains it pretty well, not that you need any sophisticated analysis when the aims were stated clearly by the people implementing the policies:
>[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to. (Haldeman, Chief of Staff)
-
>Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue...that we couldn't resist it. (Ehrlichman, White House Counsel to the president)
I think David Simon has dissected the police like no one else in recent memory, though I don't really share his nostalgia for some good ol' beat cop from some halcyon days of America.
Our Enemies in Blue is supposed to cover some of that in more depth too, from an anarchist point of view.
edit - It's also worth noting that when police departments were first being introduced, all over America, you didn't even have this pretext of cracking down on crime and protecting the public. Nobody was suggesting that the role of these institutions was to keep people from being robbed, raped or murdered and to guard the righteous from the wicked. That marketing came much later... e.g. "protect and serve" is the winner of a catchy motto contest for BEAT magazine. It's got nothing to do with any kind of duty. For that, see Warren v. District of Columbia.
I think this book provides some history and analysis into your topic:http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0896087719?pc_redir=1407583552&amp;robot_redir=1
I read this book a few years ago regarding the final siege from the Byzantines' point of view and the whole thing was just depressing because I knew what was going to happen
Yeah, that is an amazing subject to study about this kind of topic.
This book is a fun, quick read on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/1453-Holy-Constantinople-Clash-Islam/dp/1401308503
There are better and more in depth books out there, but this a nice way to learn a foundation on the subject.
>Any citations for this?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/White_sign_racial_hatred..jpg
But more seriously, this is generally considered to be the book to read on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Urban-Crisis-Inequality-Princeton/dp/0691162557
Similar things have also happened in other cities. This is a good one on Baltimore:
http://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437
This book, on Chicago, follows on a similar vein:
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Properties-Struggle-Transformed-Chicago/dp/0805091424/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
The major differences between Michigan and other parts of the Rust Belt were that Michiganders had more money with which to move, featured an automotive culture that promoted sprawl, and relied heavily on a single industry that, in the subsequent decades, went through a period of major turmoil. These things all served to magnify what was common throughout the region at the time (knee-jerk reactions to southern blacks moving in).
p.s. Google "blockbusting."
well without getting too in depth I'd like to first say you should look into and read up on the issue because I will undoubtedly get something wrong here. It's overwhelmingly complicated and I'm not an expert. If you want a quick easy intro you could start with netflix's 13TH. Many of the authors you should be reading if you're interested in the theory of structural racism are quoted or interviewed in that documentary.
&nbsp;
The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander
Not in my Neighborhood - Antero Pietila (caveat: I read about redlining quite a few years ago now, from someone interviewed in 13th. forget who. would cite them instead but in a rush RN. I think I read a snippet of this book at one point but tbh it's been a long time since I went to school)
&nbsp;
are both probably good places to start. I have a collection of academic journals and sources from undergrad I might be able to find at home too (although my life is busy this holiday season so no promises). the basic idea is that after the civil rights movement many things aligned to marginalize minorities in place of the more openly racist system of segregation. After WWII vets were given houses, but black vets were encouraged to move into new houses in black neighborhood, which were "redlined" - essentially the houses in black neighborhoods were deemed less valuable and if you lived in these neighborhoods it became progressively harder to get good loans and build your financial assets. so white vets sent their kids to free using the assets their GI bill houses gave their family, while black vets watched their neighborhoods slowly fall into poverty and marginalization.
&nbsp;
Meanwhile a rhetoric of "criminality" was cultivated in politics - Nixon ran on an anti-crime platform and his adimistration allegedly used drugs and crime to split up hippies and black, keeping them from unifying politically. Reagan grew these policies and next thing you know The New Jim Crow emerged - sorry for wiki but incarceration skyrocketed and disproportionately hit minorities and the lower classes. Check the sources at the bottom of the wiki it's a much more complex issue than one sentence and I don't have time to cite you a million sources. Although democrats don't like to talk about it, Bill Clinton actually resided over a very large part of this trend of mass incarceration and even enacted some of the harshest laws - like three strikes and you're out and mandatory minimums. It's possible this hard stance on crime helped win back the presidency for the Democrats - by then crime had become such an integral part of campaigning that the only way to beat the republicans was to join them.
&nbsp;
during this time you can actually also find some strong examples of more direct violence against major outspoken black voices - there was the time philadelphia bombed itself - here's an op-ed on that one too and there was the assasination of Fred Hampton while he was asleep next to his wife
&nbsp;
complicating matters is the privatization of prisons. With so many people in prison states were slow and overcrowding became an issue so profits started to be had in the private prison sector. it didn't take long for other industries to join the party -Lots of big names in American consumerism use or used labor in prison camps to cut labor costs and stay local. Which just makes it more profitable to be tough on crime and run prisons.
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tl;dr: it pays to have cheap labor and infrastructure/governement can be used to maintain the status quo with a new spin
http://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437 I have a bit of a different take on it that Pietila has.
Not in My Neighborhood is a great place to start.
Can you cite some studies to support your argument? I'm not saying that I believe what I do because a lot of people do, just that there is a lot of evidence to support it and most academic publishing agrees with it. If you pick a random recent anthropology textbook you're generally not going to see things that agree with you. As you're arguing against the current scientific viewpoint (which I have no issue with) the burden of proof does kind of rest on you.
Ethnicity now isn't considered to be what you're referring to as race. It has more to do with culture, ancestry, and nationality than anything else.
> better societies
As defined by who?
> whites and Asians being the most successful
Again, according to who? Major civilizations flourished in the Americas before colonization from Europe, Egypt for thousands of years was one of the biggest players in the Mediterranean. Egypt lasted longer than Rome.
A book you may be interested in in is The Fate of Africa. It does a good job of showing how fucked over the continent got by colonialism (and the botched ending of that) any why some of your viewpoints might seem to be supported (ie: why didn't Africa become like Europe if that's what's better).
Can you try to provide some recent peer reviewed work supporting your arguments?
Sure. This is not a list of what I consider the most important books on the subject but rather my attempt to select good works with similar profiles to the books found on the list.
The Fate of Africa - Meredith
The Boer War, Pakenham
Britain's Gulag, Elkins
Neoliberal Frontiers, Ethnography of Sovereignty in W. Africa, Chalfin
Africa in World Politics, Harbeson
African Perspectives on Colonialism
I've heard House of Leaves is really bizarre and cool.
My current deck is Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875-2002, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Blood Meridian, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
It's a really depressing list.
I read American Gods a couple years ago and hated it enough to not pick up another fiction book for like over a year.
Nonsense, and nobody said facts matter less than feelings. It is a FACT that Palestnians have been ethnically-cleansed by Israel. Note that not ONE jew is sent to refugee camps, only Palestinians are, and not ONE Palestinian is granted an automatic "Right of return" from anywhere in the world to enjoy state-subsidized housing in settlements in Israel, only Jews are -- do you think that's a coincidence?
Anyway, first of all Jews have and had been in the Middle East for a long time before Israel's creation, they're well integrated in the rest of the world too, and if anything it is Israel itself that is placing "the jews" in danger
Second, there is no "The Jews", it is a manufactured identity
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234
https://www.amazon.com/Wandering-Who-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/1846948754
Anyway, why should the Palestinians have to pay for Europe's antisemitism
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Well I guess if you're interested you could be a sea dog and get the book called "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe.
Synopsis
>The renowned Israeli historian revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing".
>Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the Middle East.
A simpler way would be to argue with a internet picture. This follows the same logic as your point I agreed upon (prison not shrinking from 2005) cause it just shows israeli/palestinian land but it's a disservice.
Removed comment posted by /u/HitlerWasASensitiveM at 07/25/14 02:36:02:
> TO STEAL MORE LAND. You should realize that Israel feel they have the right to land that includes Jordan and further East. And with the help of the U.S., they are going to take it.
>
> The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
>
> "In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation."
... in response to comment posted by /u/UrbanFoodGrower at 07/24/14 16:19:09:
> >Israel was given land in 1948 to establish a country, they pushed past the established borders and displaced millions of Palestinians who were already there.
>
> Why did Israel expand their borders? Could it have anything to do with the multiple Arab countries surrounding them attacking all at once?
"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and too his fellow man."
— Robert G. Ingersoll c. 1924
Time to stop taking your history lessons via Fox News and press releases from the IDF PR department!
Read this book by a Jewish Israeli historian: Ilan Pappe. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.
It's titled: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".
Watch him talk here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Tzf1YKE2w
Read the book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Palestine
You can watch Palestinian homes being demolished here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bca4JTipV4U
Plenty more where that came from!
Peace! (unless you are trying to bulldoze my house, and destroy my olive trees - it which case I will kill you to defend myself and my family. Not unreasonable eh?)
> You don't say. I, like most scholars, have higher standards of evidence.
what exactly are you a scholar of?
> Utterly false as i have already explained. Every single Arab Israeli war was instigated and started by Israel.
Just because you believe it doesn't make it so. I explained how your explanation is utterly false.
> Please... They were driven out in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. Go read this book, asstard - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Do me a favor! Are you seriously quoting Ilan Pappe to me? A "historian" discredited by his own faculty, one of the most left-leaning faculties of history in Israel??
You can do better than that!
> What difference does that make? Its their ancestral lands and they have a right to self-determination, according to your reasoning.
Do you honestly see no difference between establishing a state where none exists and establishing one where another one exists?
> Considered yourself a fucktard.
Insults again. Stay classy!
It is genocide
Source (Israeli author) http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Wikipedia. Give me a fucking break. Try reading some books.
Here are some suggestions.
http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Israel-Myths-Realities/dp/0679720987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1257019998&amp;sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1257020162&amp;sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Fateful-Triangle-Palestinians-Updated-Classics/dp/0896086011
http://www.amazon.com/Image-Reality-Israel-Palestine-Conflict-Revised/dp/1859844421/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Question-Palestine-Edward-W-Said/dp/0679739882/ref=pd_sim_b_2
> is a concept of international law.
It seems that it is you who is mistaken. Sovereignty since the dawn of time has been about being able to militarily hold the land you own. There was a time without international law.. would you have me believe there was also no sovereignty by your logic?
> no nation gets to pick and chose what laws it is subject to.
Who is we? The United States acting as a sovereign nation enacting its own foreign policy goals of eliminating enemies and threats? One need only look at North Korea, China, Yemen, Somalia, Myanmar (this one especially) to see that sovereign states in fact do choose what laws they are subject to.
>What really went on, https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Thanks for the recommendation I'll definitely pick it up.
Oh please! Why pretend to be such a fool? Surely you are not such a fool? Oh wait, you are actually a troll, I see, after all.
Here is what I said: the Zionists had been planning for decades to evict the non-Jews from Palestine, and in 1948 were on the verge of succeeding in that endeavour. That helps explain the context of the Arab state response in 1948, which was -- rather belatedly and in a half-hearted manner -- to attack the Zionists. Palestinians as well as their supporters had and have every right to resist the Palestinians' disposession, through violent means if necessary, no different from any other case of ethnic cleansing. You, as a Jewish supremacist, are unable to look at the historical facts in their clear light, because they must really make you uncomfortable. If you dare to, see The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine which I can assure you explains very clearly, in terms even you could understand, the extent to which the Zionists planned to dispossess the Palestinians.
Oh but wait. I keep forgetting. I am speaking to a troll!
tablet mag.com??
Ilan Pappe - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
4.5 stars on 298 reviews.
>Description
Product Description
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.
Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
"The Arabs" -- lol
so Palestinian villagers could be ethnically cleansed because heck they're all just Arabs like the Jordanian and Egyptian military forces?
FYI the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians started before the 1948 war, as Israeli historians point out, http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Actually they still didn't recognize Palestine then and in fact they didn't want to recognize the Partition Plan either but agreed only because they saw it as a first step towards expansionism. This is standard history. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, started BEFORE the 1948 war, in places like Haifa and Jaffa where the people were rounded-up in the local markets, shelled by mortar fire and literally forced into the sea, where British naval vessels picked up the survivors and took them to refugee camps
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants.
Here, read a book.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Well, I just did. Counter it, but be specific.
I’m clearly refering to ”Zionsts” = rightwing Zionists/NeoCons. No racism. No antisemitism.
I have never read anything at the ”electronicintifada”, no. I have among other things read these:
Not a trace of ”electronicintifada”.
Exactly, none. Trying to get back their stolen land is not ”genocidal wars”. It is a legitimate struggle for freedom and independence in their own country within the borders mandated by the United Nations since 1947.
Your arguments and alleged ”facts” are strange indeed.
”Well, we stole their land because they attacked us when we stole their land”
Eh ... ?
You really want a source for the claim that the state of Israel was established by a majority of European emigres for the purpose of establishing a demographic majority of European emigres? OK, see inter alia.
In a debate or a discussion, it is not in good manner to require a source for something that is not reasonably controversial. It is likewise not subject to reasonable controversy that the United States is a demographic majority of people who settled from Europe and their direct descendants.
Please Richard Miles book, Carthage Must Be Destroyed.
You'll find that most of your statements were incorrect. References make up about 1/3 of the book, so have at it.
To be clear, the Roman and Greek historians account for large swaths of history still, but their automatic authenticity is largely discredited in this book with more local and timely sources that weren't available until somewhat recently.
i picked up his one on the fall of rome and couldn't finish it. it was terrible.
i highly [recommend] (http://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294) that. i highly recommend that.
There is just so much out there. Reading about Carthage is really interesting. I can suggest:
https://www.amazon.it/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization/dp/0143121294
Was a really good read. I find reading about my favorites empires' enemies is pretty useful.
White Gold by Giles Milton
'White Gold, is the story of Thomas Pellow, a Cornish cabin boy who was captured at sea by a group of fanatical Islamic slave traders—the Barbary corsairs, taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Salè in Morocco and sold to the highest bidder. Pellow’s purchaser happened to be the tyrannical sultan of Morroco, Moulay Ismail, a man committed to building a vast imperial pleasure palace of unsurpassable splendour built entirely by Christian slave labour. After enduring long periods of torture Pellow converted to Islam and became the personal slave of the sultan for over two decades—including a stint as a soldier in the sultan’s army—before finally making a dramatic escape and return to Cornwall.'
https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Giles-Milton/dp/0340794704
Hi,
The source of the article is this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518959794&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=white+gold
Severed: The True Story of the "Black Dahlia" Murder by John Gilmore, and I know it's not popular on here, but Zodiac by Robert Graysmilth.
I'd also add [White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves] (https://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Africas-European/dp/0340794704) by Giles Milton. An excellent read about a part of history nobody wants to talk about.
Thomas Pellow as chronicled in Giles Milton's excellent White Gold
here's a few that would absolutely blow the mind of anyone who thinks the civil war mostly ended our oppression of black americans and afforded them anything remotely resembling equality.
for starters...
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
> Douglas A. Blackmon exposes the horrific aftermath of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, when thousands of black people were unfairly arrested and then illegally “sold” into forced labor as punishment.
> “When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our ‘fault.’ But it is undeniably our inheritance.”
there's tons of awfulness in more modern times as well...
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
or...
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
and if you really don't want to recognize your old self...
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
anyways
i'd be shocked if you're actually interested in reading about this and not just posturing over it but good on you if so.
I think you misunderstood. Thanks for the reply also.
By "help getting re-established" I was referring to Affirmative Action and other positive, not passive, assistance.
This doesn't apply only to Black Americans - it applies equally to any chronically generational impoverished group. (looking at you West Virginia). I suggest you might enjoy reading "When Affirmative Action Was White"
I agree that bad politics and bad planning can exacerbate the problem: hence the 90s overhaul of welfare and aid spending saw marketed improvements. Fundamentally different than abolishing.
When you refer to "welfare state" ... one needs to be careful as this as a loaded phrase -- meant to imply false myths. For instance, the Welfare Queen or millionaire panhandlers. Some amount of validity exists in the criticism if by "welfare state" one is referring to "bad policy" etc. for instancing a passive support for "bad decisions" leading to "extra care" (more babies equal more funds, for instance). However, these are policy issue which can easily correct the bad behavior -- which, to be clear, is not the majority.
As an aside, the Military recently changed it's monthly housing allowance. Previously, up until about 2005 or so, more children got more pay. It was changed to a flat monthly allowance based on rank (rank roughly reflecting a persons time in service, and hence age and therefore statistical family). The result is in the military one sees families with fewer children.
> So you're telling this human being, that he should not base his view of people based on his own experience?
I don't think that personal experience should, on its own, dictate how people see the world. Hell, that's what OP was saying before he started deleting all of his downvoted comments.
> Now, based on "evidence" in the US, black people commit 6 times more crime than white people. This indicates that they are, generally, lower educated, disregard the law, lack respect for authorities, and in general match what OP is saying.
Crime statistics are surprisingly flawed. They don't really measure how many people are committing crimes, but rather who got caught. Drug busts are a great example. Black people tend to get busted much more often for drug possession even though white people use drugs just as much (if not more). That's because it's much easier for police to bust people in poor black neighborhoods than in affluent white suburbs. Poor black people tend not to be well-connected.
Here's the thing: ghettos are not mistakes. West Baltimore, North Philadelphia, the South Bronx, Watts, Compton, and so forth all exist because of public policy decisions made years ago. African-Americans didn't choose to live in these places - they were basically forced to live there because banks wouldn't lend them money to live anywhere else. If you look at how the New Deal was constructed, you can see black people being written out of it. It was essentially affirmative action for white people. The New Deal is generally credited for building the American middle class - is it any wonder that black people might wind up behind the eight ball if they weren't able to take advantage? This is just one example - there are plenty more.
EDIT: And now I see that OP has not only deleted his downvoted comments, but also his account. Good.
Haha really? I've got Irish heritage and a rather Irish name and have been interested in the Irish as Non-White thing for a while and read this, which was pretty interesting.
Apart from coming across a few people from time to time who dislike the Irish, I've rarely heard people discuss it in terms of whiteness. I find that quite interesting. I assume this has to do also with Anti-catholic sentiment among evangelicals?
Maybe you just don't notice it. There are also a lot more Irish-Americans here. People identify strongly with it because it used to be something that was discriminated against. Many people still eat food from 'the old country' and follow cultural traditions, even if they don't recognize them as such. I am from California and got a bit of culture shock going to Boston as there is a 'UK' food aisle in the grocery store, and many pubs that play Irish music and serve Irish breakfast, which are well populated with non-tourists who've probably never been to Ireland in their life, yet think people playing fiddles in bars is 'normal'.
People aren't forced to assimilate in America. Go to the midwest and watch people eat perogi and lutefisk (EW) and go to polka dances without shame. Where do you think the Minnesotan accent came from? German was the second most widely spoken language in the United States and you could go to school in German until WWI and II, when people felt they had to cover up their German heritage.
I get a bug up my ass about it because I honestly prefer it when white people in this country recognize that they too have something 'different' about them, rather than thinking of themselves as 'normal' and 'American' and thinking of us brown and black people as upsetting the order of things by not conforming, whether by having a different cuisine or religion or cultural tradition. The bringing together of all these things is what makes America, not their obliteration.
Edit: I know you're probably like 'why won't this woman shut up' but here is a really fascinating book on Irish American culture and their acceptance into American society/white privilege.
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
If you haven't read them, you may also be interested in some of this author's previous work... specifically, The Wages of Whiteness and Working Toward Whiteness.
Also, Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White.
PS The promotional flyer for the new book includes a code for 20% off preorders from the Oxford University Press website.
we are now apparently http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
Only if that other country is Ireland.
The notion that race is purely biological has been debunked for years: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/275872/
For instance, one of the major works of both history and critical race theory in the last decade Is this book: How the Irish Became White which points out that the Irish and other groups we wouldn't hesitate to call "white" were considered a separate (and inferior) race for decades.
Race is not purely biological, and there is no scientific taxonomic distinction between homo sapiens sapiens.
The term isn't specifically about intermarriage between African Americans and the Irish; that's just used by the author as evidence of a similar social stature. What the article is addressing is how race is a socially constructed phenomenon.
Irish immigrants in the United States and Britain weren't considered "white" by 19th century standards. In fact, many depictions of Irish immigrants would portray them as another race entirely separate from Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Britons. Many of the stereotypes that today are associated with non-"white" minorities - laziness, lack of intelligence, simple-mindedness, and base desires - were also leveled against the Irish. The fruit of the analysis is that even though the Irish have what we would consider to be white skin, they were not considered "white" by the standards of their day. The racial category of "white" or "black," then, is about more than just skin color.
Here is another good essay to put it into context. You can find many, many images portraying the Irish as either wild beasts or monstrous - in other words, as sub-human or not human at all. The Irish came to be considered white through a historical process.
What gene is shared between Middle Easterners and Europeans? If Southern and Northern Europeans are genetically distinguishable on home tests like 23AndMe, how could Middle Easterners and WASPs have the same genetic traits?
If the Irish had to "become" white and a person could become black by one drop of ancestry, what does that say about the "scientific" nature of race?
On the subject of Irish Americans and whiteness, this is a pretty interesting book.
In case you actually wanna read a book about how the Irish became white here's somewhere to buy a cheap copy: https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
I've been thinking a lot lately about the notion of "personal responsibility." A notion that, for many conservatives, seems to break through the clouds and let the heaven shine in. I want you to question, for a moment, this way of thinking.
This value is certainly grounded in something very real and true. We recognize that if people are not generally responsible this whole world will fall apart. Everyone needs to be a responsible person. They need to wake up and go to work and they need to take care of their children and possessions. They need to hold to a budget and have the will to deny themselves pleasure when it's in their own long term best interest. Someone who hasn't accomplished these habits is someone we would consider "immature" or childlike. In other words, they never learned, they never had to face punishment and "learn better."
We've also experienced personally moments in our lives where a lazy friend or relative has dropped the ball, made poor or reckless decisions, and as a result, caused us to suffer through no fault of our own.
I think that conservatives tend to take this character of immaturity, that anecdotally is certainly true of some immature people, and project it onto the poor populace at large, as well as anyone who has a grievance that they don't recognize as valid. (what grievances they do recognize, it turns out, has a lot to do with their own ingroup vs an outgroup, involving race and gender and nationality, etc, but that's another issue).
The result is that something true on a small intimate scale is mapped onto things that are much much larger and more complicated, like "black culture" and "black history." This leads to a very wrong narrative.
The idea that there might be something such as structures of power, or social and economic ideologies that perpetuate racism, can be dismissed as imaginary based on this simple narrative. Black poverty can instead be explained through a lack of "personal responsibility."
As evidence to back things up, you and other conservatives provide singular examples of people who have "beaten the odds," and pulled themselves up. Not all blacks were slaves, and not all do live or have lived in poverty. Isn't it the case that some black people are more well off than some white people? (Without asking, why are the odds so bad to begin with?)
Even though statistically, blacks have suffered and continue to suffer form poverty levels far beyond whites, the fact that some have beaten the odds prove that it's not impossible. How bad can discrimination really be?
Also, Asians! The reason we know why this whole business of racial decriminalization is imaginary is because Asians actually have higher per capital earning than even whites. Why? They work hard and they take advantage of the opportunities available to everyone in this country. And other ethnic groups were discriminated against as well? What about the Irish, Catholics, Slavs, or Jews?
This leads to the final claim, that life in general is hard. It should be, it has to be, otherwise we'll all become soft. And what happens when you have soft people? They become like children. They need to be taken care of. To only way to turn children into adult is to deny them. To force them to work harder, to appreciate what they have, to take personal responsibility. All of this is true when it comes to raising children, or dealing with a family black sheep, but when this is easily mapped onto large swaths of the population as an explanation for poverty and crime, well, we've short circuited.
(in fact, conservative policy tends to have the opposite effect, it actually gives people less ability to make better choices. Choices are not made abstractly, they are made by an embodied individual, and people already living in poverty live under stress, making choices you'll never have to make. And black people especially have lived under low level but constant psychological disparagement. This is changing, but to get a sense of it historically, Read Native Son, or anything James Baldwin, or The Souls of Black Folks).
Conservatives tend to think, aren't all these claims explaining black poverty really just an excuse? An excuse for a lack of personal responsibility? Typically what then gets blamed is "black culture."
I can see how this is a compelling narrative, especially if you are allergic to guilt or shame, but the reason why most of this is to me bullshit, or entirely irrelevant to policy, is because it ignores the specificity of black history. Every group that has faced discrimination in the US has a distinct history and that history matters. You can't just say well one race did fine while another one has floundered, so we can cross off race as a variable.
You have to look at each ethnic group's history to see what happened. Each story is complicated, and the real story of African Americans is incredibly complex. It's also probably the most interesting aspect of American history, to me at least.
In the case of both the Irish and the Jews, they eventually were able to disappear into whiteness. This book is especially telling: https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
as well as this one: https://www.amazon.com/Blackface-White-Noise-Immigrants-Hollywood/dp/0520213807
For both, their assimilation was aided by engaging in the national past time of discriminating against, you guessed it, black people. Setting themselves in opposition to them.
Whiteness as a category has been incredibly essential to American identity. This is argued famously in The Wages of Whiteness: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-Making-American-Working/dp/1844671453/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+wages+of+whiteness&amp;qid=1567617090&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1
Basically, the book argues that American's came to be able to accept their position as wage laborers by identifying with whiteness, being able to contrast their position with that of slaves. At least they weren't slaves! At least they were white, at least they were better than someone.
This psychological drama has played out in politics and history ever since. I could go on and on and on. You might dismiss these books, and these claims, but you shouldn't. You should read and evaluate them for yourself. They are well sourced.
Basically, if there's one thing to take away here, it's that you should bracket the narrative that you have come to believe in, and you should open yourself to reading actual quality history about the black experience and race relations in this country.
A good place to start might be this book: https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/0465049664
And if you want to find some free pdfs of these books. This is the go to site: https://libgen.is/
Just search, the books are in there.
Only, those groups weren't always white. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415963095/
> u kike.
So, that's a yes on your name having been changed to pass as white.
> you dont have a single incident of a pole being not considered white.
Hello, McFly? Ben Franklin explicitly said you weren't white. Look, none of this is a secret, I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Its well established, uncontroversial history. if you weren't a WASP, you weren't white. You weren't black, but you weren't white either. You were considered inferior to real whites. There are literally thousands of books and papers discussing it and it was all simply common knowledge at the time because that's just how people saw it, some examples:
Italian/American Literature
For the social science behind this question, see How the Irish Became White.
There's a book on that
Mostly focused on Irish in America, mainly around Irish trade unions opposing Black workers rights
> The difference is that those communities reinvested in themselves over generations, and until that happens in black communities, nothing is going to change.
well i guess that's one aspect. it also helped that those groups participated in the oppression of black people and thus gained [acceptance as "white people."] (http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095)
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
How the Irish became white
> In the first half of the 19th century, some three million Irish emigrated to America, trading a ruling elite of Anglo-Irish Anglicans for one of WASPs. The Irish immigrants were (self-evidently) not Anglo-Saxon; most were not Protestant; and, as far as many of the nativists were concerned, they weren't white, either. Just how, in the years surrounding the Civil War, the Irish evolved from an oppressed, unwelcome social class to become part of a white racial class is the focus of Harvard lecturer Ignatiev's well-researched, intriguing although haphazardly structured book. By mid-century, Irish voting solidarity gave them political power, a power augmented by the brute force of groups descended from the Molly Maguires. With help, the Irish pushed blacks out of the lower-class jobs and neighborhoods they had originally shared. And though many Irish had been oppressed by the Penal Laws, they opposed abolition?even when Daniel O'Connell, "the Liberator," threatened that Irish-Americans who countenanced slavery would be recognized "as Irishmen no longer." The book's structure lacks cohesion: chapters zigzag chronologically and geographically, and Ignatiev's writing is thick with redundancies and overlong digressions. But for the careful reader, he offers much to think about and an important perspective on the American history of race and class.
My Irish ancestors had to read signs that said "No Irish Need Apply". In the 19th century the Irish wer not considered to be "white":
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
I should just include a link to his book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Half-Never-Been-Told/dp/046500296X
Interesting tidbit of history: a lot of the violent religious fundamentalism has to do with the Wahhabi movement out of Saudi Arabia late in the 18th century. At the time, the Ottomans ruled over the entire Arab world, but the founder of the Wahhabi movement was a religious scholar, and believed that the Sufi religious practices of the Turks at the time were weak and an affront to god. He advocated an open rebellion against the Sufi practices of the Ottoman empire, and the thousand year old practice and reverence of the Islamic equivalents to Christian saints, calling it polytheism and justifying a jihad against the Turks and all moderate muslims.
The movement's founder was not very popular in his own village, but soon found a political ally in Muhammad ibn Saud, ancestor of the Saudi Arabian rulers. Ibn Saud used the al-Wahhab's radical reinterpretations to justify war and subjugation of other arab tribes in the peninsula and against their Ottoman rulers.
Fast forward to the modern day, and you have several groups including al-Qaeda, the Tailban, ISIS and many others who follow this movement and use it as religious justification for destroying other muslims and westerners. The Wahhabis look to the King of Saudi Arabia as a religious leader, and much of the oil wealth of the Saudis goes straight into funding these radical religious groups. Their intention is to change the Islamic world back to the way it was in the first few generations after Islam's founding, because they fully believe that other groups do not practice true faith and profane their god.
TL;DR: A highly conservative religious movement around the time of the American Revolutionary war declared all other sects as polytheists and thus deserving of extermination according to Islamic law.
Note: I am an American and much of my understanding on the topic comes from this wonderful book. I'm just passionately fascinated by the history of the region.
Great Britian, 1922.
When the Ottoman Empire fell after the First World War, the French, British, and the Russians (to a lesser extent) divided up the territory that was formerly owned by the ottomans into administrative districts between them. When doing so all considerations of ethnic, linguistic, and historical division were ignored, except to intentionally separate common people to weaken their resistance. The Sykes-Picot Agreement is the foundation of all subsequent conflict in the region, from ISIS, al-Qaeda, Israeli-Palistein conflict, you name it. Another take on Sykes-Picot
There is an problem reoccurring throughout history that if you take over a people, kill there leaders and trash their cultural institutions and way of life, it's no simple matter to undo that. Anyways, countries began to get their independence back but then were forced to either aline with the US or the USSR to survive the Cold War.
The modern Iran is the fault of the US and Britian. Iran was one of the most modern and liberal places in the world during the 50's, had a brilliant film industry, was really a modern wonder. But when Iran decided to nationalize their oil industry so the profits could go to bettering the country rather than into the pockets of the Brits that owned the contracts the CIA and MI6 staged a coup of the Iranian government. They installed a puppet, he was wildly unpopular and the resulting unrest and instability gave rise to the modem Islamic nationalism currently in charge of Iran. It's really a shame, Iran could have been absolutely on par with France or Germany right now, had this not happened to them.
If there is one thing I know about politics, it's that the more unstable a place is the more extreme politics will come out of it. This is probably just intuitively obvious, but when a place starts to lose its stability people will abandon the 'standard' set of political solutions and start reaching for more and more politically extreme ones. The particular character of the ideology developed just takes the flavour of whatever already exists there and really takes it off the chart. See the rise of the Nazis following a crippling war and economic downturn, the communists came to power in Russia after years of political turmoil and the massive causalities of the war as well. Look at Greece in the last few years, huge economic strife and now their parliaments has both Neo-Nazis and Communists.
So take a region like the Middle East, and subject it to 100 years of political turmoil, consistently have western powers come in and knock governments down ever once in a while, finally demolish a long standing strong man in the region and something like ISIS springs up to fill the power vacuum. The imminent cause of ISIS was removing Saddam followed by failing to create a political situation that respected the actually ethnic topography of the country, but the root is early 20thC interference by the British and French. ISIS themselves recognize this as the root cause, and some section of ISIS see their mission as undoing that original agreement.
Also:
[Afganistans woes date back all the way to 1813, where Great Britain and Russia completely screwed the place when both were trying to build empires.] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game)
If you really want to get into understanding this Id recommend The Arabs: A History by Eugene Scott. It starts in around 1500 and goes right up to W. Bush, and really gets into the deep roots of why the Middle East looks like it does today.
All good--for context in terms of my favorite non-fiction reads, this one is pretty high on the list, and it's not exactly riveting reading.
Good Resources is King Leopold's Ghost. http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
To get more into it. It was the Age of Colonization and the Carving up of Africa. As the major powers took chunks for the nation for themselves King Leopold decided he wanted a part of the action.
He paid explorers to chart of the Congo River and claimed a large swath of land along it. He was competing with France to his North, and Germans to the East.
It is important to note that the Congo Free State started not as a Belguian colony but as King Leopold's personal colony. He exploited the lands for Ivory and later Rubber by essential enslaving the natives in their own homeland. Those that didn't make quotas had their hands cut off. The population in the Congo crashed, and it is general considered the 4th worst destruction of human life after the Holocaust, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's Communist China
The book Heart of Darkness is written about what Joseph Conrad saw when he visited.
Eventually as people learned of the atrocities King Leopold was forced to turn it over to the Belgium nation. When they took over Missionary school and other more "civilized" systems were set up, but the exploitation continued in a slightly less extreme way.
This book is an excellent resource for those wishing to learn more about Belgian tyranny and genocide in Congo.
Read this book: White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves
Catholics have only been white since the 60s.
Read this.
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
Relevant.
They are now.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
Look man, if acknowledging whiteness causes some crises of identity for you that's fine. We can stop talking about it.
The lack of knowledge of history on display here is staggering. The Irish were portrayed in the press during those times as dunk, violent, hooligans who came over for debauchery and to sit in the streets unemployed. They and the Italians were considered to be a subhuman racial breed, denied the category of the white race. Italians were portrayed as coming over to have a million kids, spread organized crime and undermine the political system with anarchists and communists. I'm not even going to go into how extreme the antisemitism was.
It is deeply ironic that you have the exact view of today's immigrants being terrible for their destination country that the average person of one hundred years ago had back then, but fail to realize that the only reason you believe that is because you have been culturally trained to hate the newcomers. You are right that the parents of the current generation will have to die before these issues are resolved, but it is the passing of native parents training their children in bigotry that is necessary, not the passing of the immigrant parents struggling to better their lives.
> This is r/DebateAChristian. Perhaps you are laboring under the mistaken belief that you are on another sub-reddit.
No, I'm going off your flair. Plenty of bitter people around, but most of them have the courtesy to label themselves "Atheist" and "Anti-theist." My understanding was ignostics didn't debate theological crap without definitions involved.
Then again, I am an idiot.
>Are you capable of answering the question?
Well, you seem to want to talk to "Generic Christian Belief X Y Z" instead of me. In my belief, angels didn't set fire to anything, so no, angels wouldn't save raped Yazidi women or keep kids from being decapitated.
>I see. So it was a mistake to build the walls and it was a mistake to not strengthen the walls.
Pretty much. Theologically, they weren't being good Christians. Militarily, their walls were horrifically out of date. A mistake on multiple levels! :)
I only know that because I read a good history about the siege of Constantinople recently.
Thanks? I certainly don't think I've got an astounding knowledge of history. I've just been reading a history of postcolonial Africa (which everyone should read) and it's really shocked me with how the systemic issues of colonialism affected postcolonial African states.
I'm a dude.
Ethnic cleansing and forced removal qualifies as Genocide, amigo. Forcing palestinians out of the west bank and maintaining gaza as an open air prison, frequently carped bombed on the basis of their ethnicity is objectively genocide by every single international standard for the word.
Israel controls the power and water for gaza and routinely cuts the power supply out of spite and hatred. They've systematically eliminated homes in the west bank and enforced illegal settlements, burned down olive crops and stationed IDF soldiers to defend their settlers on stolen land.
Maybe read a book or two before you try to "Facts and logic" someone who is certainly more read and studied on the subject than you.
https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/hlps.2017.0151?journalCode=hlps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_and_massacres_during_the_1948_Palestine_war
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-genocide-scholar-blasts-israel-s-racist-teaching-of-the-holocaust-1.5396158
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
podcast
book
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
Yes. Perhaps you should read a book.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
"In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well."
Here's a book written by an Israeli historian that'll help you comprehend what I'm trying to explain. http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553
What I really found interesting in this 'Conservative' link, is that it represents the changing concepts of race in the United States. I would not be surprised if some day in the future, Asians are viewed as part of the "white" race (or whatever the dominant class is called, rather). The definition of 'white' and therefore the privileges that come with being part of the dominant race/class is constantly expanding. Here is the book about how the Irish became white, for example.
https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
This isn't news or anything. What constitutes white was far more restricted before.
It's painfully apparent that the OP and a lot of people in this thread don't know history. I highly suggest reading
This is simply the same history, different group.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: "In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state."
>I'm irish you stupid idiot.
You're still racist. Like a Celtic Uncle Ruckus.
>Sorry I'm not a billionaire and can jet-set around the world
I've only been to Canada.
I do have a library card, an Internet connection, a high school education, and basic people skills though. That's all one really needs to realize you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
>Did you know that they just threw chinamen at the TCRR until it was done?
"Chinamen"? That's some vintage racist shit.
>There are a lot of Polish people here too.
But you don't know anything about them because you have the people skills of a mole rat.
>Your hostility proves the un-popularity of this issue. Mr. Genius.
So one the fact that one person disagrees with an opinion makes it unpopular? Well, I guess there are no popular opinions then.
Again, read a book.
EDIT: Read another book too.
If you think white Irish and Eastern European immigrants didn't get massive benefits from not having to compete for jobs and opportunities, and in many cases adopting the racial discriminatory policies/beliefs of the existing white class, you are really doing some bad history. https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095
And yes, even today's Serbian immigrant doesn't face the kind of racism in hiring (for example) or policing/incarceration/disenfranchisement, or lose housing value gains due to white flight.
That's exactly the "problem of whiteness". First of all, nobody's skin is literally white, just like nobody's is literally black either. So the whole concept of white and black races is inherently absurd, it doesn't make sense. Let's get that out of the way.
Also, Whiteness has an association with purity, so southern europeans who had north-african invaders mix with them, thus black and curly hair, weren't considered "white" by the blonde hair blue eyed people of northern europe. And then, the masses of Irish who came to America were often very poor, (otherwise they would have been able to afford to stay in Ireland), and they were Catholic rather than Protestant; so they were not "White" simply because most middle-class americans looked down on them, even if they were blonde and blue eyed irish. (To this day, we've only ever had 1 Catholic/non-Protestant president!)
The Problem of Whiteness isn't just about color, it's about much much more than that, it's very complex and it means different things to different people. That's exactly why a course like this might be interesting to someone.
edit: you asked for evidence: "In the first half of the 19th century, some three million Irish emigrated to America, trading a ruling elite of Anglo-Irish Anglicans for one of WASPs. The Irish immigrants were (self-evidently) not Anglo-Saxon; most were not Protestant; and, as far as many of the nativists were concerned, they weren't white, either. Just how, in the years surrounding the Civil War, the Irish evolved from an oppressed, unwelcome social class to become part of a white racial class is the focus of Harvard lecturer Ignatiev's well-researched, intriguing although haphazardly structured book."
>Africans sold each other to white people
Totally legitimizes slavery done by white people!
>Irish people were slaves and stuff
Irish people were not considered "white" at that time (http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095).
>the first slave owner in the US was black, I think
Nice anecdote you got there, cracker, totally puts the whole slave trade in perspective. How could I not see it before? Black people were the villains all along!
>And all of these things totally vindicate all white people.
Nice revisionism you got there.
EDIT : Just noticed you post to the Blue pill, SRS subreddits and yet are still a white defender? Wow.
> Slavery is a good example, sure it had economic benefits at the time but weighed against the ongoing social and economic costs has it really been worth it?
There weren't huge costs in economic terms, especially since we rolled back reconstruction a couple years after the US Civil War. I've been meaning to buy and read The Half Has Never Been Told. Apparently slavery made us wicked rich. So yeah, from an amoral/immoral standpoint it was worth it.
Of course China is copying the U.S., Britain, Australia, Europe, etc. etc. We're all rich and powerful as fuck.
Plowing a rut is easier than plowing virgin sod.
Meh, seems like I’ve already read it: https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1519095686004
> They weren't ethnically cleansed from Israel either no matter how many times you repeat it.
Actually they were, try reading a little about it:
https://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1
>Also you really expect them to just walk into Israel without disturbance?
How were the people shot in the back trying to walk into Israel?