Ghana's women farmers resist the G7 plan to grab Africa's seeds

Heidi Chow

Ecologist - 22nd May 2015

Sharing and saving seed is a crucial part of traditional farming all over Africa, writes Heidi Chow. Maybe that's why governments, backed by multinational seed companies, are imposing oppressive seed laws that attack the continent's main food producers and open the way to industrial agribusiness. But Ghana's women farmers are having none of it.

My mother gave me some seeds to plant. And I'm also giving those seeds to my children to plant.
"So that is ongoing, every time we transfer to our children. And that is how all the women are doing it. We don't buy, we produce it ourselves."
Sitting together in the heat of the Ghanaian sun, Esther Boakye Yiadom explained to me the importance of seeds in her family and the transfer of knowledge between the different generations of women.
Esther continues to explain the role of the community in sharing and preserving seeds: "I am having tomatoes and I don't have okro. And another woman has okro. I'll go to her and then beg for some of her okro seeds to plant.
"And then if another person also needs tomatoes from me and I have it, I'll have to give to the person. Because you know every season changes, because maybe mine will not do well. But that person's will do well. So next season we can get to plant. That's why we exchange them."
An oppressive new law is putting all this under threat
The ability to save and exchange seeds after each growing season is an age-old practice that ensures that small scale farmers have seeds to sow the following year.

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Deep Racism: The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos

POPULAR RESISTANCE - February 18th, 2014

Racism is deeply embedded in our culture.  Slavery of African people, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and colonialist imperialism are seeds that intertwine to create racism that still has impacts today.  One example of the sad human history of racism — of colonizers seeing themselves as superior to others — is the long history of human zoos that featured Africans and conquered indigenous peoples, putting them on display in much the same way as animals. People would be kidnapped and brought to be exhibited in human zoos.  It was not uncommon for these people to die quickly, even within a year of their captivity. This history is long and deep and continued into the 1950s.  Several articles below with lots of photos so we can see the reality of this terrible legacy. KZ

Through the 1950s, Africans and Native Americans Were Kept In Zoos As Exhibit
By M.B. David
Political Blindspot, February 13, 2013

Throughout the early 20th century, Germany held what was termed a, “Peoples Show,” or Völkerschau. Africans were brought in as carnival or zoo exhibits for passers-by to gawk at.

Brussels, Belgium in 1958
Only decades before, in the late 1800′s, Europe had been filled with, “human zoos,” in cities like Paris, Hamburg, Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Milan, and Warsaw. New York too saw these popular exhibits continue into the 20th century. There was an average of 200,000 to 300,000 visitors who attended each exhibition in each city.
Carl Hagenbeck of Germany ran exhibits of what he called, “purely natural,” populations, usually East Asian Islanders, but in 1876, he also sent a collaborator to the Sudan to bring back, “wild beasts and Nubians.” The traveling Nubian exhibit was a huge success in cities like Paris, London, and Berlin.

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The Numbing Spectacle of Racism

What the ugly history of a 1906 Bronx Zoo exhibit tells us about ourselves today.

Pamela Newkirk

The Nation - June 1, 2015

At the dawn of the 20th century, a young 103-pound, 4-foot-11-inch tall African named Ota Benga was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo monkey house. The year was 1906, eight years after the consolidation of the five boroughs transformed New York into one of the world’s largest cities, a dazzling hub of finance, publishing, culture, and trade. The New York Zoological Gardens was one of the city’s crown jewels, a sprawling neoclassical wonderland of lush forest, soaring statuary. and gleaming white beaux arts–style pavilions. What became known as the Bronx Zoo had been willed into being by the city’s social elite, who positioned it as the world’s largest and most scientifically advanced facility with an unrivaled array of exotic animals.
On September 8, the unveiling of its latest acquisition, the so-called “pygmy” from the Congo, garnered sensational headlines. “Bushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes,” screamed the New York Times headline on the following day. According to the article: “The human being happened to be a Bushman, one of a race that scientists do not rate high in the human scale. But to the average non-scientific person in the crowd of sightseers there was something about the display that was unpleasant.”

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US Military Expansion in Africa Is About Domination and Exploitation, Not Humanitarian Concerns

By Mark Karlin

Truthout | Interview - Tuesday, 02 June 2015 

The reach of the US military has expanded into nearly every corner of the world, but it is Africa that US officers describe behind closed doors as "the battlefield of tomorrow, today." In his essential new book, Nick Turse tenaciously details the growth of the Pentagon's secretive mission in Africa and the resulting harmful impact on the continent, its countries and its people. Order your copy of Tomorrow's Battlefield now by making a donation to Truthout!

Since before the heinous ravaging of Africa as a source of human beings denied their humanity, lives and freedom as chattel in the slave trade, the continent has been brutally exploited by European colonial (and later US) powers. Now, the continent is targeted by developing nations as a rich source of natural resources and for its coveted geopolitical military positioning. Researcher and author Nick Turse, managing editor of TomDispatch.com, offers a sobering, thorough account of the extension of the US military mission in Africa, known as Africom.
Mark Karlin: What is Africom and how does it fit in with the structure of the US military presence around the world?
Nick Turse: In 2008, US Africa Command or Africom became the newest of the Department of Defense's six geographic combatant commands with a responsibility for all military missions in Africa (aside from those in Egypt, which fall under the purview of Central Command or Centcom). After 9/11, the US military began to focus increased attention on Africa, ramping up counterterrorism operations, proxy interventions and the training of local allies while constructing an increasing number of outposts from which to launch missions.

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Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah Compare Racism in America Versus Africa

Trevor Noah: You Laugh But It's True - The UNICEF Fly

The US Militarization of Africa Is Well Underway and Nothing Good Will Come of It

By Nick Turse, Haymarket Books | Book Excerpt 

TRUTHOUT - Friday, 29 May 2015

The following is an excerpt, "Finding Barack Obama in South Sudan," from the book Tomorrow's Battlefield: US Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa:

Juba, South Sudan. The camp is a mess of orange muck and open earthen sewers. A single wood plank provides passage over a roughhewn trench. Children peek out from tarp-tents. Older men and women sit in homes of mud-speckled plastic sheeting that become saunas in the midday heat. Young women pick their way through refuse, some with large yellow jerry cans of water balanced atop their heads, others carry their homes in similar fashion - a mess of wooden poles and a folded tarp - as they set out for another camp hoping for better to come.
As I walk down the main thoroughfare of this camp for internal exiles, I suddenly see his smiling face, the one I'd know anywhere. Here, in Juba, the capital of South Sudan amid tens of thousands of people crammed into a fetid encampment visibly thrown together in haste, out of fear and necessity; here, as huge water tanker trucks rumble past and men in camouflage fatigues, toting automatic weapons, stride by; here, in the unlikeliest of places in the heat and swirling dust and charcoal smoke, the air heavy with the scent of squalor, is a face I've seen a thousand, or ten thousand, or a million times before. Here in a camp where hopelessness is endemic and despair reigns, is a face that, for so many, was once synonymous with hope itself. It's a sight that stops me in my tracks. Here, 7,000 miles from my home, Barack Obama is smiling his familiar smile amid the results of a decades-long American project in Africa.

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South Africa's second-biggest grocer talks about their strategy

The Africa Report - Friday, 22 May 2015

Dutch retail partnership Spar sees big opportunities to expand in markets where other Western chains fear to tread, exploiting a model of sharing global best practice among independent businesses trading from Angola to India and Ukraine.    
"The potential in China is still enormous and in Russia it is too because we've only just started opening hypermarkets," managing director Gordon Campbell told Reuters in an interview at the group's Amsterdam headquarters. 
"We see enormous potential in India. We're only just starting in Indonesia."  In addition to entering Indonesia and India, Spar opened its first stores in Angola, Malawi and Georgia in 2014 and is in active discussions with potential partners in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, Campbell said.  Spar International licenses its brand to independently-owned national or regional partners, provides them with a range of 300 Spar own-brand products and offers guidance on issues ranging from store layout to merchandising and logistics.

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Global_Geneva’s annual NGO ranking shows that the “white savior” status quo remains intact

Fairouz El Tom

Africa is a country - May 13, 2015

Teju Cole wrote that a white saviour is someone who, “supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening”. 
Global_Geneva recently released the third annual Top NGO ranking, and unfortunately, it’s more of the same. In 2013, I reviewed the Board profiles of the previous ranking, focusing on their gender balance and diversity, and links to the tobacco, weapons and finance industries. The findings were troubling. Many of the listed NGOs were not adequately diverse or representative, and over half had links to the above industries. 
This year’s ranking reveals similarly disturbing trends. Though 78% of the activities of the NGOs listed take place in the majority world, the ranking remains skewed towards NGOs headquartered in the West (64%). This once again sends signals about who has value and expertise, and reinforces the fallacy that citizens of Western countries are best equipped to change the world.

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Are African Americans really Americans?

By Nnamdi F. Akwada

THIS IS AFRICA - December 18, 2014

Whereas regular folks on the continent have demonstrated in solidarity against the extrajudicial killings in America, the thugs in power have remained mute. One could only imagine what the outcry from Africa would be if we still had leaders like Kwame Nkrumah.

There are the evocative feelings that come with claiming the American citizenship. These emotions are prominent during the swearing in ceremonies of immigrants (with other national origins and tongues) as new citizens. However, those emotive reactions are clouded in the hype rather than the realities of what the European interpretations and applications of American nationality is truly about. For American citizenship, contrary to the popularly held assumption, is not rooted in the jargon of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rather it is centred on the notions of white patriarchy and privileges. This accounts for the duality of meaning in the invocation of American citizenship between European Americans and African Americans. For the former it is about segregating themselves from others while coveting their resources and for the latter about drawing closer to the privileged white folks evocative of colonialism.

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Ghana, a place for African-Americans to resettle

By Efam Dovi

The Africa Report - 11 May 2015

In Prampram, a town just an hour's drive east of Ghana's capital Accra, many holiday houses line the shores of the South Atlantic Ocean. One of them belongs to Jerome Thompson.
Located only 500 metres from the water, Thompson's house is resilient to the effects of the salt and wind. The floors, windows and doors are made of hard wood. His self-designed furniture is made from quality Ghanaian timber and hand-carved by local artisans.
"The ocean helps me fall asleep and wakes me up in the morning," says Thompson, an African-American retiree taking a stroll on the beach where palm trees shade hand-carved canoes.
"Where else can I live this close to the ocean? It would cost me millions of dollars!"
Thompson, a native of Maryland in the United States, retired to Ghana 11 years ago. He first visited the West African country on a tour in 2000.

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‘West still treats Africa as former vassals’ – South Africa’s Zuma to RT

Russia Today - May 10, 2015

Western “colonial” states are not interested in S. Africa’s development, but rather want to take its natural resources and never give anything back, Jacob Zuma, S. African president, told RT. It’s China’s investment that Zuma sees as a way to prosperity.
“The Western world or the European countries, in particular, came to Africa [in the 19th century] to colonize and they had been taking the resources of Africa,” Zuma said.
But even after the continent decolonized itself in the mid-20th century, its relationship with the US, UK, France and other Western countries “remained the same,” he stressed.
“They still regard us as the Third World, as a kind of people, who must be related to as the former subject [state], etc. That talks also to the economics… Their intention has never been to make the former colonial countries develop,” the president explained.

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Cheap imports threaten Ghana's textile industry

To revive the fragile sector, the government is encouraging people to buy local fabrics. 

Al-Jazeera - 10 May 2015

West African prints have made it to the fashion catwalks of the Western world, yet at home the fabric industry is suffering because of cheap fake imports.
In response, the government is encouraging people to support the industry and promote their culture by wearing local fabrics.
Al Jazeera's Ama Boateng reports from Ghana’s capital Accra.

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Telling “the African story”

Africa is a country - July 31, 2014

We often hear political and business leaders and Africanists talk about the need to “tell the African story.” For us, “tell the African story” means nothing. In other words, it is a cliché of no value. We don’t know what it is supposed to mean. It may be that the idea of a definitive “African story” gains traction as a response to bigoted representations of the continent that have been influential in Western journalism and thinking. But like the idea of the need for “positive stories about Africa”, it’s facile and unhelpful. Our suspicion is that political and business leaders say that when they feel uncomfortable with airing real problems that ordinary Africans experience. The phrase also assumes–as our blog title mockingly suggests–that Africa is a Country.  African journalists rarely think or talk about their vocation in these terms. In most cases, they lack the continental consciousness to think or write in this way. The national trumps any continental solidarity or focus. So does the local. Their focus is very different from their counterparts in the West who report on “Africa.”

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Baltimore Protest - Collected Articles

Baltimore Been Burning

The Dominant White Response to Baltimore Shows Why Black Residents are Justified in their Anger

Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots Didn't Start the Way You Think

You’d be surprised who the outside agitators in Baltimore really are

Historian on Freddie Gray: Baltimore policing grew from ‘slave patrols’ used to enforce social order

The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore

10,000 Strong Peacefully Protest In Downtown Baltimore, Media Only ReportsThe Violence & Arrest of Dozens

Right-wing media exploits unrest in Baltimore to push ‘race war’ narrative

11 Stunning Images Highlight the Double-Standard of Reactions to Riots Like Baltimore

State of emergency in Baltimore after Gray funeral

Weeklong Curfew in Baltimore, Cops Injured by Rioters, National Guard Called by Governor

Hey, Step Back with the Riot Shaming

Bloods and Crips Team Up to Protest Baltimore’s Cops – The Daily Beast

Names Of 255 Black People Killed By The Police In 2015 (R.I.P)

Chair of Black Studies Department - Portland State University

https://jobs.hrc.pdx.edu/postings/15591 

Position Summary
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences invites applications for a tenure track position (associate, full professor) for appointment in the Department of Black Studies beginning September 1, 2015.
Responsibilities: Tenure track faculty are expected to provide classroom instruction; engage in research activities, including the pursuit of grants and external funding; the publication and/or dissemination of scholarly and research based knowledge; advise students; participate in department and university governance through committee work and related activities; participate in community involvement activities that support the goals and objectives of the Black Studies Department.
Qualifications: Doctorate and a record of effective teaching, scholarly research and community involvement with a focus on the Black experience are required. The candidate must be able to instruct courses focused on the African American and/or African experiences drawing on the history and traditions of the Black Studies and Africana Studies disciplines. Candidates with strong credentials in the areas of local, national and diasporic history are encouraged to apply. Candidates with experience and expertise in the traditional disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences are also welcome to apply if their background is appropriately linked to a focus on the Black and/or African experiences. All candidates should be comfortable and competent working within a framework of interdisciplinary assignments and responsibilities.
Demonstrated success and ability in obtaining funded research as well as scholarly publications commensurate with rank are expected. Evidence of excellent classroom teaching and effective interactions with students is advantageous. The candidate is expected to be qualified to assume the administrative and management responsibilities of the Chair of the Black Studies Department. The Department expects that the successful candidate will assume the chair role immediately or soon after hire. Appointment may include tenure or credit towards tenure depending on experience and qualifications.

Minimum Qualifications 
Doctorate and a record of effective teaching, scholarly research and community involvement with a focus on the Black experience are required. The candidate must be able to instruct courses focused on the African American and/or African experiences drawing on the history and traditions of the Black Studies and Africana Studies disciplines. Candidates with strong credentials in the areas of local, national and diasporic history are encouraged to apply. Candidates with experience and expertise in the traditional disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences are also welcome to apply if their background is appropriately linked to a focus on the Black and/or African experiences. All candidates should be comfortable and competent working within a framework of interdisciplinary assignments and responsibilities.
Demonstrated success and ability in obtaining funded research as well as scholarly publications commensurate with rank are expected. Evidence of excellent classroom teaching and effective interactions with students is advantageous. The candidate is expected to be qualified to assume the administrative and management responsibilities of the Chair of the Black Studies Department. The Department expects that the successful candidate will assume the chair role immediately or soon after hire. Appointment may include tenure or credit towards tenure depending on experience and qualifications.

Key Cultural Competencies
Creates an environment that acknowledges, encourages and celebrates differences.
Functions and communicates effectively and respectfully within the context of varying beliefs, behaviors, orientations, identities and cultural backgrounds.
Seeks opportunities to gain experience working and collaborating in diverse, multicultural, and inclusive settings with a willingness to change for continual improvement.
Adheres to all PSU policies including the policies on Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment and the Professional Standards of Conduct.

Complete the on-line application and include a statement of interest; a curriculum vitae; three writing samples (optional); and provide the names and email addresses of individuals (minimum of 3 – maximum of 5) who have agreed to serve as references.
Review of applications will begin May 14, 2015 and continue until finalists are identified.

"BALDWIN'S NIGGER" (James Baldwin and Dick Gregory)

The U.S. military is never leaving Africa: How 9/11 spawned a permanent war

The war on terror extends beyond the Middle East, and a new agreement could keep soldiers on the ground for decades

Nick Turse

TomDispatch.com -  Thursday, Apr 16, 2015

For three days, wearing a kaleidoscope of camouflage patterns, they huddled together on a military base in Florida. They came from U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and U.S. Army Special Operations Command, from France and Norway, from Denmark, Germany, and Canada: 13 nations in all. They came to plan a years-long “Special Operations-centric” military campaign supported by conventional forces, a multinational undertaking that — if carried out — might cost hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of dollars and who knows how many lives.
Ask the men involved and they’ll talk about being mindful of “sensitivities” and “cultural differences,” about the importance of “collaboration and coordination,” about the value of a variety of viewpoints, about “perspectives” and “partnerships.”  Nonetheless, behind closed doors and unbeknownst to most of the people in their own countries, let alone the countries fixed in their sights, a coterie of Western special ops planners were sketching out a possible multinational military future for a troubled region of Africa.

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8 African Countries Whose Independence Is a Direct Result of the Teachings of Marcus Garvey

by Taylor Gordon 

Atlanta Black Star - April 16, 2015

Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, is one of the greatest examples of a country being impacted by Garveyism. According to an article titled “The Seeds are Sown: The Impact of Garveyism in Zimbabwe in the Interwar Years,” Marcus Garvey’s teachings had an “electrifying effect on colonial Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa, inspiring them to form various associations.” Garvey’s emphasis on Black nationalism along with other principles that were considered radical at the time helped spark the “colony’s most radical African movement in the interwar years.” The teachings ultimately helped shape the political, religious and social landscape for the associations that eventually came together to form Zimbabwe.
Ghana
Garvey’s teachings inspired many great leaders including Kwame Nkrumah. As a result of this influence, Nkrumah went on to start working to free Africa of colonial with rule starting with Ghana, according to Black Business Network. From 1952 to 1966, Nkrumah acted as the leader of what was then known as the Gold Coast before he led the country to win its independence from British colonial rule. This made Ghana the “first Black African country to become independent,” according to the BBC. It also led to many people in the country crediting Nkrumah with “stabilizing a turbulent political scene and leaving a legacy of democracy.”

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14 African Nations Being Forced By France to Pay Taxes for the ‘Benefits’ of Colonialism

Atlanta Black Star - September 30, 2014

Fourteen nations listed below are in agreement to deposit 65 percent of all foreign currency reserves in a shared reserve fund to France. The countries established the Monetary and Economic Union of West Africa. Their currency, the CFA-Franc, is printed under supervision of the French National Bank in Chamaliéres, France.
Christof Lehmann wrote for nsnbc.me in 2012, “France is indebting and enslaving Africans by means of Africa’s own wealth; for example: 12.0000 billion invested at three percent creates 360 billion in interests which France grants as credits to Africa at an interest rate of five to six percent or more. The allegory of ‘Bleeding Africa and Feeding France’ is no exaggeration, not alarmist, and not revolutionary.”
All numbers below according to the World Bank.

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Minister Farrakhan on 60 mins. with Mike Wallace

Persona non-grata: Judge Jane Matilda Bolin and the NAACP, 1930-1950.

Black women have always boasted a strong presence in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They have served overwhelmingly as fundraisers and proselytizers tying the organization to the Black community and creating a Black-led NAACP. (2) But a number of Black women have also made their mark as national officers serving as members of the Board of Directors, and as vice-presidents early in the organization's history. Jane Matilda Bolin, the nation's first African American woman judge, is among this small cadre of Black women which includeds such notable educators and clubwomen as Mary McLeod Bethune and Nannie Helen Burroughs. (3) Bolin became a member of the NAACP national leadership in 1943, serving consecutively as a member of the Board of Directors and then as vice-president before resigning in 1950. An active member and officer of the New York Branch of the NAACP and a recent judicial appointee, Bolin's nomination for election to the Board of Directors came as no surprise. Her resignation, however, broke with convention and was dissected in the Black press. The question is therefore not so much how Bolin rose to prominence in the NAACP, but more importantly, how and why she plummeted to the depths of its disregard. She allows us a rare glimpse into the tenure of Black women as national officers in the NAACP. But, an examination of Bolin's positioning within the NAACP leadership also affords us some insight into her philosophy of leadership, its conformity to that of the National Office, and how she became "persona non-grata" to the organizational leadership.

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African Origin in America ~Dr Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan

Celebrating Dr. Ben’s extraordinary life

AMSTERDAM NEWS | 4/9/2015

As family and friends prepare to commemorate the lifelong achievements of renowned factologist, Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, affectionately known as “Dr. Ben,” at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, 132 W. 138th St., Thursday and Friday, April 9 and 10, thousands from all walks of life are expected to attend.
He was born Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Johannas, Dec. 31, 1918, in Ethiopia, the homeland of his father, Kriston ben-Jochannas. When he was 6 years old, the family moved to Fajardo, Puerto Rico, the native town of his mother, Julia Matta, where his younger sister was born.
The family practiced the Beta Israel way of life, and ben-Jochannan credited his parents for instilling the hardened discipline in him that allowed him to feed his insatiable appetite for knowledge.
When ben-Jochannan was a teenager, his father suggested he go to Egypt and study that country’s Black heritage. He made his first voyage there in 1938. And until the late 1990s, “Dr. Ben’s Alkebu-Lan Educational Tours” conducted annual fact-finding journeys to Egypt, taking hundreds at a time.
During his early years, ben-Jochannan also spent time in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he was heavily influenced by Pan-African pioneers Edward Wilmot Blyden and Hubert Harrison.

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Chinese Dreams and the African Renaissance A China in Africa Podcast

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden, Mothusi Turner    

CHINA FILE - April 10, 2015

Leaders in both China and Africa have articulated new visions for their respective regions that project a strong sense of confidence, renewal, and a break from once-dominant Western ideologies. In both cases, argues East is Read blogger Mothusi Turner, Chinese and Africans are using these new slogans to define themselves as something other than victims of their colonial pasts. Mothusi joins Eric and Cobus to discuss how these two ideologies converge and why this new intellectual framework is so important for both sides of the Sino-African relationship.

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BOUND: Africans vs African Americans OFFICIAL TEASER TRAILER 2015

Remember Sobukwe! - South Africa

Life and Times of Chris Hani

Chris Hani’s political legacy

Africa is a country -  April 10, 2014

The American political scientist Adolph Reed Jnr. once wrote about Malcolm X that “… he was just like the rest of us—a regular person saddled with imperfect knowledge, human frailties, and conflicting imperatives, but nonetheless trying to make sense of his very specific history, trying unsuccessfully to transcend it, and struggling to push it in a humane direction.” Like Malcolm X, Chris Hani, who was also assassinated (Hani was murdered on this day in 1993), should not be made into an ideal type or used to settle political scores in the present.
Yet, any observer of contemporary South Africa can’t help noticing that while Chris Hani is still lionized and his name invoked in speeches and songs, the principles he stood for no longer  animate the political project of the liberation movement he laid down his life for or that his erstwhile comrades in the ruling party, its Communist ally and the main trade union federation have been disappointing.

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ZULU 1964 - BATTLE SCENE

Paul Robeson: On colonialism, African-American rights (Spotlight, ABC,1960)

Song of Freedom (1936) - Paul Robeson Film

The Rise of a Post-colonial University

Africa is a country - April 6, 2015

In the last two weeks, students belonging to the #RhodesMustFall collective have rechristened and remade of one of University of Cape Town’s key administrative building as ‘Azania House.’ They have been occupying the building since March 20and it has become a nodal point for the student led collective. At the end of one of the first teach-ins at Azania House, a UCT student and member of the collective, Ru Slayen, half-jokingly and half-seriously suggested instituting teach-ins like the one we had just had in a new summer school to be named the Post-colonial School of Cape Town.

Ru’s words might have been half-serious and half-joking but they also, as I grasp them, iterated a desire to institute and inhabit a university that in the first instance enables an understanding of the after-effects of colonialism and then reflects on how to ‘go beyond’ them, as Stuart Hall argued in 1996. Cecil John Rhodes’ statue is one such manifest symbol of colonialism and the students’ passionate calls for its removal are a reminder of the visceral ways in which history is experienced. But the visceral sting of colonial inheritances can be felt repeatedly and in many places. At Azania House students remind us of that experience through the posters that they have put up on its walls. Amongst the many that have come up in in the last two weeks, one announced that, “we are no longer at ease.” Several others bear printed copies of the many racist Facebook responses that the #RhodesMustFall page has received; these Facebook comments appear intent on hurting and demeaning the students who are part of the movement. Some of these racist comments are from fellow students, and others perhaps from members of the wider Cape Town and South African citizenry who disagree with the #RhodesMustFall collective’s cause and dispute its members’ position. On its part, the university administration has also had to deal with vicious outpourings. It had put up writing boards around the statue to invite comments from the university community on transformation issues but had to remove them because, according to a university missive, many of the comments penned there constituted ‘hate speech.’

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Will Africa’s Industrial Revolution Be Made in China?

Africa is a country -  April 3, 2015

Over the past three decades, consumers have grown used to seeing the “Made in China” label adorning their less expensive purchases. Once China opened its economy to international trade and investment in the 1980s, it did not take long for it to wrest domination of the lower-end manufacturing sector from its East Asian neighbours and flood the world’s high streets with cheap goods.

Low wages were at the heart of China’s success. The majority of the population lived on less than a dollar a day, so businesses had no need to pay high salaries. Combined with high productivity, this enabled them to undercut manufacturers in more advanced economies.

As China has grown wealthier and wages have increased, however, this advantage is eroding. Higher wages render Chinese producers less competitive in low-value, labour-intensive manufacturing, but they are unlikely to want to relinquish control over the lucrative cheap goods market. Higher technology products contain many low technology components and China will need a supply of such inputs as its economy becomes more sophisticated. To whom will it turn to fill its shoes?

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Sagallo, Russia's Short-Lived Cossack Colony In Africa

RADIO FREE EUROPE - 2 April 2015  

In 1888, the "Scramble For Africa" was nearly over. European powers had carved out their colonies, and Imperial Russia still lacked a "place in the sun." But adventurer Nikolai Ivanovitch Achinov came up with a bizarre plan to create a Russian territory in what is now Djibouti. The following year, he and a small group of Cossacks raised their flag above the village of Sagallo. But after French objections, the tsar disowned them and the colony lasted less than a month.

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A Nigerian autocrat who embraced democracy: Story of Muhammadu Buhari

AFP, Lagos | Apr 01, 2015

Muhammadu Buhari, the one-time coup leader who won Nigeria's historic presidential election Tuesday, is not a man who is easily put off.
He tried three times previously to become head of state since the return to civilian rule in 1999 -- and failed on each occasion.
But the straight-backed former major general, who overthrew elected president Shehu Shagari -- widely seen as inept and corrupt -- in a military coup in 1983, was determined to lead the country again.
He was given the chance when President Goodluck Jonathan conceded his loss, paving the way for the first ever peaceful transfer of power between political parties in the history of Africa's most populous country.
"Our country has now joined the community of nations that have used the ballot box to peacefully change an incumbent president in a ree and fair election," he said on Wednesday.
"To me this is indeed historic."

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‘Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa’ – Thomas Sankara

By Paula Akugizibwe 

This is Africa - July 23, 2012 — A week before he died, Sankara said, “revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, but you cannot kill ideas”. And so, for us today, the final challenge rests not in finding more Sankaras, but in becoming them – in bringing these ideas to life

Thomas Sankara, former leader of Burkina Faso, was the apparent opposite of everything we are often told that success should look like. Mansions? Cars? Who? What? Get out of here. As Prime Minister and later as President, Sankara rode a bicycle to work before he upgraded, at his Cabinet’s insistence, to a Renault 5 – one of the cheapest cars available in Burkina Faso at the time. He lived in a small brick house and wore only cotton that was produced, weaved and sewn in Burkina Faso.
Going by his lifestyle, Sankara was the antithesis of success, but it is this very distinction that enabled him to become the most successful president Africa has ever seen, in terms of what he accomplished for and with his people. Sankara would not have chopped P-Square’s money given twice a chance – in fact, he might have sat him down and taught him a thing or two about the creeping menace of pop culture patriarchy – because Thomas Sankara, “The Upright Man”, was a feminist. In this and many other ways, Sankara was the African dream come true, the only living proof that hopes of African independence are not dead on arrival.

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The fall of Rhodes’s statue is only the first step, says Malema

Bongani Nkosi

MAIL&GUARDIAN - 30 Mar 2015

The fall of late imperialist Cecil Rhodes’s statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) won’t be a meaningless token action, but a major step towards defeating white supremacy in South Africa.
This is what Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), told delegates at the summit of the party’s student wing at the University of the Witwatersrand on Sunday. Members of the EFF Student Command from 103 university and college campuses across the nine provinces attended the summit.
Delivering a keynote address, Malema urged the students to reject attempts by some influential people to trivialise the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign by students at UCT. Those people ask “when Rhodes falls, then what?” as if the campaign is “just a small thing”.
“It is not a small thing. [The campaign] is an onslaught against white supremacy,” said Malema.
“It is that statue that continues to inspire [whites] to think that they are a superior race, and it is through ­collapsing of these types of symbols that the white minority will begin to appreciate that there’s nothing superior about them.”
Downfall of race supremacy
The UCT students’ protest campaign to have Rhodes’s statue on campus removed enters its third week on Monday. Malema described it as just “one very important step in the correct direction”.

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WhiteHistoryMonth: Was Cecil Rhodes really an entrepreneurial genius? Zambia says no

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY - March 30, 2015

We owe a great deal of gratitude to the students at the University of Cape Town whose #RhodesMustFall campaign has forced us to reengage and debate, in a new and invigorated manner, the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes. Because of their brave and spirited campaign, a lot more people now know a little more about Rhodes than they did before. That in itself is quite an achievement.   Parsing the online conversations around Rhodes’ legacy, one sees the claim advanced that Rhodes was an entrepreneurial genius. The proof of this assertion is seen in the wealth that Rhodes accumulated over his lifetime: So much wealth could only ever have been amassed by a Captain of industry. The claim is often made by those pushing for a “bigger picture” appraisal of Rhodes’ legacy: Being a Captain of industry is an achievement worthy of memorials of one type or the other. But I have also noticed that even those who, on the whole, are critical of Rhodes’ legacy tend to concede, perhaps implicitly, the point about Rhodes’ entrepreneurial genius and choose instead to focus on other aspects of his life in making their case.

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10 Black Scholars Who Debunked Eurocentric Propaganda

Atlanta Black Star - October 6, 2013 

Dr. Chancellor Williams

Dr. Chancellor Williams (1893 – 1992) was an African-American sociologist, historian and writer. His best known work is “The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.”, for which he was awarded honors by the Black Academy of Arts and Letters.
In “Destruction of Black Civilization,” Williams chronicles how high civilization began in black Africa, contrary to what mainstream  historians have espoused to  the world. He meticulously lays out the history of Africa in great detail and demonstrates that the continent’s  current underdevelopment came after  thousands of years of consistent onslaught by Eurasians, and not because Africans made no significant contributions to the world.

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A New Book: The Scholar Denied W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology

Aldon Morris 

University of California Press, 2015

In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Taking on the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of African American social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has been written, giving credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Uncovering the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies, Morris examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work. The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In uncovering the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois, enabling Park to be recognized as the “father” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center.

The Scholar Denied is a must-read for everyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.

1. The Rise of Scientific Sociology in America
2. Du Bois, Scientific Sociology, and Race
3. The Du Bois–Atlanta School of Sociology
4. The Conservative Alliance of Washington and Park
5. The Sociology of Black America: Park versus Du Bois
6. Max Weber Meets Du Bois
7. Intellectual Schools and the Atlanta School
8. Legacies and Conclusions 

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Africa is new ‘El Dorado of espionage’, leaked intelligence files reveal

Continent emerges as the focus of international spying, with South Africa becoming a regional powerhouse and communications hub

Seumas Milne and Ewen MacAskill 

The Guardian - Tuesday 24 February 2015

Africa emerges as the 21st century theatre of espionage, with South Africa as its gateway, in the cache of secret intelligence documents and cables seen by the Guardian. “Africa is now the El Dorado of espionage,” said one serving foreign intelligence officer.
The continent has increasingly become the focus of international spying as the battle for its resources has intensified, China’s economic role has grown dramatically, and the US and other western states have rapidly expanded their military presence and operations in a new international struggle for Africa.

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1937-1938 Portraits of African-American former slaves

By Chris Wild

MASHABLE - JAN 31, 2015

We honor 150 years since the abolition of slavery in the United States. On Jan. 31, 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the country.
These portraits of black American men and women who had been slaves were taken in the late 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the Work Progress Administration (WPA). They are part of a group of 500, together with more than 2,000 first-person accounts of the experience of being a slave.
The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) operated during the Great Depression of the 1930s and tasked unemployed writers cross the USA with collecting the life stories of Americans across society. This particular set of pictures and testimonies was published in 1941 as the seventeen-volume "Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves."

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Renzo Martens – the artist who wants to gentrify the jungle

It is one of the poorest parts of the planet, a place where workers earn $1 a day – which is why, according to one artist, the plantations of eastern Congo really need an art gallery

Stuart Jeffries

The Guardian - Tuesday 16 December 2014

Next month, Renzo Martens, along with his wife, son and baby daughter, are going to live in eastern Congo so he can continue his five-year plan to gentrify the jungle. The 41-year-old Dutch artist is trying to create an arts scene in one of the most impoverished parts of the world.
It sounds like a sick joke. “It’s not,” Martens tells me when we meet in London. “I mean, it’s funny to call your programme a central African gentrification programme, but I’m basically putting a white cube in the forest to see what it does.”
There’s a little more to it than that. Martens is artistic director of an outfit called the Institute for Human Activities, which has helped artists from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, establish a critical curriculum akin to a foundation arts course for plantation workers. The Congolese Plantation Workers Art League has now started to organise exhibitions of self-portraits. At workshops, workers’ children drew what they imagined their futures would be. “Most of these kids had never had a pencil in their hands before,” he says.

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African Development Successes

Success Story from Liberia: Dr. Rajesh Panjabi’s Last Mile Health

Success Story from Uganda: Andrew Rugasira’s Good African Coffee

Success Story from Cameroon: Samuel Eto’o Gives Children a Chance

Success Story from Somalia: Fatima Jibrell’s Conservation Initiatives

Success Story from Nigeria: Nwankwo Kanu’s Heart Foundation

Success Story from South Sudan: John Dau’s ‘Lost Boys’ Clinic

Success Stories from Africa: Judith Rodin’s Books 

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The black experience: portraits of a community

A fascinating collaboration between the V&A and the Black Cultural Archive charts the changing lives of black people in Britain and tells us much about who we are today

Matthew Ryder

THE GUARDIAN -  Saturday 7 February 2015

In 1988, I bumped into a friend walking back from a lecture. “I didn’t see you at the black students’ group,” I said.
“It’s just… all we ever seem to talk about is racism,” she said, sighing. I was immediately filled with undergraduate indignation: “What do you mean ‘all’? It’s important!”
“I know,” she replied, “but isn’t there more to being black and British than that?”
It’s a question I have been trying to answer ever since. And it lies at the heart of the exhibition Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s, which is the culmination of a seven-year collaboration between the V&A and Brixton’s Black Cultural Archive. Over the two locations it features 118 images by 17 artists. The exhibition shares the name of the famous book by Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (1984). But while Fryer’s landmark work was largely concerned with slavery, colonialism, immigration and racism, this exhibition is different. Racism, insofar as it features, is merely one element of the historic backdrop. Instead the focus is on images of the ordinary lives of black Britons – those of African and Caribbean heritage – in the UK. Like the conversation with my friend back in 1988, it makes you question what it is to be black and British.

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Africa ama Ita 1972

Don’t Be Like That Does black culture need to be reformed?

By Kelefa Sanneh

The New Yorker - February 9, 2015 Issue

It was just after eight o’clock on a November night when Robert McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, announced that a grand jury would not be returning an indictment in the police killing of Michael Brown, who was eighteen, unarmed, and African-American. About an hour later and eight hundred miles away, President Obama delivered a short and sober speech designed to function as an anti-inflammatory. He praised police officers while urging them to “show care and restraint” when confronting protesters. He said that “communities of color” had “real issues” with law enforcement, but reminded disappointed Missourians that Brown’s mother and father had asked for peace. “Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone,” he said. “We should be honoring their wishes.”
Even as he mentioned Brown’s parents, Obama was careful not to invoke Brown himself, who had become a polarizing figure. To the protesters who chanted, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!,” Brown was a symbol of the young African-American man as victim—the chant referred to the claim that Brown was surrendering, with his hands up, when he was killed. Critics of the protest movement were more likely to bring up the video, taken in the fifteen minutes before Brown’s death, that appeared to show him stealing cigarillos from a convenience store and then shoving and intimidating the worker who tried to stop him—the victim was also, it seemed, a perpetrator.

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Remembering Stuart Hall: Stuart Hall’s South African Legacy

By Sean Jacobs

Social Text - August 8th, 2014

My early university education at the then-very white University of Cape Town coincided with South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to democracy. Stuart Hall didn’t feature much, despite the fact, as I would later learn, I was indirectly influenced by his ideas about identity politics, language, culture, race, and social movements.  For example, I remember writing a seminar paper as a final year student at the University of Cape Town about “black Afrikaans”—a movement of coloured (STET) poets and educators in Cape Town and the Cape West Coast allied to teacher unions and the United Democratic Front who sought to counter white histories of Afrikaans by emphasizing its hybrid origins in a slave economy and encouraged use of spoken Afrikaans in classroom settings. Nevertheless, culture (or studying culture) was hardly a priority for my late-1980s/early-1990s cohort—South Africa then was in the midst of a violent transition; protest movements and their academic allies were tactically focused on electoral power and state institutions.  Strategic considerations, too, pushed us to eschew analyses of race in favor of class. Lynette Steenveld, a media scholar at Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, wrote to me that “… identity was a problem because of the Apartheid state’s racialization of identity and its essentialist stance on culture. So the one progressive move was to eschew identity and focus on class.”  That said, there is ample evidence that South African scholars, students and media activists were very familiar with Hall’s work in that period. In 1980s Apartheid South Africa, academics who studied culture, came at it from two diametrically opposed schools: on one side a more traditional behavioralist approach (the Afrikaans “communications studies”) and on the other, leftist /political economy approaches to culture (reflecting dominant positions in the liberation movement and old school Marxist influences).

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Turkish African Friendship

A Movie: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

A Documentary: We come as friends

A Documentary: Concerning Violence

Vanguard of the Revolution

Bringing Fanon's "Concerning Violence" to Film

By Alnoor Ladha

Truthout | Interview - Thursday, 05 February 2015

Activist and author Alnoor Ladha interviews Joslyn Barnes, co-producer of Göran Hugo Olsson's film, Concerning Violence, which explores African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.

Alnoor Ladha: I recently watched Concerning Violence and was in awe during the entire duration of the film. What is it about these scenes from colonialism and imperialism that strike a chord at the deepest core of our humanity?
Joselyn Barnes: That they are true. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak says in her preface to the film, "The issue of colonization is a greed shared by humankind. No one is better than anyone; every generation must be trained in the practice of freedom, caring for others, as did [Frantz] Fanon, and that is what colonization stops. Within the greed for capital formation, colonization allows already existing ignorant racism to spread the markets in the name of civilization or modernization or globalization, as it does today. This film captures the tragedy of the moment when the very poor are convinced in the name of a nation, that is going to reject it once it is established on its own two feet, to offer themselves up for a violent killing. Fanon insists that the tragedy is that the very poor is reduced to violence, because there is no other response possible to an absolute absence of response and an absolute exercise of legitimized violence from the colonizers."
Spivak's preface was indeed powerful. And poignant. One could argue, and indeed we do, that our current brand of capitalism, neoliberalism, is simply a continuation of colonialism. That the logic of capital requires extraction, exploitation, violence etc. Would you agree with this line of thinking?
Decolonization, as Fanon pointed out, needs to work in both directions. The colonized and the colonizer both must be decolonized.

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BLACK HISTORY: Black Women who were Lynched in America

Black Women who were Lynched in America
http://www.funkydineva.com/black-history-black-women-who-were-lynched-in-america/

The Waco Horror: A Report on a Lynching
http://www2.uncp.edu/home/berrys/courses/hist362/hist362_docs_waco_lynching.pdf

Edgar Lungu Wins Zambia Election Ruling Party Patriotic Front Stalwart Elected President

By Patrick McGroarty in Johannesburg and Nicholas Bariyo in Kampala

The Wall Street Journal - Jan. 25, 2015

Zambians elected ruling party stalwart Edgar Lungu their next president, setting the stage for more haggling between a mercurial government and the powerful mining firms that drive its economy.
Mr. Lungu, a former defense and justice minister, won 48.3% of the votes cast this week, the southern African country’s electoral commission said on Sunday. He was chosen to lead the Patriotic Front party after former President Michael Sata died in office in October, following a long and secretive illness. Mr. Lungu will govern Zambia over the next 20 months to complete Mr. Sata’s term until the next general election, scheduled for September 2016.
Mr. Sata was elected in 2011 on a populist pledge to recover more mining revenue and counter tax evasion. He also attacked the practices of Chinese miners in Zambia. But in office Mr. Sata warmed to Chinese investors and endorsed a flurry of contradictory mining policies.

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8 Disturbingly Racist Children’s Books Designed to Devalue Black People

By G. Thorpe

The Atlanta Black Star - February 21, 2014

Let’s Hurry or We’ll  Miss the Public Lynching
In the late 19th and early 20th century, many books were developed in the United States and the United Kingdom to propagate the devaluation of Black people in their relative societies.   Some of the books were so outrageous, comedian Bob Staake’s  made ‘Let’s Hurry or We’ll  Miss the Public Lynching‘ parody cover to bring light to the era. Below are the real books. These few are just a fraction on the hundreds that were made during that time.

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Akon: 'America was never built for black people'

The Senegalese-American recording artist talks frankly about US race relations, "rebranding" Africa, and his music.

Al-Jazeera - 23 Jan 2015

Senegalese-American artist Akon is a five-time Grammy nominee who has sold over 35 million records worldwide, and has collaborated with some of the biggest names in popular music, such as Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga and David Guetta.  The musician, songwriter and producer, who was born in the US but spent much of his childhood in Senegal, is also an activist and a philanthropist - and he has turned his sights on helping Africa.  How many African-Americans do you know actually consider Africa as a vacation spot? Not one... Even just for knowledge, just to know where they came from, just to get an idea of what that is; there is so much fear instilled in them that they wouldn't even want to go there to visit. You mention Africa, they start shaking.  Akon  His current ambitious project, "Akon Lighting Africa," is working to bring solar-powered electricity to Africans in 49 countries by the end of 2020.Akon is also an ambassador for the non-profit organisation Peace One Day. Last year, he and actor Jude Law brought their celebrity power to Goma to a concert to promote peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  But Akon has also caused controversy through his performance style and his lyrics.  Akon talks to Al Jazeera about running his musical career as a business; his projects - both philanthropic and artistic; singing songs for peace and whether he thinks it can really make an impact; and being an African in the US.

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Africa Debt Rising New publication

By Paul Adams

AFRICA RESEARCH INSTITUTE - JAN 22, 2015

Average gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Africa is second only to that of South Asia. The improvement of macroeconomic and public sector management since the 1990s is widely praised. Substantial investment in infrastructure is now among the most pressing priorities. Public debt levels are mostly well below 50% of GDP, a rule of thumb being that 40% is sustainable in emerging economies. Global investors’ hunt for yield has enabled many African countries to tap international bond markets for the first time. While Eurobond issues are often depicted as evidence of the continent’s economic resurgence, they should also encourage close scrutiny of public financial management and debt sustainability. Against a backdrop of falling commodity prices, the US dollar’s strength and forecasts for higher global interest rates, this Counterpoint highlights the pitfalls of rising debt levels in Africa and underscores measures for mitigating risk.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT......

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Life Never Ran These Striking Images of What It Was Like to Be Black in 1950s America

By Jordan G. Teicher

Salon - Jan. 18, 2015

Gordon Parks hadn’t been to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas, in more than 20 years when he returned there in 1950 as a photojournalist on assignment for Life magazine. Growing up as the youngest of 15 children, Parks attended the Plaza School, an all-black grade school in the heavily segregated town. Now, as the first black man hired full-time by the magazine, Parks wanted to find and photograph all 11 of his classmates from grade school as a way of measuring the impact of school segregation. The photo essay he created, which was never published, is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the exhibition, “Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott,” beginning Jan. 17.

In the years since Parks lived in Fort Scott, segregation had remained. But the black population, which had been at a high of 20 percent when he was child, had dwindled to around 6 percent, as a deficit of agricultural work caused blacks to move to nearby cities in search of jobs.

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Gentrification: white people following white people

By Kevin Hartnett
Globe Correspondent 

Boston Globe - August 06, 2014

When we think of gentrification, we imagine swarms of young upper middle class white people moving into previously minority neighborhoods, bringing pour-over coffee and higher property tax bills in their wakes. It’s a controversial migration, not least because of the existing residents who are displaced, but it’s also seen as a welcome step away from the segregation that set in after the “white flight” of the 60s and 70s.
Now an inventive new study using Google Street View and an archive of 1990s videotapes has found that gentrification may involve less racial mixing than we assume—and in fact, may reinforce residential segregation.
In an article this month in the American Sociological Review, doctoral student Jackelyn Hwang and Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson used Google Street View to take a virtual walking tour of Chicago. As they went, they looked for details like home renovations or new construction that indicate gentrification is underway, or litter and graffiti, which indicate it’s not. Based on those observations they gave each census tract in Chicago a gentrification score. Then they compared those scores against a similar but far more labor-intensive study Sampson had carried out twenty years earlier. 

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Uncle John Scruggs - Little Log Cabin in the Lane

Critical Race Theory - Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the US (Essential Reading List)

1. Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
2. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America by Ronald Takaki 
3. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
4. Beyond the Melting Pot, Second Edition: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan
5. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
6. THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO by W.E.B. DuBois
7. The Wretched of the Earth  by Frantz Fanon
8. Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
9. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Critical Social Thought) by Michael Omi and Howard Winant 
10. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  by Michelle Alexander
11. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
12. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation by Leo R. Chavez
13. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations by Joe R. Feagin
14. The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing by Joe R. Feagin
15. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism by Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin 
16. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression by Joe R. Feagin
17. White Party, White Government: Race, Class, and U.S. Politics by Joe R. Feagin
18. Latinos Facing Racism: Discrimination, Resistance, and Endurance (New Critical Viewpoints on Society)  by Joe R. Feagin and José A. Cobas
19. Globalization and America: Race, Human Rights, and Inequality (Perspectives on a Multiracial America) by Angela J. Hattery and David G. Embrick (Editors)
20. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America  by Ira Katznelson 
21. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
22. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement by Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, Kendall Thomas (Editors)
23. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
24. Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs by Deirdre A. Royster 
25. The Crucible of American Indian Identity Native Tradition versus Colonial Imposition in Postconquest North America By Ward Churchill
26. One Nation, Indivisible: Is It History?  Todd Bigelow/FTWP In Los Angeles, demographers see "white flight" beyond the suburbs and into rural areas. (By Todd Bigelow for The Washington Post) First in a series of occasional articles  By William Booth Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 22, 1998; Page A1
27. Mexican Americans and the American Dream by Richard Alba
28. We the People: Asians in the United States (CENSUS BUREAU REPORT)
29. We the People: Blacks in the United States (CENSUS BUREAU REPORT)
30. We the People: Hispanics in the United States (CENSUS BUREAU REPORT)
31. We the People of Arab Ancestry in the United States (CENSUS BUREAU REPORT)
32. How many Jews are there in the United States?  By Michael Lipka - PEW RESEARCH October 2, 2013. 
33. A Portrait of Jewish Americans - PEW RESEARCH, October 1, 2013.
34. Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora by Sarah M. A. Gualtieri.
35. Brown Skin, White Masks by Hamid Dabashi. 
36. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani. 
37. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack Shaheen. 
38. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions by Vilna Bashi Treitler.