The
Hearts of Darkness
By Milton Allimadi
Explosive
Book Exposes some Newspapers', including The New York
Times’, culpability in racist
representation of Africa in early news coverage.
Milton Allimadi, graduate of the
Columbia Journalism School, investigative reporter and publisher
of The Black Star News, has written an explosive
investigative book that digs deep into the history of the
negative, racist media representations of Africans and people of
African descent that persist in contemporary America.
The Hearts of Darkness, How White
Writers Created The Racist Image of Africa, (Black Star
Books, 2003, ISBN 0-9740039-0-5 $12) is an exploration into
Western media’s historical demonization of Africa over the
last several centuries – from Herodotus’ “The
Histories,” the journals of the so-called explorers such as
Samuel Baker, and the 20th century reportage by
journalists with American news publications, including The
New York Times.
The book looks into the harmful consequences
of the racist depictions of Africans, such as condoning the
enslavement and colonization of Black people, genocide,
contempt, hatred and racism towards Africans and people of
African descent. It also examines the inferiority complex and
self-hatred that some Black people suffer as a result of
bombardment by negative media images.
Allimadi takes readers on a journey of
discovery where he encountered many gatekeepers that would have
preferred his work never be published, including The Columbia
Journalism Review a publication that masquerades as “the bible
of objective journalism.”
In this powerful book, spiced with rich and
compelling anecdotes and examples, Allimadi offers
insight into the process behind the “tribalization” of
Africa and African peoples. He explains how and why Western
media were able to dismiss the Rwanda genocide as merely a
“tribal” affair when the massacres erupted in 1994, while
ignoring underlying factors including the 1990 invasion from
Uganda.
He shows the similarities between how
Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta was demonized in the 1960s by Western
media for leading the so-called Mau Mau uprising when Kenyans
battled British settlers who had stolen their lands and the way
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been similarly derided once he
started seizing land from British settlers for redistribution to
Africans.
The book includes a historical analysis of The
New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, National
Geographic and The New Yorker. It contains exclusive
letters from The New York Times' archives exposing the
racism of some editors and reporters involved in that
newspaper's early African coverage, including two-time Pulitzer
Prize winner, the late Homer Bigart. The Pulitzer committee
should consider revoking the awards posthumously.
Allimadi candidly explains how news
organizations were often accomplices and apologists for the
negative stereotypes. The book is also an engaging tour of
European travelers who went to “explore” and “discover”
Africa between the 18th and 19th centuries. He shows how
Africans were merely backdrops in the Europeans’ accounts, as
they often still are today.
Allimadi shows that these travelers’
publications served as the original media responsible for
disseminating the racist images of Africa around the world.
Allimadi discusses how centuries of racist representations have
created inferiority complexes and Black self-hatred. The book is
an educational weapon against racism globally. The book is
already on its third print run and has sold 20,000 copies.
Some
of the people who have praised The Hearts of Darkness --
Robert
Mugabe,
President of Zimbabwe
Dr.
Julianne Malveaux,
Economist and leading social commentator
Imhotep
Gary Byrd,
leading WBAI radio commentator
Elombe
Brath, WBAI/founder
Patrice Lumumba movement
Jill
Nelson,
commentator and author “Sexual Healing”, “Volunteer
Slavery”
Glen
Ford,
Publisher Blackcommentator.com
Hon.
Charles Barron, New
York City councilmember
Baffour
Ankomah,
Editor, New African magazine
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You can order the book by sending a Money
Order for $15 (which includes postage and handling) made payable
to Black Star Books, P.O. Box 64, New York, N.Y., 10025, or
calling (212) 481-7745. The book is available at Barnes &
Noble and can also be ordered through www.amazon.com
For speaking engagements or book signings: Please contact Milton
Allimadi through (212) 481-7745 or Milton@blackstarnews.com
http://www.blackstarnews.com/index.html
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 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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|
Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
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1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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updated 5 November 2007
